Member Avatar for Buppy

Hello,

I've encountered this problem with my PC recently. It randomly crashes from time to time (about 0 - 3 times a day). The crash can appear as following - the BSOD, a simple blank black screen, or a black screen that says "a disk read error occurred press ctrl+alt+del to restart". I already checked the HDD, no bad blocks and the SMART data shows Ok. Where should I look for the next issue?

Thanks

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Random BSODs, intermittent black screens and occasional "a disk read error occurred" usually point at three broad areas: storage/boot-layer problems, memory or driver faults, and power/hardware instability. Given ’s note that the drive surface and SMART looked OK, the most useful next step is to collect hard evidence (bugcheck codes, minidumps, and Event Viewer errors) and then isolate components rather than guessing causes.

Recommended evidence-capture and analysis: make sure automatic restart is off (as recommended) so the STOP code is visible, and have Windows write crash dumps (small kernel dumps and the full MEMORY.DMP). Look in C:\Windows\Minidump and C:\Windows\MEMORY.DMP and analyze those with WinDbg or a dump-reader (WhoCrashed-type tools) to get the bugcheck code and any named faulting driver. Common leads: 0x7B (INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE) → storage/driver/boot problem; 0x50/0x0A → bad RAM or a misbehaving driver.

Hardware isolation and targeted checks: follow ’s RAM suggestion but expand it—run a bootable MemTest86 for multiple full passes and test each DIMM singly; Windows Memory Diagnostic is quicker but less thorough. Swap SATA cables and ports, try the drive on another machine or via a USB adapter, and check Event Viewer for controller resets or disk I/O errors. Verify BIOS/firmware and storage mode (AHCI vs RAID) and reinstall matching storage drivers if RAID/Intel RST is used. Also rule out PSU instability, overheating, or GPU faults (remove overclocks, check temps).

If the disk-read error appears at boot, use the Recovery Environment and run chkdsk /f /r and the bootrec commands (/fixmbr, /fixboot, /rebuildbcd) after backing up data. The exact bugcheck code, the driver name from the dump and the relevant System log entries are the keys to a precise fix.

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Member Avatar for gerbil

In the Windows startup options screen ( http://windows.microsoft.com/en-au/windows/advanced-startup-options-including-safe-mode#1TC=windows-7 )set the system so that it does not automatically restart upon errors such as BSOD. Then next time, give the error code so displayed. Likely there will be a faulting process listed also.
If you often get "a black screen that says "a disk read error occurred"" then it could be a cabling issue, or still a hdd fault, or a driver problem. Are you using AHCI or Raid?

Member Avatar for khakilang

You may want to check your memory module. That may also be the cause of BSOD.

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