Bluescreen hell. I am currently on a relatively cheap refurb PC that I bought a year ago just in case my big PC failed. There is practically nothing on the drives of this machine so please bear with me as I try to fix my main PC.
Story so far - It started when my PC just froze. Then I started getting seemingly random BSODs. It has now progressed to NTLDR not found. On the plus side, I think all my data is still intact. Anyway, got to try some fixes on MS win 10 forums.
Thanks.
TR
Don’t know if this helps, but I recently had a very similar problem which turned out to be a worn out hard drive.
My suspicion too but mines an SSD.
TR
I read that SSDs are even easier to wear out if you overwrite the content often - possibly a red herring, of course.
I have had SSD fail this way too. I remember people being surprised that my drive seemed to have failed so quickly, with what appeared to be a heavy amount of writes. It happens. 
I went for a Samsung SSD after this, and this seems to be much more reliable to date. (I did not get the drive replaced under any warranty.)
That was an early failure if it was still in warranty.
I have one last thing to try before moving onto the almost nuclear option (no not reinstall). The setup on that PC is that it is a duel boot win 10/win 7 with a 2 tb data disk. However, I still have the HD that win 10 was on originally. Hopefully, it still has win 10 on it. I also have another empty SSD of the same size and make as the one that has apparently filed. They’re both manufactured by Crucial. So, even though I am reluctant to do it (that’s X amount of time’s updates to get to now), if what I expect to fail does so and the data on the mechanical HD is OK, I may have to do a disk copy onto that spare SSD. FWIW, I had intended to put the win 7 disk onto it but never got around to it.
BTW, anyone know how much current a 2 tb mechanical HD draws? I could really do to move some of the data from the already in use mechanical HD onto it.
TR
Aside of this being a defective unit, SSDs don’t fail so rapidly, unless you do a continuous, massive write of files on them. I’m talking terabytes of data in each session. Brand may play a factor as well. I’ve had a 2 TB EVO 860 for about 5 years, first as a system drive and now as storage, and have had zero issues. Current system has been on a 250 GB Kingston SSD for about 3 years without a hitch. It seems the higher the storage capacity also plays a factor, but that may be due to how much data you may overwrite at once, rather than an inherent flaw.
OK, I found that time I had the SSD issue… Mine was a Crucial too.
UPDATED: It seems that this SSD was NOT replaced under warranty. (I have corrected my original post.)
I just checked, and this was OUTSIDE of its warranty - I must be thinking of another HD I got replaced under warranty, but this SSD definitely went “wrong” and the number of “writes” had been told me were the issue. Seems our NWN builds stress these drives. 
I hasten to add that I have now moved onto a EVO drive since that other drive was ordered and used.
Check out the link I have here to see what Crucial told me about the “writes”. Note the info about this TBW value. Crucial (120) is lower than Samsung (600), and can affect its lifespan.
OK, After a day or 2 I have a bit of an update on this. I am pretty sure it is not a faulty SSD. I “burned” a USB stick with a live Linux distro (Mint v22.2 Cinnamon) (boot from the USB and run it without disturbing the actual contents) and used that to check that my filesystem and files were still there. They were and and seemed undamaged. So when (I refuse to say if) I figure out how to fix my sector problem I can then see if I’ve still got my BSOD problem. If I have and if I have the time to do it, rolling back to previous version should (I hope) fix the BSOD.
Annoyingly I see that there is a new dev patch now available for EE, just when I can’t try it out! [much wailing and gnashing of teeth]. See the announcement on steam.
TR
By the way, what’s a BSOD. Basic Supply Of Damage?
Fwiiw: My experience with SSD is the following: Everything works perfectly until the day comes, where the disk refuses any write access. All my data was still there and intact, but no changes possible. Having a look on the smart parameters shows, that the livetime obviously was expired. You had a look on smart, hadn’t you?
Blue Screen of Death
Also available in Black
Ah, I see. I only know it just as “Blue Screen”, without prosaic add on.
Re. S.M.A.R.T. - Unfortunately AFAIK (I could be very wrong here), the windows install media that has access to repair stuff doesn’t give access to SMART. Fortunately there is a program built-in to Linux Mint called Drives that does. On launch, it says everything is fine. Just to be sure, I launched the short version of the SMART drive self-test. Still comes back as fine - Says something like “Limits not exceeded” and everything else says “OK”.
TR
Just to add that the software I used to test the Crucial drive I had that went wrong, also reported that I was well within limits. (See what the guy from crucial said about that in my post above.)
This was also my situation. (Again, see my post above.)
Other than that, let us know if it does turn out to be anything different.
I use this one. Runs without installation, so it can be executed from a stick. My disk is quite new.
A sector problem on a drive containing the OS is known to cause BSODs, but if the SSD is completely non-functional, you won’t even reach the blue screen, but rather get a “drive not found” or “non-system disk” error message.
So the good news is your data is probably still intact, but you’ll need to plug another SDD or HD to copy it from the internal SSD.
When the backup of all your files is completed, you could try to restart the computer without the linux thumbdrive in, and before the BSOD appears you hopefully will have some time to try the usual “chkdsk” command to scan and repair the SSD. But maybe an update of the driver would be enough.
Good luck!
Thanks @4760. Thanks for the suggestion on making a copy of the drive. That may take a bit of time but I am going with it. Given that it has just taken 7+/- hours to format a tb HD, via USB 2 docking station, I’ll give my USB 3 one for the actual copying. Then I’ll use the Linux Mint Drives program to carry out a test to see if it is actually the SSD that is worn out or not. With luck the copy will be an insurance against anything else going wrong. I’ll proceed from there based on the results.
TR
