Additional Hard Disk Drive causing certain games to crash

[Lemon Tart]

I recently got myself a new PC and noted that the SSD it came prebuilt with barely has enough space for more than two newer games, so I grabbed a 1TB HDD from my old PC, plugged it in and formatted it. All seemed fine until after I transferred all my game files to the new drive and tried running a couple games.

Problem seems to mostly be with Unity games. Rimworld and Phasmophobia crash on starting up and also cause any programs in the background to freeze at random. No Man's Sky works up until I try to start or load a game, somewhere around until the logo splash screen. I was able to run BattleBit Remastered, Starbound and Planet Zoo without any issues.

Verifying game files, reinstalling steam into the same drive as the library file and restarting the PC had no effect. Even after I transferred steam and the games back to the original drive, the problems continued to persist until I removed the additional drive.

If anyone's got an idea if I can or can't get this drive working, I'd appreciate it. Thanks in advance.

[Bee🐝]

Basics:

- Most likely a good idea to do a Windows Chkdsk scan for a start.

- Are you receiving an error when they crash or is it just a clean crash?

- Turn off all non-essential background apps including any VPN’s or anti-virus software and try to run those again. That the games are failing on the main drive as well is interesting.

- You can run DISM CheckHealth and a sfc /scannow scans and see if they find anything. They most likely won’t but it’s basic troubleshooting which eliminates the OS as the cause.

[Lemon Tart]

In most cases there were no errors. Running Phasmophobia in administrator mode did get me an instruction at referenced memory could not be written error once

I removed the extra hard drive which made everything run normally again, then plugged it back in and it asked me to format it again. I got Phasmophobia to start up once without issues but now it's crashing again. Not running anything in the background that should interfere with things as I've been able to run everything without issues up until adding the new drive.

[nullable]

Well as is I'd suspect the drive. And I might look at getting a replacement. Maybe it's nothing, or maybe you won a frustrating lottery where the drive started failing at the same time you transplanted it. Not impossible.

HDDs generally don't take much configuration, and there may not be a lot of tweaks or configuration you can do to make it work like you want.

$30 could solve your problem. $45 could solve your problem and double the space.

[Lemon Tart]

So the problem is now persisting even without the hard drive installed and in some cases I feel like it's gotten even worse. Trying to launch No Man's Sky force closed just about every window running in the background and froze the rest.

Only errors I'm getting is an occasional "The exception unknown software exception occurred in the application at location" from one of the background processes, like steam web helper or razer synapse.

[nullable]

Well, just to be safe have you run any tests on your C:\

If you take the thing out you thought was the cause, and still have the issue, then the extra HDD may not have been the cause at all. It was coincidental. If the drive was removed and the problem still persists I'd be looking to troubleshoot other causes. I wouldn't really expect the 2nd drive somehow damaged the rest of the system, at least not as a top concern I'd investigate first, unless there's additional details you'd care to mention?

[Lavie]

Hi!
- Do you have a number error iwith the errors message?

- Try if you can found a log a the error via the Event Viewer, and write here the exact error message?
https://www.howtogeek.com/123646/htg-explains-what-the-windows-event-viewer-is-and-how-you-can-use-it/

More details found on the net (with Portal 2 as example) if that can help you with that:

Try opening the Windows Event Viewer by right clicking the start button and selecting Event Viewer from the menu (third from the top option on my machine). From there, expand Windows Logs and select Application. The middle pane should contain a list with columns named "Level, Date and Time, Source, Event ID, Task Category" and so on (the specific columns may differ on your computer).

Portal 2 crashing should result in Windows writing an entry with level Error and source Application Error to this list. To find the entry corresponding to the crash, locate entries matching those values (using the Date and Time column as a guide), and click to display details in the lower middle pane. The entry corresponding to Portal 2 crashing will list the Faulting application name as portal2.exe. Once you have found an entry, note the Faulting module name and Exception code; these will provide a clue as to what is ultimately causing the problems.

[Lemon Tart]

At the end of the day I ended up opting to reset my PC, which seems to have fixed the issue. New drive's working without issue so far with the games I had issues with, but I'll have to see if anything occurs when I get the rest of the games installed again.

[Iceira]

im not so sure you have fixed it, atm you have a fresh system, but nothing say it cant happend again, because most see hardware to other disk is same and driver like that dont just fix itself.

sure you can have interference issue, and that my point i hope you dont get them again ofc, but not then you look at the topic add other disk then it go down hill from there. ( its here most will say this dont add up. ( could you tecnicaly has PSU issue or in balance mode the disk dont get its power it craving for and then get system issue. ( i assume disk pass the check disk )

and nothing prevent you from test disk again in old pc. after you discover a issue in the new.
look like disk dont get the power it need.

im sure the other helper here can see a point in this, only you can confirm it, because i have not seen such ever. ( other then its PSU issue to a graphic card )

im sorry only you can test for this ,sense most other dont have 2 pc or can see the problem then it work on 1 pc thats the problem here. ( assume disk actual work fine in the old pc, still no problem there then my point is spot on, unless cable is the issue and point is same.)