Memory leak, SSD/HDD failure, or virus?

[Azza ☠]

Hi,

I have a very straight issue with one of my gaming pcs. It's been working 100% stable and never had any issues till just now, starting up as normal.

Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate - 64 Bit (Service Pack 1)
CPU: Intel Core i7-3770 CPU (@ 3.40GHz / 3.90GHz)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Elite 2x8GB (16GB total) 1866MHz CL9 (9-9-9-27) 1.5V
Graphics: Nvidia GTX 980 (Asus STRIX)

Disk Drives:
128GB Samsung SSD 840 PRO (Boot / Operating System)
2TB Western Digital Black Edition with 64MB cache (WD2002FAEX SCSI)
128GB OCZ Vector SSD (used as Intel Smart Response cache on the HDD)

The issue is when using the computer, browsing the web, youtubes, steam, or just work, etc. It will random corrupt the desktop.

Clicking the start button - Appears as transparent with no text / buttons.
Hovering the taskbar icons - Appears as black boxes.
Opening new windows / folders - Appears as a black window.

Computer has to be restarted or logoff / logon to fix the issue.

Full virus scan and chkdsk sometimes fills on the memory usage (~15.8GB) and then just hangs till closed. As soon as closed, releases the memory.

Virus scan: Clean, sometimes hangs / drains system memory
Rootkit scan: Clean
Windows Integrity Check (SFC /scannow): Clean, no issues
CHKDSK: On the SSD, clean | On the HDD, sometimes hangs / drains system memory

Graphic card drivers: Using latest version 347.52 + Geforce Experience

Virus scanners:
Kaspersky Internet Security 2015 (version 15.0.2.361)
Spybot - Search & Destroy 2 (version 2.4)
RogueKiller
Microsoft Support Emergency Response Tool (msert)

Web browsers:
Internet Explorer 11
Firefox
Google Chrome

Plugins look clean, and tried disabling them.

[Τhe Rolling Cheese Wheel]

Seems like bad ram to me. Try a memcheck next.

[Theory]

did you say it has 8gb RAM but it is reporting 15.8GB usage?

[Azza ☠]

Originally posted by Τhe Rolling Cheese Wheel:

Seems like bad ram to me. Try a memcheck next.

Thanks for the suggestion: Attempting Windows Memory Diagnostic on startup - Scan was successful and says the memory is fine.

Originally posted by markAholic:

did you say it has 8gb RAM but it is reporting 15.8GB usage?

Sorry, that was a typo - meant to be 2x 8GB sticks (16GB in total).

ps: The SSD was running a bit low of space (~9GB free), so freed up it up to 20GB now. I seriously don't think it could just be that?

[Silicon Vampire]

you should keep a minimum of 25% free on your SSD because of how it reallocates space. 20% will probably do it but I keep 25-30% free just to be safe and avoid issues.

[Andrius227]

Originally posted by Azza ☠:

Originally posted by Τhe Rolling Cheese Wheel:

Seems like bad ram to me. Try a memcheck next.

Thanks for the suggestion: Attempting Windows Memory Diagnostic on startup - Scan was successful and says the memory is fine.

Originally posted by markAholic:

did you say it has 8gb RAM but it is reporting 15.8GB usage?

Sorry, that was a typo - meant to be 2x 8GB sticks (16GB in total).

ps: The SSD was running a bit low of space (~9GB free), so freed up it up to 20GB now. I seriously don't think it could just be that?

Dont trust the windows memory diagnostic. Try memtest95. Download a usb installer, it can make a bootable usb for it. Then boot from it, (may need to go to bios to select usb as boot device) it will launch the test. Do at least a couple of passes, will take a few hours, leaving it overnight should be enough.

[Mr. OOSA]

@Andrius227 Is correct here. Testing independant of the OS is always reccomended when Ram issues are considered.

[Satoru]

memory tests generally generate so many false negatives as to be useless

If you suspect yoru RAM is bad, the only real 100% accurate test is a pull test. Yank it out and test each module inividually. You can test your RAM about 1000x faster that way than doing RAM tests that will 99% of the time show nothing is wrong.

[Azza ☠]

I did 3 passes on MemTest86+ - that took several hours but turned up no errors.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Originally posted by Azza ☠:

I did 3 passes on MemTest86+ - that took several hours but turned up no errors.

Then I would test the RAM/DIMMs individually.

Hang/Drains system RAM doesn't mean that is something faulty. Often times that can be normal when so much CPU usage is occurring, usually due to lengthy/in-depth scans of compressed files.

For verify of your drives (since u said those hung), try booting into Safe Mode and doing them, then try this same method for your Virus/Spyware scanners.

Ensure Drivers and Software are up to date, like anything related to Intel Chipset or Intel SRT. You may need to disable Intel SSD Caching before updating that app.

[The Giving One]

Forgive me for asking here with so many good suggestions already, but how old is the HDD ?

How is your paging file configured ?

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Originally posted by The Giving One:

Forgive me for asking here with so many good suggestions, but how old is the HDD ?

How is your paging file configured ?

Good point too; is PageFile disabled? That causes alot of issues whenever it is.

[The Giving One]

Originally posted by Bad-Motha:

Originally posted by The Giving One:

Forgive me for asking here with so many good suggestions, but how old is the HDD ?

How is your paging file configured ?

Good point too; is PageFile disabled? That causes alot of issues whenever it is.

Thanks. I also remember reading somewhere that OCZ uses a special "gargabe collection" feature at the windows log in screen when you boot your PC in the case of the SSD. Not sure if that matters here, but I wanted to put that out there too.

Also, is TRIM enabled for the SSD ? I know the OP said it showed up as clean, but just asking.

[Daggoth]

Originally posted by Azza ☠:

Full virus scan and chkdsk sometimes fills on the memory usage (~15.8GB) and then just hangs till closed. As soon as closed, releases the memory.

Just so you know, chkdsk with check for bad sectors on WILL, by design, take up almost all your RAM. The idea being toss as much in RAM as possible to get it done as quick as possible. Even then it still takes hours.

So don't be too quick to see that and think it's a problem.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

CHKDSK mostly rely on how fast the drive is though, as it has to do a read check of it, sector by sector. Most SSD you can run a full CHKDSK in just a matter of a few minutes, even on a 256GB. But on mostly all HDD, especially 1TB and beyond, those can take quite a while to finish.

A certain minimum of RAM sure does help, like having 4GB+ as opposed to say 2GB. But having a ton more of RAM doesn't really help CHKDSK finish any faster after you have enough minimum RAM.

You want to use "CHKDSK /F" though as that /F ensures that bad-sectors are marked off the MFT and then CHKDSK also attempts to fix any it finds when using the /F switch.

[Seven7]

if it were a normal HDD, I would recommend Victoria for DOS... but this is SSD...

and if you have more than 4GB of RAM, it is better to make a fixed swap file on 200MB (this is the minimum for normal operation of the debugger and system error messages)