My Aspire Desktop T3-605 freezes every 10 minutes (for approx 3 mins at a time) Anyone know why?

This problem coincided with the latest Windows 10 Anniversary update (vers. 1607).

The PC is also having difficulty booting up since the above upgrade and I frequently see the message:

"Reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected device and press a key"

I have tried a whole host of suggestions including one from Microsoft Support KB3083595 that disables storAHCI MSI through the registry that didn't seem to make any difference.

I did notice (too late as it was after I upgraded) that ACER don't support the Windows 10 upgrade at all for this model but they don't seem to give a reason.

Any help / suggestions appreciated.

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IronFly

i'm more worried about the boot media issue than the freezes.

can you please check your HDD SMART values?

download the free trial of HD tune:

http://www.hdtune.com/

and check under Health tab if any value is suspect, do an error scan too.

NigelP

Hi IronFly,

Thanks for the HDtune suggestion.

Unfortunately, every time I try to run the Health Check my HD freezes. It doesn't bother waiting the usual 10 mins it just goes straight to 100% disc utilisation (Task Manager) and for a lot longer than 3 mins each time.

I performed a chkdsk /r /x on my system before trying HDtune that I'm presuming went OK - it rapidly went to 11% complete then stayed like that for a good few hours before finally presenting a Windows login screen. If it hadn't been successfully completed I would have expected it to be still looping. I wasn't at the screen when if finished though so I can't be sure everything's OK. Is there a log file generated? And if so, do you know where it would be?

Anyway, I don't think I'm going to be able to get anything useful from HDtune currently so any other ideas?

Thanks again,

NigelP.

IronFly

check on C:, sometimes chkdsk logs are here or run Event viewer - applications and search for chkdsk logs.

by the way, i strongly suggest you to backup your personal data, since your HDD is dying and buy a new one.

NigelP

Hi IronFly

As I couldn't do anything else with my HD I bought and installed a new one.

This seems to have solved the freezing every 10 minutes problem but I'm not sure about the BIOS message as after I changed the BIOS settings back to Secure Boot [Enabled] which changes Launch CSM to [Never] I received the message: "Reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected device and press a key" again.

So now I've reverted back to disabling Secure Boot and setting Launch CSM to [Always].

Although I've only been up and running for a couple of days I have had to perform many reboots, shutdowns and starts while (re-) installing everything and the message hasn't appeared again with this BIOS setting so I'm going to leave it like that.

Thanks again for replying and helping me - I'm curious though on why / how you knew my HD was dying. I was convinced it was a MS Windows 10 Anniversary Update (Vers 1607) / Acer mismatch problem as it only started happening after they forced the update. What made you think otherwise?

Cheers,

NigelP.

IronFly

1) you have installed windows 10 as legacy/launchCSM, so switching to UEFI gave you that boot error. It will be better to re-install windows 10 under UEFI for hardware and security issues.
Be aware that your installation media must be formatted as FAT32 with GPT scheme for EFI.

2) i suspected the HDD starting from HDTune and checkdisk issues.

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