Acer Nitro 5 AN515-53 - Refurbished laptop with failing 1TB HDD after only a year and a half of use

Hi all,
I no longer have warranty on this laptop, but even after doing a completely clean installation of windows I get BSOD while doing WINDOWS UPDATES with failed crash dumps and no bootable device on restart. I got this laptop from best buy for a reasonable price.

The laptop will stutter and freeze on random days, and when it freezes for a full minute I get the BSOD. I checked the health of my RAM and HDD, both completely fine after running full tests but still getting BSOD for no reason.

Does anyone know if there are any last resorts I can take other than replacing the HDD?

Accepted answers

All comments

StevenGen

ShangWang said:

Hi all,
I no longer have warranty on this laptop, but even after doing a completely clean installation of windows I get BSOD while doing WINDOWS UPDATES with failed crash dumps and no bootable device on restart. I got this laptop from best buy for a reasonable price.

The laptop will stutter and freeze on random days, and when it freezes for a full minute I get the BSOD. I checked the health of my RAM and HDD, both completely fine after running full tests but still getting BSOD for no reason.

Does anyone know if there are any last resorts I can take other than replacing the HDD?

This could be a driver issue. Make sure that you have all your Win-10 drivers up to date and also use the DDU (Display Driver Uninstall) software in Win-10 "Safe Mode" to uninstall all your stacked and unwanted display drivers as they could be causing BSOD's and or freezes and lockups. To do this do this:

To get to Safe Mode and run DDU (Display Driver Uninstall) do this:

1. Download and install DDU onto desktop

2. Press Left Shift key

3. Keep pressing Shift key and Restart Windows

4. Go into Troubleshoot

5. Go to Advance options

6. Go to Startup Settings

7. Click Restart

8. Go into #4 Enable Safe Mode

9. Go to the DDU software and use “Clean and Not Restart” to uninstall all drivers of NVIDIA or INTEL or AMD and other remanence’s of uninstalled drivers to thoroughly take them OFF the drive and system.

10. After you have uninstalled all the drivers > reboot > and install all the latest GPU drivers from either NVIDIA or AMD and Intel as these steps will completely uninstall all drivers that could be causing BSOD's and freezes and you will only have the appropriate drivers installed

As far as your 2.5" spinner HDD its unlikely to cause these BSOD's and freezes (but and my advice is that a pinner HDD is not suitable for Win-10 boot drive as they are too slow and are prone to anything) so get a 2.5" SSD as your boot drive. But and if your spinner HDD hangs and freezes then it could be its bearing and/or its heads that are failing? When that happens the spinner HDD makes a distinctive noise(s) and you will know about it, check that and if this is the case, then immediately clone and replace the 2.5" spinner HDD and clone its boot drive onto a 2.5" new SSD before it fails completely and you lose all your data.

ShangWang

StevenGen said:

ShangWang said:

Hi all,
I no longer have warranty on this laptop, but even after doing a completely clean installation of windows I get BSOD while doing WINDOWS UPDATES with failed crash dumps and no bootable device on restart. I got this laptop from best buy for a reasonable price.

The laptop will stutter and freeze on random days, and when it freezes for a full minute I get the BSOD. I checked the health of my RAM and HDD, both completely fine after running full tests but still getting BSOD for no reason.

Does anyone know if there are any last resorts I can take other than replacing the HDD?

This could be a driver issue. Make sure that you have all your Win-10 drivers up to date and also use the DDU (Display Driver Uninstall) software in Win-10 "Safe Mode" to uninstall all your stacked and unwanted display drivers as they could be causing BSOD's and or freezes and lockups. To do this do this:
To get to Safe Mode and run DDU (Display Driver Uninstall) do this:

1. Download and install DDU onto desktop

2. Press Left Shift key

3. Keep pressing Shift key and Restart Windows

4. Go into Troubleshoot

5. Go to Advance options

6. Go to Startup Settings

7. Click Restart

8. Go into #4 Enable Safe Mode

9. Go to the DDU software and use “Clean and Not Restart” to uninstall all drivers of NVIDIA or INTEL or AMD and other remanence’s of uninstalled drivers to thoroughly take them OFF the drive and system.
10. After you have uninstalled all the drivers > reboot > and install all the latest GPU drivers from either NVIDIA or AMD and Intel as these steps will completely uninstall all drivers that could be causing BSOD's and freezes and you will only have the appropriate drivers installed
As far as your 2.5" spinner HDD its unlikely to cause these BSOD's and freezes (but and my advice is that a pinner HDD is not suitable for Win-10 boot drive as they are too slow and are prone to anything) so get a 2.5" SSD as your boot drive. But and if your spinner HDD hangs and freezes then it could be its bearing and/or its heads that are failing? When that happens the spinner HDD makes a distinctive noise(s) and you will know about it, check that and if this is the case, then immediately clone and replace the 2.5" spinner HDD and clone its boot drive onto a 2.5" new SSD before it fails completely and you lose all your data.

Hello, thank you for reaching out to me!
I don't mind losing data, I only back up some of my needed files on Onedrive and I'm good. I already completely wiped my partitions from the clean install.
By doing that didn't I already uninstall all drivers and restore the default ones? When downloading Driver Easy I noticed all my oudated drivers are showing up.

ShangWang

ShangWang said:

StevenGen said:

ShangWang said:

Hi all,
I no longer have warranty on this laptop, but even after doing a completely clean installation of windows I get BSOD while doing WINDOWS UPDATES with failed crash dumps and no bootable device on restart. I got this laptop from best buy for a reasonable price.

The laptop will stutter and freeze on random days, and when it freezes for a full minute I get the BSOD. I checked the health of my RAM and HDD, both completely fine after running full tests but still getting BSOD for no reason.

Does anyone know if there are any last resorts I can take other than replacing the HDD?

This could be a driver issue. Make sure that you have all your Win-10 drivers up to date and also use the DDU (Display Driver Uninstall) software in Win-10 "Safe Mode" to uninstall all your stacked and unwanted display drivers as they could be causing BSOD's and or freezes and lockups. To do this do this:
To get to Safe Mode and run DDU (Display Driver Uninstall) do this:

1. Download and install DDU onto desktop

2. Press Left Shift key

3. Keep pressing Shift key and Restart Windows

4. Go into Troubleshoot

5. Go to Advance options

6. Go to Startup Settings

7. Click Restart

8. Go into #4 Enable Safe Mode

9. Go to the DDU software and use “Clean and Not Restart” to uninstall all drivers of NVIDIA or INTEL or AMD and other remanence’s of uninstalled drivers to thoroughly take them OFF the drive and system.
10. After you have uninstalled all the drivers > reboot > and install all the latest GPU drivers from either NVIDIA or AMD and Intel as these steps will completely uninstall all drivers that could be causing BSOD's and freezes and you will only have the appropriate drivers installed
As far as your 2.5" spinner HDD its unlikely to cause these BSOD's and freezes (but and my advice is that a pinner HDD is not suitable for Win-10 boot drive as they are too slow and are prone to anything) so get a 2.5" SSD as your boot drive. But and if your spinner HDD hangs and freezes then it could be its bearing and/or its heads that are failing? When that happens the spinner HDD makes a distinctive noise(s) and you will know about it, check that and if this is the case, then immediately clone and replace the 2.5" spinner HDD and clone its boot drive onto a 2.5" new SSD before it fails completely and you lose all your data.

Hello, thank you for reaching out to me!
I don't mind losing data, I only back up some of my needed files on Onedrive and I'm good. I already completely wiped my partitions from the clean install.
By doing that didn't I already uninstall all drivers and restore the default ones? When downloading Driver Easy I noticed all my oudated drivers are showing up.

In addition after a clean install or repair my laptop goes to abnormally high CPU heat for no reason when doing simple tasks, this usually goes away after a few restarts. I already repasted my heatsink and it was working perfectly fine before.

ShangWang

ShangWang said:

ShangWang said:

StevenGen said:

ShangWang said:

Hi all,
I no longer have warranty on this laptop, but even after doing a completely clean installation of windows I get BSOD while doing WINDOWS UPDATES with failed crash dumps and no bootable device on restart. I got this laptop from best buy for a reasonable price.

The laptop will stutter and freeze on random days, and when it freezes for a full minute I get the BSOD. I checked the health of my RAM and HDD, both completely fine after running full tests but still getting BSOD for no reason.

Does anyone know if there are any last resorts I can take other than replacing the HDD?

This could be a driver issue. Make sure that you have all your Win-10 drivers up to date and also use the DDU (Display Driver Uninstall) software in Win-10 "Safe Mode" to uninstall all your stacked and unwanted display drivers as they could be causing BSOD's and or freezes and lockups. To do this do this:
To get to Safe Mode and run DDU (Display Driver Uninstall) do this:

1. Download and install DDU onto desktop

2. Press Left Shift key

3. Keep pressing Shift key and Restart Windows

4. Go into Troubleshoot

5. Go to Advance options

6. Go to Startup Settings

7. Click Restart

8. Go into #4 Enable Safe Mode

9. Go to the DDU software and use “Clean and Not Restart” to uninstall all drivers of NVIDIA or INTEL or AMD and other remanence’s of uninstalled drivers to thoroughly take them OFF the drive and system.
10. After you have uninstalled all the drivers > reboot > and install all the latest GPU drivers from either NVIDIA or AMD and Intel as these steps will completely uninstall all drivers that could be causing BSOD's and freezes and you will only have the appropriate drivers installed
As far as your 2.5" spinner HDD its unlikely to cause these BSOD's and freezes (but and my advice is that a pinner HDD is not suitable for Win-10 boot drive as they are too slow and are prone to anything) so get a 2.5" SSD as your boot drive. But and if your spinner HDD hangs and freezes then it could be its bearing and/or its heads that are failing? When that happens the spinner HDD makes a distinctive noise(s) and you will know about it, check that and if this is the case, then immediately clone and replace the 2.5" spinner HDD and clone its boot drive onto a 2.5" new SSD before it fails completely and you lose all your data.

Hello, thank you for reaching out to me!
I don't mind losing data, I only back up some of my needed files on Onedrive and I'm good. I already completely wiped my partitions from the clean install.
By doing that didn't I already uninstall all drivers and restore the default ones? When downloading Driver Easy I noticed all my oudated drivers are showing up.

In addition after a clean install or repair my laptop goes to abnormally high CPU heat for no reason when doing simple tasks, this usually goes away after a few restarts. I already repasted my heatsink and it was working perfectly fine before.

Figured it out, when plugged in turbo boost is set to max for some reason. Tweaking with throttlestop and quickCPU fixes it.
However I still have stuttering and freezing indicated by a possibly faulty HDD, and get infrequent BSOD with 0% restart and no bootable device until
force shutdown.

Quick Links

Top Members

Weekly

Puraw 70

Swift Series Intel^® Evo™

Game Pass

Acer Corner

Gaming on Chromebook

Swift Series Intel® Evo™

Game Pass

Acer Corner

Gaming on Chromebook

Swift Series Intel^® Evo™