How to investigate this generic "Drive Error" message?

I received a generic "Drive Error" message yesterday in my Notification Centre--please see the first picture attached below. I then shut-down the PC for the day. Upon booting-up this-morning it presented me with the screen seen in the second picture attached below. I chose the "Restart" option in response to this, and then it restarted as normal as has been fine in the hours since.

How do I investigate what happened here please? I was having trouble installing AutoHotKey yesterday, which trouble I suspect was due to Norton Antivirus' interference, and I'm troubleshooting that on the AutoHotKey community-forum currently; could it have been that that was the underlying cause of this "Drive Error" message I'm asking about in this post?

I just very recently Clean-Installed W11 onto my PC, perhaps this has something to do with it?

Personally, if it were me, I would not be too concerned if this issue has happened only once and it worked itself out with a restart. Glitches do happen. Now, if it re-occurs that's another story and I would start worrying.

One can check his drives using a Seatools bootable drive.
Run Sea Tools bootable Long Generic test > take pictures > post share links

SeaTools Bootable | Seagate US

https://www.seagate.com/content/dam...es/seatools/USBbootSetup-SeaToolsBootable.zip

Reliability Monitor is a troubleshooting tool that can be used to monitor your overall system stability history at a glance and lets you see details on a day-by-day basis. Many of the reports there are transient. Here again, don't fret if you see an occassional error. That too is normal. Windows recovers itself from transient events all the time. The tool is to be used to form a pattern of failures coinciding with actual problems you have with your system.

You can check that you have no corrupt system files that is causing this problem. Open a command prompt as administrator and
type sfc /scannow
Pay attention to the scan results to see if SFC found anything it could not repair. If it found corruption it could not fix followup with this command (note the spaces)
dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth
Restart computer
(Note-you can follow up with another sfc /scannow command to make sure that dism repaired the files)

That said you can gather your log files as per instructions and post in the BSOD section of this forum. Zip the files, upload the zipped file to any cloud provider and post a shared link. BSOD - Posting Instructions

@glasskuter Thanks for all that, I'll try it tomorrow.

Edit to the OP: after that second screenshot, during the "normal restart" I mentioned, it said beneath the Dell logo and the buffering-wheel "Scanning and repairing drive. [incrementing]%".

As has already been said, if it just the once and is not repeated continuously, no problems it has fixed itself.
Such things can be due to some minor disc filing system error due to a random power glitch or something.

The easiest place to go is Control Panel > Security and Maintenance > Maintenance V > View reliability history.
Don't worry about a few red circles with crosses there, in most cases just some minor problem.

For Disc checking you can go to File Manager > Right click on C drive > Properties > Tools tab > Check.

Those messages are probably windows just doing that automatically.

I would use the SFC and DISM command line stuff at some point, just for peace of mind.

Launching an investigation is way over the top.

_william said:

I chose the "Restart" option in response to this, and then it restarted as normal as has been fine in the hours since.

Click to expand...

1) Search for srttrail.txt > post a share link

c:/windows/system32/logfiles/srt/srttrail.txt




2) Run HD Sentinel > post share links
a) Overview
b) Temperature
c) SMART



3) Run Sea Tools Windows Long Generic test: > post share links

@glasskuter
I haven't looked-into the Seagate tool yet.

Regarding the Reliability Monitor tool. There are a few "COM Surrogate" Critical Events that occured over the two days prior to my receiving the error-notification mentioned in the OP, but they're all to do with the "ClipChamp" app, which I don't even use at all, and which I've now uninstalled. Otherwise the only Error I can see that's out-of-place in the Reliability Monitor tool is a "Windows was not properly shut down" one, which occured two days before my receiving the notification mentioned in the OP. There was nothing that seemed to actually pertain to the notification I mentioned in the OP.

Regarding the "sfc/scannow" Command Prompt. It returned the message

"Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files and successfully repaired them."

It then referred me to a log-file at "C:\Windows\Logs\CBS\CBS.log"; the "scannow" operation had produced 500 lines of information in this LOG file, and I don't know which, if any, of those lines would be helpful--i.e., so the system fixed some corrupt files and there are 500 lines of details about that, is it worth investigating those details further? Also, that was for the "online log" of "scannow", I couldn't understand the Command Prompt's message regarding an "offline log" for it: it said to use the "/OFFLOGFILE" Flag for it, so I entered "sfc/scannow/OFFLOGFILE=C:\Windows\Logs\CBS\CBS.log" but that just produced the message seen in the picture below.

There was no 'corrupt files were found, but Windows could not repair them' message at all, so I didn't use the further Command Prompt command you gave.

If it were me, I would quit worrying about it until it happens again. As I said, some times Windows will belch but recover itself and no further troubleshooting is necessary. Normally, if a machine has a hard error, you will experience the issue again. When and if it happens again, that is the appropriate time to worry and try to deal with it. If not, you're golden for now.

If it does happen again, create another post in the BSOD section of the forum. Follow the special instructions exactly as listed at the top of that forum section about all the necessary information required for analyzation. It involves gathering of necessary logfiles into a folder, zipping the folder, and uploading the folder to any cloud provider. You then post a shared link to the folder within your post.
The instructions are very clear.

@Helmut

Helmut said:

File Manager

Click to expand...

Is the same as "Windows Explorer" and "File Explorer", right?

Helmut said:

I would use the SFC and DISM command line stuff at some point

Click to expand...

You mean the Command Prompt code the user glasskuter gave in the first response of this thread, right?

@zbook

Here's a Dropbox share-link for the "SrtTrail.txt" file.

I downloaded "Hard Disk Sentinel (standard) v6.20 (ZIP)" from the website, is that the correct version?

Is the SeaTools software you linked any different to the "SeaTools Bootable" software linked by the user glasskuter in the first response of this thread?

The srttrail.txt was unremarkable.



Any of the latest trial versions of HD Sentinel should work > the results are instantaneous

Either Sea Tools Windows or Sea Tools bootable can run the Long Generic test.

If Sea Tools bootable is used plan to run the test overnight while sleeping.

If Sea Tools Windows is used it can run in the background.

_william said:

"Windows was not properly shut down"

Click to expand...

Had you forced Windows off or had it crashed at that time?

_william said:

Regarding the "sfc/scannow"

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Refer to the tutorial for all SFC matters including what to do if it does not repair all faults it finds [run a particular Dism command].
SFC - ElevenForumTutorials
Its Option 3 tells you how to extract relevant entries from that huge cbs.log.

_william said:

is it worth investigating those details further?

Click to expand...

Since everything was repaired this time, there's little or no benefit in extracting anything or posting what gets extracted.

_william said:

that was for the "online log" of "scannow"

Click to expand...

No, it is the combined log for lots of things not just SFC. That's why you need to extract SFC entries.


SFC guidance is also provided in SFC - MSLearn
[There is also some limited info in SFC - SS64 - All other SS64 help pages are excellent.]

All the best,
Denis

@zbook

Glad the "SrtTrail.txt" file is fine.

I couldn't, at a glance at least, see anything wrong with the results of the "HD Sentinel" tests--for "Overview", "Temperature", and "SMART"--; I've attached screenshots below of those results. In the third screenshot, the remaining items I pasted onto the very bottom of the picture, to save uploading two separate pictures (i.e., all items are marked in pink in that screenshot).

I don't myself understand why you copy-pasted lines from the "SrtTrail.txt" file at the end of your reply there, but I guess it's not important for me else you would have explained.

@zbook

So I finished running all the tests on the SeaTools app you recommended. I only ran the tests in the "Quick Tests" and "Extended Tests" sub-tabs of the "Health" tab; and I ran the "Spin Down" test in the "Advanced" tab. Then I exported the logs using the "Manage Logs" tool under the "Utility" tab. It "passed" them all, according to the log, so the "Fix All" sub-tab of the "Health" tab didn't seem relevant, nor did the "Erase" tab.

Also, the manual seemed to say that any Windows users should first log-in as an Administrator before using it, but I just right-clicked it and chose "Run as administrator" instead, I hope that was fine to do...

The results from the tests performed were unremarkable.

The Sea Tools long generic was by post report as no link was seen.

The HD Sentinel uses their SMART data and creates a proprietary rating.

If there are any recurrent problems logs can be collected.

Try3 said:

Had you forced Windows off or had it crashed at that time?

Click to expand...

No. I thought I could account for it, but can't on second-thought... I may just make a new thread about this as another instance of the same problem just happened about an hour ago.

Nothing about that sounds troubling. I didn't understand these two lines of yours however:

zbook said:

The Sea Tools long generic was by post report [?] as no link was seen [?].

The HD Sentinel uses their [Seagate?] SMART data and creates a proprietary rating [?].

Click to expand...

When the software completes testing there is a displayed result or box.

The thread did not have images from Sea Tools but had had images from HD Sentinel.

So far so good.

If there are any recurrent problems logs can be collected.