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I use windows 10. I find the following happening over a long time:

  1. When doing some work, the screen suddenly froze.
  2. BSOD. "Critical process died." It is really difficult to see the error message, because the blue screen only last for less than a fraction of a second. I actually have to vedio it and view frame by frame to see the message.
  3. When trying to reboot: "No boot device".
  4. Press the power button and boot again, and see the error message again.
  5. After several trials, I manage to get into the operating system again, by chance.
  6. After two days, steps 1-5 happen again. This has been that way for months.

Running a windows disc check gives me no problems. I thought it is the SSD being loosely connected.

What's the problem? It only happens occasionally, and I am completely perplexed.

It seems that other posts about similar problems are tackling the situation in which the PS cannot boot at all. Since I can still enter the system, the situation is different.

More details: I looked at the event log. There is an error in the event log less than 1 second before the BSOD: volmgr, 161. Apparently, it is the same situation as described here: https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/1119441-intermittant-crashing-volmgr-event-id-161/

I runned sfc scannow but that doesn't tell me any errors.

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    Open the EventViewer, find the system log. Look for items flagged with a red icon dating from around the last crash. Add the information from such an eventlog message to the question. Hopefully that provides more information about the crash. As it stands we can't do anything about your question than just guess-work.
    – Tonny
    Mar 28, 2020 at 9:42
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    Sounds like hard drive failure, probably something in the power side failing and taking time to cool down or reset. Replace the drive.
    – Mokubai ♦
    Mar 28, 2020 at 10:03
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    @Tonny Thank you. I have added some details.
    – Holding Arthur
    Mar 28, 2020 at 11:07

1 Answer 1

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Volume Manager error 161 is a bad one.
It can have a whole list of causes and most of them are not good news.

URGENT: copy all your important data to another disk. BACKUP!!!! The disk can fail completely and become totally unusable at any time. Prepare for the worst and assume that this disk is already past dead. (If it isn't, your lucky. If it is, your data will be safe.)

Then: Open the computer and make sure all cables to/from the drive are firmly seated in their socket. For the SATA cable going to the motherboard don't forget the motherboard end of the cable.
(Of course: If this is a laptop there may not be any cables and the disk slots directly in a connector on the board. If it is a M.2 drive it will also slot directly in to a board-connector. Anyway. Just make sure there isn't anything loose.)
If there is power-cable between drive and power-supply see if you can swap the disk over to a different power-connector. Preferably also on a different power-cable (if available).

Second thing to do is to force a full chkdsk for your C: drive:.
Start a Command Prompt or Powershell Prompt with "Run as Administrator" and give the command chkdsk c: /offlinescanandfix.
It will probably tell you it can't do that now, because C: is in use (duh... Windows is running from it, of course it is in use), but it can schedule a scan to happen on next boot. Let it do that and reboot the computer.
This may take awhile.

Hopefully the combination of the 2 things above fixes your problem.

If that doesn't fix the problem the disk most likely really has an intermittent hardware problem.
The most likely cause in that case is either the disk overheats due to bad ventilation in the computer case or the disk itself is starting to fail.

For overheating make sure the fans all work and aren't clogged by dust.

To check the disk itself: Look in Windows device-manager what the exact brand/model of the harddisk or SSD is and go to the web-site of the manufacturer to download their disk diagnostic tool. (Every harddrive/SSD manufacturer has a diagnostic tool.)
Run that tool to analyze your drive.
If the diagnostic indicates the disk is bad you must replace it asap as it can die on you completely at any time. (Did I mention backup?)
Even if the diagnostic is inconclusive it is better to be safe than sorry and replace it.
(Personally I wouldn't even bother diagnosing the disk and just replace it anyway. To me, data-integrity is more valuable than the price of a new disk.)

If you are still using a classic, spinning, disk this would be a good moment to upgrade to a SSD.
Whether you want to copy your existing Windows installation to the new disk or want to do a fresh installation from scratch is up to you, but I recommend the latter for 2 reasons: A fresh installation gets rid of all the cruft Windows has picked up over the years and, more importantly, cloning the old disk to the new will possibly be unreliable so you can't garantee you will have a good copy. So you might just as well start with a fresh install straight away.

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