My machine blue-screened on me abruptly while sitting idly. Nothing much that I can think of has changed lately.

It rebooted on its own and went into Windows fine, except for a message saying Windows did not shut down properly and asking me if I want it to search for a solution. (This was NOT a message saying "The system has recovered from a serious error.")

Everything seemed fine.

I went to the C: drive in Windows Explorer > Properties > Tools > Error-Checking > Check now. I left the first box checked, which is checked by default, to check for and fix system errors.

But when I clicked "Start," nothing happened. I clicked it again, and again nothing happened. It may have been 20-30 seconds before it finally gave me the next screen, which says it has to be shut down to run CheckDisk.

I know my machines pretty well, and this long delay was very uncharacteristic behavior.

I ran chksdk and it said it found no errors.

I went back to do the same steps again, and again there was an unprecedented, very long delay before the Check Now > "Start"
button gave me a response.

I noticed that after it did finally respond the first time after a reboot, if I then canceled and tried it again, it responded instantly.

A third reboot revealed the same behavior. It exhibited about 30 seconds of a delay after hitting Start before it gave me any response.

Based on my experience with computers, my judgment is that I need to restore this machine from an image backup. I have one that's a few days old, but it was sent off-site and it will take a few days to have it back here (which is not a big deal for me, per se, since I can use other computers for now and this one is working "fine" from what I can tell so far, other than that one issue).

Before I do restore the machine -- and avoid using it in the meanwhile, til I get the backup disk back here -- I just want to check here as to whether that long delay is actually common behavior or not.

I've never seen it, but I've only run it a few dozen times in my life.

Maybe the long delay is because I have a third drive in here now? The OS/apps is on an SSD, and the data is on an HDD. Lately, I added another SSD which is solely for my video editing projects and support files. All of it is basic SATA.

So, given that this is a mission-critical machine and years of work and many people's lives are relying on this company, should I do an image restore, or is this normal behavior I've just never seen before?

Thanks very much!

Hello Jay -

I assume this is with Windows 7? Here's an article you can check out, it might help http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/Resolving-stop-blue-screen-errors-in-Windows-7

Let me know if any of this helps, or I'll keep looking for you.

Hello Jay -

I assume this is with Windows 7? Here's an article you can check out, it might help http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/Resolving-stop-blue-screen-errors-in-Windows-7

Let me know if any of this helps, or I'll keep looking for you.

I appreciate the effort, my friend, but this is entirely unrelated to the question I posed and doesn't help me.

Perhaps someone else can help?

I'm not concerned with chasing down blue-screen madness. I'm writing it off as a once-in-three-years fluke. If it happens again, I'm replacing the machine, but I know enough to know that once in ten blue moons a blue screen might occur for no reason and then not happen again for years, so I'll wait and see.

For someone who feels they can share an opinion on the question I'm posing, I did more experimenting and the behavior is pretty weird. After reboots, the lag after hitting the Start button before I got the next window with the message saying it can only check the drive upon a restart has proven to be intermittent.

I unplugged the external USB3 card reader and the SSD I recently added as a third drive, and the response was instant. I connected one device back and it was instant. I remove that one and put the other device back, and it was instant. I tried it with both connected back and it was instant twice, but then on more tries it began to lag again -- one time the lag was about 20 seconds and one time it was more like about SIXTY seconds. (I did reboots before each try, of course.)

There's no way that's proper behavior.

Again, CHKDSK showed "no problems found." And I just ran "sfc /scannow" and that also found no issues.

I'm perplexed.

Maybe something is up with the new SSD I added? Perhaps, but I have as a close tech-advisor friend the Storage Editor for Overclock.net, who specializes in SSDs and who a Samsung tech lead in the SSD tech support division first introduced me to as a top expert when I bought my first SSD, and he can't imagine what the issue could be. And I ran Samsung Magician to make sure everything is optimized, as I've always done for all my SSDs.

Thanks!

I don't mean to seem disrespectful, unappreciative  or stubborn here. Let me share what I just wrote on another forum when the identical thing occured. I asked whether it's normal for the Start button to lag before giving a response, and I was told how to download the DM log tool and create a thread to troubleshoot BSOD issues. But that is not my goal at this time at all.

Here's what I wrote there, which I'll post here as well:

I appreciate the advice, and may yet go start a thread in the BSOD forum and provide the DM log etc.

But right now I'm doing my version of troubleshooting and decision-making as a pretty experienced computer user and someone with a lot of responsibilities on my plate. I ask that you please respect my judgment and allow me to make decisions on my risks and time commitments and that you help me with the question I've presented the way I've presented it.

The question again is whether it is common, uncommon, or even unheard of for that Start button to take as much as 30 to 60 seconds to produce the subsequent message and prompt on a properly functioning system.

(My judgment is that if it's normal or reasonably common, then I will probably assume, based on all my on-site observations and my experience and better judgment, that this BSOD was a fluke and I can ignore it and go back to work -- and assume the OS is entirely unscathed. If it's not at all common or is unheard of, I need to restore the system from backup and not rely on it until that's done. And, entirely separately, I research the BSOD issue to see if I can determine the cause -- or first wait to see if it ever happens again. Whatever I decide, I can more readily make a well-informed decision if this current question is answered.)

THANK YOU!!!