I think BitLocker was causing my new PC to crash - does this make sense?

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BenN

BenN

Ars Legatus Legionis
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  • #1
    As per my thread in the Audio/Visual Club last December, I have been having ongoing issues with an HP Omen 45L gaming desktop that I bought in October last year. The display would randomly go blank, and the case fans would go to 100%, and I'd have to do a hard shutdown & restart.

    As per that thread, I initially thought it might be a hardware problem (but I passed all hardware checks), and then I thought I had figured it out, with an HP Omen app as the culprit.

    But the crashes continued. About a week ago, I decided to turn off BitLocker (which was on by default); I don't keep any sensitive personal data in the PC, so I'm not too concerned about the security implications.

    And lo and behold, since then it has been rock-solid, Before, it was crashing several times per day. Since I turned off BitLocker, it has not crashed once.

    Does this make any sense? Could BitLocker really be the culprit?

    It seems so right now, but I'd appreciate any insight / advice.

    :)
     
    L

    Lord Evermore

    Ars Scholae Palatinae
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  • #2
    BitLocker in and of itself is unlikely to be a problem, but Windows 11 does have known major issues with software-based encryption, general performance loss not crashing.. If anything I'd look at this being a drive problem, since the read/write patterns would be very different with BitLocker enabled. It could be hitting the cache in different ways, if there is one. What is the actual model of the drive? (They don't give a specific model on the site.) Is it Windows 11 Pro with BitLocker, or just Windows 11 with "Device Encryption"?

    Have you tried various stress tests for the different components individually? Prime95 with its different tests that will produce the most heat on the CPU, or the most stress on the RAM. FurMark or others to stress the GPU. ATTO or others that will stress the drive for several minutes. Use Crystal DiskInfo to look at the status of the drive while ATTO is running to watch the temperature, and also see the health of it, plus the software from the actual drive manufacturer if there is any for your model.
     
    singebob

    singebob

    Ars Centurion
    373
  • #3
    First, if you can remember to the hour when the PC crashed the last time, have a look in the event logs to see whether there's any interesting data around the point of the crash.

    Actually going back to test for what might be wrong on the other hand will be super risky without a full backup of your PC. The way would be to turn Bitlocker back on, and then poke around the event logs after another crash. The problem here is that it could happen when you turn Bitlocker back on to encrypt the drive, which if it happens mid-encryption has every chance of trashing the drive.
     
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