xardius99 Posted June 20, 2023 Author Share Posted June 20, 2023 (edited) I just recently did a fresh install of Windows 11 so i hadn't checked System Recovery option. Noticed that it was turned on for my main SDD drive and i just turned it off. But other than that, i have no other application that I can think of which does automated backing up of files... Edit : Also, just to add that i usually leave my PC on 24/7 and i play alot of modern PC games and this kind of random wholesale shutdown of the PC never happens. Edited June 20, 2023 by xardius99 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted June 20, 2023 Share Posted June 20, 2023 @xardius99 VSS is the Volume Shadow Copy service. It is integral to the OS, because it helps to do things like maintain file history and allows backing up files while they're in use, etc. VSS may or may not be the cause of the shutdown, but if it is the cause, then there are some sort of serious issues going on with the OS install, the drive, or the file system. We have a broad enough install base that we can say 100% that LaunchBox does not cause random system shutdowns. If it did, we'd have reports from many different people, and this is the only one, at least from any time recently that I'm aware of. Windows makes that nearly impossible anyways these days. There are a million protections in place by Windows to make sure that any particular application cannot freeze or reboot the system. Therefore, any time this happens, more than likely it's a hardware or an OS install issue. LaunchBox often uses the hardware more than other software, even games. Specifically, LaunchBox uses a *lot* of disk activity. So my first guess is that there's probably some kind of issue with your disk. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xardius99 Posted June 20, 2023 Author Share Posted June 20, 2023 10 minutes ago, Jason Carr said: @xardius99 VSS is the Volume Shadow Copy service. It is integral to the OS, because it helps to do things like maintain file history and allows backing up files while they're in use, etc. VSS may or may not be the cause of the shutdown, but if it is the cause, then there are some sort of serious issues going on with the OS install, the drive, or the file system. We have a broad enough install base that we can say 100% that LaunchBox does not cause random system shutdowns. If it did, we'd have reports from many different people, and this is the only one, at least from any time recently that I'm aware of. Windows makes that nearly impossible anyways these days. There are a million protections in place by Windows to make sure that any particular application cannot freeze or reboot the system. Therefore, any time this happens, more than likely it's a hardware or an OS install issue. LaunchBox often uses the hardware more than other software, even games. Specifically, LaunchBox uses a *lot* of disk activity. So my first guess is that there's probably some kind of issue with your disk. I recently did a fresh reinstall of Win11 since i bought a new Crucial NvMe SSD. We are talking about 2 weeks ago. Since that time, i have installed / reinstalled a multitude of games (single-player, MMOs, , other emulators like Ryujinx that i launch separately from Launchbox), and i leave my PC on 24/7 as mentioned earlier. The only time the PC shutdowns in when running BigBox. But this occurred also before the Windows reinstall on my older (2020) Samsung Evo 970 NvMe SSD. I have done a bit of searching before posting here and I concur that it is not a frequent problem. I only found 1 other post on the internet on this subject and it was not resolved. However, i have gone ahead and turned off automatic system backup of my main drive and will do more testing tonight. Thanks all for your input, it is greatly appreciated btw. I would really like to enjoy BigBox as the majority of you Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xardius99 Posted June 20, 2023 Author Share Posted June 20, 2023 I have noticed during boot-up that the computer asks me to choose between 2 different volumes of Windows 11 (even though i formatted my old drive with previous install). I don't know if that could have any impact whatsoever with the VSS problem.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C-Beats Posted June 20, 2023 Share Posted June 20, 2023 34 minutes ago, xardius99 said: I have noticed during boot-up that the computer asks me to choose between 2 different volumes of Windows 11 (even though i formatted my old drive with previous install). I don't know if that could have any impact whatsoever with the VSS problem.... I fully admit I am no system admin and tend to run for the hills when it comes to any system maintenance or OS setting questions. I personally have never seen that on any PC I've ever own and would hate to even guess is causing that and whether that is intended behavior or not. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xardius99 Posted June 20, 2023 Author Share Posted June 20, 2023 I am also going to try testing using Launchbox (without BigBox) tonight if i still get shutdowns. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skizzosjt Posted June 20, 2023 Share Posted June 20, 2023 (edited) 3 hours ago, xardius99 said: I have noticed during boot-up that the computer asks me to choose between 2 different volumes of Windows 11 (even though i formatted my old drive with previous install). I don't know if that could have any impact whatsoever with the VSS problem.... sounds like you didn't wipe the drive before making the recent install? operating systems don't magically duplicate, so I initially think it would be user error. Is Windows Boot Manager coming up? Some screen like one of these to choose between which one.....note these show different OS versions but if you made multiple installs of the same OS version the same thing would occur. (random images grabbed off google) If someone puts more than one installation on the same disk, you will be prompted to choose which one. Is that what is happening to you? I've also seen this when people make an OS install when they have multiple disks in their system. The EFI partition (which contains all the info about booting) gets written to disk A where an EFI partition already exists, but the OS partition gets written to disk B (where the user likely thought everything was being installed). User later then removes disk A from the system and then complains about why their computer doesn't boot anymore or states there is no operating system present. This could be user error like that. I purposely only do fresh clean installs with a single disk connected to the system to prevent any mistakes like this. Edited June 20, 2023 by skizzosjt remove duplicate image Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xardius99 Posted June 20, 2023 Author Share Posted June 20, 2023 (edited) 36 minutes ago, skizzosjt said: sounds like you didn't wipe the drive before making the recent install? operating systems don't magically duplicate, so I initially think it would be user error. Is Windows Boot Manager coming up? Some screen like one of these to choose between which one.....note these show different OS versions but if you made multiple installs of the same OS version the same thing would occur. (random images grabbed off google) If someone puts more than one installation on the same disk, you will be prompted to choose which one. Is that what is happening to you? I've also seen this when people make an OS install when they have multiple disks in their system. The EFI partition (which contains all the info about booting) gets written to disk A where an EFI partition already exists, but the OS partition gets written to disk B (where the user likely thought everything was being installed). User later then removes disk A from the system and then complains about why their computer doesn't boot anymore or states there is no operating system present. This could be user error like that. I purposely only do fresh clean installs with a single disk connected to the system to prevent any mistakes like this. Well i had Windows 11 previously installed on my old NvMe SSD. When i got my new NvMe SSD, once i started the installation process : 1) I completely formatted the old SSD, then 2) installed a fresh copy on the new SSD. Edit : Is there anyway to rectify the situation outside of redoing a wholesale reformat/reinstall ? (and would that even change anything with the VSS problem ?) Edited June 20, 2023 by xardius99 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xardius99 Posted June 20, 2023 Author Share Posted June 20, 2023 Got a shutdown running BigBox even though automatic recovery was disabled Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xardius99 Posted June 20, 2023 Author Share Posted June 20, 2023 Going to start Volume Shadow copy manually in Windows Tools-Services and see if that helps... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xardius99 Posted June 20, 2023 Author Share Posted June 20, 2023 2 hours ago, xardius99 said: Going to start Volume Shadow copy manually in Windows Tools-Services and see if that helps... Nope, still shutting down... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skizzosjt Posted June 21, 2023 Share Posted June 21, 2023 3 hours ago, xardius99 said: Well i had Windows 11 previously installed on my old NvMe SSD. When i got my new NvMe SSD, once i started the installation process : 1) I completely formatted the old SSD, then 2) installed a fresh copy on the new SSD. Edit : Is there anyway to rectify the situation outside of redoing a wholesale reformat/reinstall ? (and would that even change anything with the VSS problem ?) so you had at least two disks installed in your system when you did the most recent installation. with that said, if you can boot to multiple OS installs, you created them (whether you intended to or not is a different story). you will not be able to fix that without basically starting over from scratch. so you def got things messed up when installing Windows, please fix that problem first. and you're not really helping your story here by saying this whole random shutdown thing also happened on your older disk/OS install.....which means this issue goes across multiple disks and OS installs.....which could suggest something that is a hardware issue instead of software. 7 hours ago, xardius99 said: But this occurred also before the Windows reinstall on my older (2020) Samsung Evo 970 NvMe SSD but lets take one step at a time. you obviously don't really want multiple OS installs asking you to pick which one on boot, so lets fix this first. you will need to start by removing the disk (physically uninstalling it from the M.2 slot) that is just a data disk. first before you do that though. prove to yourself it really is just a data disk! Go to Disk Management and look at it in the bottom half of the window. Is there an EFI partition on it? If not, that is good and you can shutdown the PC and physically uninstall it. If there is an EFI partition on it, then there really shouldn't be and will continue to mess up booting. If this is the case you will need to wipe this drive FIRST and THEN shutdown the PC and physically uninstall it. Pic of mine for ex below. Disk 0 is my boot disk, notice the 100MB EFI partition (very 1st partition). Disk 2 and 3 are both data disks (not bootable - no OS installed), so take notice there is no EFI partition. Meaning if Disk 2 or 3 were selected as a boot disk it would just go back to UEFI ("BIOS") screen telling you no bootable disk was selected or keep going through your determined boot order until it got to a disk that is bootable and then boot that disk. So once you get past that, now at this point you should have nothing but the ONE disk in the system that you actually want the OS installed on. Then start over with the operating system install process and when you get to the point of selecting which disk you will only have one to choose. You will be able to wipe that disk clean on that same screen by deleting/removing all the existing partitions. When you select said disk that is totally wiped it will create the new partitions appropriately for Windows. Next time you boot, no more boot manager type screens will appear and it will instead boot to the single OS partition that exists. Once you go through that and the Windows Updates, THEN return to this LB/BB troubleshooting. If your OS is borked right now you're going to be chasing your tail and leading us on a goose chase trying to help. So, in my opinion, we gotta make sure the OS was a good install before blaming other stuff for your random shutdowns. Hopefully this next time goes better for you! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xardius99 Posted June 21, 2023 Author Share Posted June 21, 2023 1 hour ago, skizzosjt said: so you had at least two disks installed in your system when you did the most recent installation. with that said, if you can boot to multiple OS installs, you created them (whether you intended to or not is a different story). you will not be able to fix that without basically starting over from scratch. so you def got things messed up when installing Windows, please fix that problem first. and you're not really helping your story here by saying this whole random shutdown thing also happened on your older disk/OS install.....which means this issue goes across multiple disks and OS installs.....which could suggest something that is a hardware issue instead of software. but lets take one step at a time. you obviously don't really want multiple OS installs asking you to pick which one on boot, so lets fix this first. you will need to start by removing the disk (physically uninstalling it from the M.2 slot) that is just a data disk. first before you do that though. prove to yourself it really is just a data disk! Go to Disk Management and look at it in the bottom half of the window. Is there an EFI partition on it? If not, that is good and you can shutdown the PC and physically uninstall it. If there is an EFI partition on it, then there really shouldn't be and will continue to mess up booting. If this is the case you will need to wipe this drive FIRST and THEN shutdown the PC and physically uninstall it. Pic of mine for ex below. Disk 0 is my boot disk, notice the 100MB EFI partition (very 1st partition). Disk 2 and 3 are both data disks (not bootable - no OS installed), so take notice there is no EFI partition. Meaning if Disk 2 or 3 were selected as a boot disk it would just go back to UEFI ("BIOS") screen telling you no bootable disk was selected or keep going through your determined boot order until it got to a disk that is bootable and then boot that disk. So once you get past that, now at this point you should have nothing but the ONE disk in the system that you actually want the OS installed on. Then start over with the operating system install process and when you get to the point of selecting which disk you will only have one to choose. You will be able to wipe that disk clean on that same screen by deleting/removing all the existing partitions. When you select said disk that is totally wiped it will create the new partitions appropriately for Windows. Next time you boot, no more boot manager type screens will appear and it will instead boot to the single OS partition that exists. Once you go through that and the Windows Updates, THEN return to this LB/BB troubleshooting. If your OS is borked right now you're going to be chasing your tail and leading us on a goose chase trying to help. So, in my opinion, we gotta make sure the OS was a good install before blaming other stuff for your random shutdowns. Hopefully this next time goes better for you! I think you are on to something there, here is my Disk Management as we speak : My C drive is my boot drive, but i can see that there are remaining EFI partitions on my old drive ( labeled as F drive ). I am pretty certain i reformatted that drive before installing on the new one. I will go ahead and redo the OS installation as you suggested. Thanks for the input ! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xardius99 Posted June 21, 2023 Author Share Posted June 21, 2023 (edited) " If there is an EFI partition on it, then there really shouldn't be and will continue to mess up booting. If this is the case you will need to wipe this drive FIRST and THEN shutdown the PC and physically uninstall it.." I tried to do a format of the non-boot problematic drive (via clicking on the drive in Windows Explorer and choosing Format) . However, the EFI and recovery partitions are still there and didn't get deleted.....weird... What is the suggested way of wiping the problematic drive ? Edited June 21, 2023 by xardius99 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skizzosjt Posted June 21, 2023 Share Posted June 21, 2023 (edited) so your issue here with your OS install is you you did exactly what I described in my first post. your EFI partition is on a different disk than what the actual OS volume/partition is on. this means if you were to remove the disk (F:) that has the EFI partition on it, you literally couldn't boot to your C: drive. This is a sticky situation in my opinion depending on what resources you have available to you But just gotta say....3 recovery partitions on one disk.....well...at least you didn't half ass it lol! that's an impressive bit of borked there lol. this means you may have done this mistake twice because just one mistake should mean only 2 recovery partitions I think. (Edit: just googled this. I guess it is common for OEM systems - any chance this is a prebuilt system by someone like Dell or HP etc? If so those OEMs normally put their own recovery partition on there along with the one that is normally created by Windows....so it is possible this mistake only happened once) first and foremost make sure you have prepared a USB drive to install Windows using their Media Creation Tool. You will need to totally wipe BOTH NVMe disks and I think we need to do it from within the installation process. 1 hour ago, xardius99 said: I tried to do a format of the non-boot problematic drive (via clicking on the drive in Windows Explorer and choosing Format) . However, the EFI and recovery partitions are still there and didn't get deleted.....weird... I thought weird for a sec too....then as I think more, it makes total sense. I believe Windows is smart enough to not allow you to literally nuke your currently booted OS install's EFI partition....or even the main volume/partition. This is a bit of a catch 22 you are in.....you need to wipe both of those NVMe disks, but you need both of them physically installed in order to even boot to Windows lmao. If Windows did allow you to reformat over something like that while it's in use it would mean the PC would likely just crash and then not boot. So I think Windows is not going to let you nuke your currently booted EFI partition I bet.....I think we need to do the wiping FROM the USB install drive! (ie as you go through the Windows install process) This is getting a bit involved, and it's getting late for me! I gotta tap out for tonight but will try to return to help more next day. Edited June 21, 2023 by skizzosjt recovery partition update Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xardius99 Posted June 21, 2023 Author Share Posted June 21, 2023 (edited) I went ahead and plugged in my USB Windows 11 key and proceeded to the Windows install process. I deleted, formatted then did some more deletion for good measure on my problematic drive first. The reason for more deletion is that when I formatted, it recreated extra partitions. So i just deleted those and left them as "unallocatted partitions". Next, i tried rebooting into Windows to check on Disk Management utility.... and it wouldn't boot up. So your theory was correct, it was using my old SSD as the boot-up sector. Proceeded then to format my new disk (and losing tons of stuff that i will have to redownload, my fault lol) . But, lo and behold, i dont get a prompt to boot into another OS... so it goes straight into Windows ... BUT : Disk Management shows the same EFI partition on the old disk However, i am optimistic that all should be good now. In the process of doing Windows updates and reinstalling everything. Will post to update on the situation, resolved or not. Edited June 21, 2023 by xardius99 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skizzosjt Posted June 21, 2023 Share Posted June 21, 2023 @xardius99 if you followed the instructions to only have a single disk in the system when you do the Windows installation it would be impossible to have the EFI partition on disk 1 and the OS volume/partition on disk 2. This is what I am trying to help you change so I'm afraid it seems you didn't resolve this issue so far you have a RAW partition on disk 1 which means that partition's file system is non existent or corrupted. whether or not you can boot into Windows, that partition is useless for anything in its current state. it would require another reformat to be capable to be used again. It also has no drive letter assigned, hence why it doesn't show up in Windows File Explorer. And even if it does, it's not going to be accessible because its file system is RAW In context of all these issues and what is trying to be resolved, it doesn't matter if you can boot into Windows without being prompted for which install to boot to. you have continued to spread your critical installation partitions out over multiple disks, this is not desirable for your use case and needs to be corrected. Having a setup like means you are doubling your chances of having problems because now you have a 2nd disk that impacts how the other disk works. If something happens to that EFI partition disk, you cannot boot your PC anymore without again starting over from scratch. So this is a problem I strongly recommend to resolve. Even if your PC isn't shutting down randomly anymore and LB/BB runs fine you should not leave your setup in it's current state Follow these instructions carefully! READ THE WHOLE THING BEFORE STARTING! ASK QUESTIONS BEFORE YOU START IF YOU NEED ANYTHING CLARIFIED OR HAVE ANY CONCERNS! You will need to go through part of the installation process more than once. This is because you need to wipe both the NVMe disks on pass #1 of doing the installation. Once those drives are wiped, you will need to shutdown, physically remove the older NVMe disk and leave only the single NVMe disk in the PC which is where Windows will be installed on the 2nd pass Shutdown your PC and get that Seagate disk out of your system! You can reinstall it after this is all completed. You must have only the two NVMe disks, and the Windows USB drive physically connected when you start this process. This is as much of a requirement as it is a safety precaution to make sure you don't nuke your Seagate disk on accident. As well as not continuing to make the mistake of breaking apart EFI partition and main OS partition to multiple disks! Now with just the two NVMe disk physically installed and the Windows USB in one of your USB ports, start up the Windows install process from the USB drive When you reach the screen that asks which disk to install to do NOT do any deleting or removing or reformatting etc Press SHIFT + F10 to bring up a Command Prompt window Type diskpart and then hit enter Type list disk and then hit enter Review the generated list to determine which #s got assigned to the two NVMe disks. For sake of this example I will assume they are disk 0 and disk 1 Once you know those disk #s we need to select which disk to manipulate Type select disk 0 and then hit enter Type clean and then hit enter Now disk 0 is totally wiped but it is also not initialized. Stay in Command Prompt window to finish this Type convert GPT and then hit enter Disk 0 is now totally clean and initialized. Now you need to repeat steps #9 - 12 for the other disk, replace the disk # as appropriate At this point now both of your NVMe disks are totally wiped and finally ready to start actually installing Windows in a proper manner Shutdown your PC Physically remove the NVMe disk you do NOT want Windows to install to. You should have just the single NVMe disk you DO want Windows installed to and the Windows USB drive connected to your PC at this point. Start the Windows install process again Due to only having a single disk in the system that is totally wiped, everything will go as expected this time around Good luck! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xardius99 Posted June 22, 2023 Author Share Posted June 22, 2023 I did not physically remove any disk during the Windows reinstall, but i did try to execute steps 5 to 10 from inside Windows-Command Prompt and it didnt work (prior to the reinstall). At this point, I've spent the last 2 days reinstalling and configuring all my games and apps, so I will wait for further instability before redoing the suggested 20 steps. I was going to test BB stability yesterday but I was having problems with audio syncing between my PC and my TV. Before reinstall, i initially had same problem and forgot how it was resolved but both monitors were running 60 Hz. Now i'm stuck with my PC monitor at 60 Hz and my 4k TV at 30 Hz (even though i manually changed the res to 1080p in Windows display settings).... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xardius99 Posted June 23, 2023 Author Share Posted June 23, 2023 Seems the stuttering problem was when running arcade games via Mame so i fixed that by running through Retroarch with an arcade core. Did not play extensively tonight, maybe an hour or so, but no shutdowns Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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