Bitcoin Forum

Hey guys,

When downloading/parsing the blockchain using the armory wallet my computer crashes. It's not a bluescreen however it appears my Harddrive no longer functions. For example, i can't open any files however I can still type and use my mouse. Before this happens I usually get some type of error from bitcoin-qt stating that there was something wrong with the memory IO. I have to do a hard reset to operate my computer again. Is this something wrong with the armory or is my HDD failing? I've made paperbackups of my wallet so I'm not too concerned however it's extremely annoying. I noticed my harddrive is extremely active when it's updating the blockchain which makes sense, however I'm concerned that my computer's hardware is failing.

Get a new computer? Redownload Armoury? Replace Harddrive?

This computer is barley over a year old which is why I'm not so sure it's the HDD. I've re downloaded everything including the blockchain and that worked. However, since I don't always open armory when I use the computer, the blockchain gets out of date and needs to catch up - in the process of catching up it crashes.

Out of space on hdd?

Then probably something wrong with armory.

If something is wrong with your harddrive, your system log should say so (dmesg on Linux). If something is wrong with your memory, then WEIRD THINGS will happen. Even if other programs behaves fine, run a tool like memtest86. Leave it overnight.

This is very good advice.  Bad RAM is more common than one should think, and causes all kinds of symptoms.  memtest86 will usually find it, in particular if left to run overnight.  Usually, it just confirms that the RAM is OK, but then you don't have to worry about that :)

Thanks for the advice guys. I ended up moving the armory and bitcoin-qt over to my solid state hard drive and everything seems to be working much better. I'll run the tests however, just to make sure.