[danevaz]

Hey All,

Still running WIN7/SP1/latest updates on a 5 year old Dell XPS8500. All has been well until early this year when a couple of times I got unceremoniously got kicked out of WINDOWS and when I tried to reboot, my SSD (boot drive) was not recognized by the BIOS.

I'm a retired computer professional so I did what I had to do to get things sorted out. Happened again a few weeks ago. Took the whole case apart, vacuumed inside, made sure everything was set and connected properly. Was OK for a few weeks, and then last night - "BSOD" 2x, which in the 5 years I've had this computer I've only seen maybe 2 other times when trying to load funky drivers.

The common element - the room was hot and humid and I'd been doing a lot of browser work. Air Con is on today and all is fine.

Would this be a sign of impending SSD death - a drive that stops working when it (presumably) "overheats"? I cleaned up the drive and it's nowhere near an 80% use rate. Ran Malware Bytes and my AntiVirus - all OK. Checked the SSD for bad sectors - none found.

The computer is set up in the same spot it's been for 5 years; same house, same room, same weather - so this is a recent phenomenon.

When I had the case apart I didn't notice any fans not working (CPU, Power supply).

Wondering if this is a sign from the universe that it's time to move on to a new computer with WIN10 PRO - as I'm starting to run into software updates that are only WIN 10 compatible.

Thanks for any offered advice,
Danny V.