Blue Screen of Death Fatality (twice now...)

[VGM8Richard]

Hello and thank you for taking a look at my post.

My problem is likely with Windows 10 or my hardware (interacting with Windows 10?).
So this is the issue;

Two months ago my pc crashed due to a BSOD and I was unable to get it to work again.
I tried all the options Windows let me like trouble shooting, safe mode, restarting Cmos etc.
The only option left for me (at least so me and my friend thought) was a clean install of Windows.
Which I did. I put a creation tool on an usb drive and re-installed Windows 10 Pro.

Two months later, the same issue happened (yesterday) and I did the same thing to fix it.
However since I am not all that punctual with back-ups, I did lose some data. (Again)
And this is a big issue for me.

The fact that my pc can BSOD at random with no special trigger and be completely inoperable until I re-install Windows for the third time is not how it should be nor how I'd like it to be.
Unfortunately I do not have a screenshot of the exact error code (I will try to get it if there is a next time, let's hope there won't be.).

My question to the community is;

What usually triggers this, what is usually the root cause of this and what can I do to stop / prevent it?

ps; my windows crash log is wiped by the clean install.

Specs:

Windows 10 Pro
8gb ram.
GTX 1060 (6gb)
i7 920 (yes laugh at me)
BeQuiet relatively newly bought psu.
X58 Platinum mobo

OS is on my SSD which is Intel with up to date firmware.
2x HDD + 1x external HDD.

I hope you can help me, thank you for reading.

 

[Colif]

There are over 255 different BSOD messages, so its impossible to narrow it down to just a few things. Admittedly of those 255, we normally only see about 15 or so.

Most of the time it is outdated drivers. especially on boards that don't have win 10 drivers, or like your motherboard, only win 7 drivers.

they can also be hardware as well. most boot type problems are corrupt files, this can be caused by bad ram or a messed up boot config file.

try running chkdsk on the drives (in command prompt)
chkdsk /f C: on SSD
chkdsk /f /r on hdd

I know its too late now but if you can get into the repair menu off the installer, you can save some of your data (or better idea, just have it all on the hdd's and not lose anything).
change boot order so USB is first, hdd second
boot from installer
on screen after languages, choose repair this pc, not install.
choose troubleshoot
choose advanced
choose command prompt
type ;b]notepad[/b] enter and notepad will open
go to file > open and file explorer will open
use this to move files onto hdd

 

[VGM8Richard]

My SSD I already ran yesterday and it's completely healthy.
Also when I run the installer, the repair option does not work. Tried everything available from every menu I was given. Install was the only option that worked. (with does not work I mean it let's me do it but it doesn't do anything, tells me it can't be done and returns me to the option menu.)
The curious thing is I have not up or downgraded my hardware recently so for this to start happening now due to drivers would be odd.. Hardware failure is one thing although it would be more often than once every two months give or take so far if that were the case but drivers would be a constant.

But yeah getting a bsod is one thing. Getting a bsod that prevents the pc from actually logging in / going into desktop is another I suppose. I've had bsods before although not often and definitely not as fatal as these.

 

[Colif]

That is a very strange reaction from the installer. it should be running the repair from a ram disk and as far as I know, it has all the files it needs on the installer. It must as you can access them on a blank hdd.

what should have happened after bsod, and then refusing to boot, after 3 attempts it should try to run Automatic repair. After it finishes it offers options, one is possibly called advanced
this should lead to another set of choices, one of which is troubleshoot
this is where the reaper options that should have been available of installer are listed.

how old is motherboard? have you ever replaced the cmos battery?

3 types of bsod that stop PC booting
1. drivers or windows corruption
2. boot config data being corrupted.
3. busted hardware

1. this can be caused by a number of things like bad hardware or viruses or old drivers, or windows itself
2. I am not 100% sure of all the reasons this can be caused by (would make it easier to fix them, that is for sure)

Try turning fast startup off (see link ), it could be one cause of the bsod. win 10 isn't off if you power it down, its sleeping. It saves a copy of all drivers running into ram so when PC restarts it is much faster... unless you on ssd and then you won't notice.

If you have drivers running that weren't built for fast startup then they could be reason PC won't start up. Turn it off since you have an ssd anyway.

3, is obvious but you don't appear to have that problem, or if you do, its temperamental. IT might be a dying cmos battery which is where bios saves all the settings.

 

[lindstrom]

You can use a Blue Screen Viewer to analyze the crash dump, if you get blue screen always let computer finish creating the crash dump file to make it easier to troubleshoot what caused it afterwards.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/bluescreenview.html

 

[Colif]

He could if it didn't happen at boot and he could actually access the repair menus. Can't run bluescreenview without an operating system. If he had dumps I would have asked for them already

Each time he can't get into windows and only solution is a clean install.

 

[smorizio]

with your pc it might be a bad cap or vrm on the mb due to it age or a bad ram stick. start with booting from a usb stick and run over night memtest86. if the ram passes run hardware info check the temp and voltage of mb parts. on your mb look for any swollen caps. if it been a few years i would buy some good thermal paste and repaste your cpu.