Blue Screen of Death Haunting me

[Leinahtanwc]

The Situation so far...
I have, for the past three weeks or so, been trying to isolate the cause(s) for this persistent Blue Screen of Death on a new computer I built. Before the BSOD's occured I was also trying to optimize/overclock a little the system but when the BSOD's struck I resorted back to defaults. The previous two threads I started are located here:

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2878567/odd-boot-fresh-x99-sabertooth.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2883937/software-tests-isolate-problem-case-hardware-failure.html

The titles are different (and in the Motherboard forum) since I have been trying to isolate the problem on several assumptions. For all but one Blue Screen, I am getting a Driver_corrupted_EXPOOL error. The other one time was a "pointer" error. I really need help in fixing the problem and I am willing to do basically anything at this point, including even RMA'ing each piece you suspect to be the problem. I am posting this in the Windows 10 forum since there is still a nagging feeling that this problem may be related specifically to Windows 10 - however, it may be hardware related after all.

Here is the system:
New
Intel i7 5820k CPU with a Noctua NH-D15 Cooler
Asus Sabertooth x99 Motherboard
Samsung M.2 Pro 256GB HDD
Mushking Enhanced Redline PC4-22400 (4x4GB pack)
EVGA 850W Platinum Supernova PSU
Corsair 760t Case (Black)

Used/Old
Logitech G110 Keyboard
Logitech Performance MX Darkfield Wireless Mouse
3 Various 3.5 HDD Disks (No RAID; each is a separate drive letter)
EVGA GeForce 560 GTX Ti
Various USB storage sticks sometimes
Old LG Blu Ray Writer
5.25 HDD Loading Bay

Software installed
Windows 10 Pro via Bios (1st) & UEFI (2nd)
Battle.net
Cisco Any Connect Secure Mobility Client
Google Chrome
Hearthstone
Heroes of the Storm
Adobe Acrobat X Pro
BitDefender Total Security 2016 + BitDefender Agent
Brother MFL-Pro Suite MFC-7840W
VLC Media Player
Logitech Gaming Software 8.76
Microsoft Office Proessional Plus 2010
Microsoft Visual C++ 2013, 2010 Redistributables

What I have done so far
During the first installation of Windows 10, I did not notice any BSOD for a short while. However, it did start to pop up, the first being the Pointer Error after installing several programs when I clicked restart. Since that point, we would get a BSOD randomly, whether we were present at the computer or not. We decided to check the memory and ran the MemTest x86. No errors were present in the memory. Unfortunately, I do not remember the programs installed at that time that may have started the BSOD. As time went on, the BSOD's became more frequent while the computer was in use and it would randomly do them while idle as well.
I ran MemTest x86 and received no errors during that test run (twice actually, once via BIOS, once via UEFI Bios). After getting 3-4 BSOD's in a single day, I decided to reinstall Windows 10.

For this installation, I also made sure nothing was overclocked and everything was using the default values on the x99 Sabertooth. I also ended up installing Windows 10 via the UEFI Bios the 2nd time around. After re-installing Windows 10, I noticed no BSOD's for a while - about a week or so went by. We decided to install one program at a time and reboot after each 1-2 times to make sure there were no problems. As the week went by, we eventually installed most of the programs as before. And then it struck - the computer was not actively doing anything and no one was at it when it struck - however we saw it "Driver_corrupted_EXPOOL", just like the last BSODs on the previous installation. It has only happened once on this installation, but I suspect it will continue to occur now.

*Just so everyone knows, I went to the advanced settings and turned off the auto-restart option when Windows 10 hits a BSOD. We originally thought the "odd" reboots were Windows Update related.

What I suspect
I have been suspicious of the motherboard for a while now, as you can see from the other threads. I cleared my suspicion on the memory with the test. On the first installation of Windows 10, I had Coretemp installed and it reported very low temperatures, so it can not be related to overheating - however that does not rule out a defective CPU. I am also suspicious that there may be some program that is causing the problem - maybe the Logitech Keyboard is the culprit, which was the last installed program to have drivers associated with it. I am unsure how to navigate these BSOD's since googling them does not appear to yield any help or insight into the problem.

What to do from here on out
I want all the advice everyone is willing to give me. I am willing to RMA, Reinstall Windows 10 or install Windows 7. When it comes to uploading Memory Dump files, please tell me how to upload what you want since I only know how to access the BSOD dump files via the Nirsoft Blue Screen Viewer. I am in desperate need since this is basically an early Christmas gift that isn't working.

 

[cin19]

Try the BlueScreenView http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/blue_screen_view.html to see what causes the BSOD, then find the solutions for the error.

 

[AreH]

My experience with blue screen tells my that the problem is in software. Didn't read your previous posts, but if you already didn't try to reinstall windows try to do this.

Best luck!

 

[Leinahtanwc]

Try the BlueScreenView http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/blue_screen_view.html to see what causes the BSOD, then find the solutions for the error.

I have tried using that and I can't seem to figure out what is causing the problem. It is saying the ntoskrnl.exe is the culprit, but that seems to be a default windows 10 process.

Since the last post, I have tried to install Core Temp, which resulted in the system hard locking and massive slow down. I would advise everyone with any new CPU's to avoid Core Temp now and go with hwmonitor. The reason for this was that I wanted to run Prime95 to see if the CPU/memory were faulty by chance. Ran Prime95 for a few hours, no problem.

I spent several hours trying to system restore and finally managed to restore to 3 days ago - then proceeded to reinstall the keyboard/mouse drivers. Had several hard locks (due to Core Temp messing things up, BitDefender broke due to Core Temp) but no blue screens at the moment. I think everything has "settled" for now, and now I am waiting for the next BSOD to occur.

 

[Leinahtanwc]

I may have found the culprit for the BSOD's. Let me know if this makes sense in a way:

The program/driver at fault is acsock64.sys, a driver associated with Cisco Any Connect. Since many people kept asking for me to check the memory, I ran both MemTest x86 and Prime95 to see if there was a problem with the memory. No crashes, no errors. The driver acsock64.sys, while VPN'ed in, may be causing some sort of memory leak once its activated, slowly draining the memory until it must conflict in some way - this would explain the BSOD while working out of nowhere.

The only piece of the puzzle missing is that the BlueScreenViewer is not reporting this with 100% consistency. Out of the 3 BSOD's that occurred in the past day, only two of them reported acsock64.sys with the ntoskrnl as the cause. Reports with just one driver/file at fault, ntoskrnl.exe, makes little sense.

I will be stress testing the Cisco VPN client now to determine if it is the cause for the BSOD's.

 

[cin19]

If you can't find the memory error in BlueScreenViewer, the RAM is fine, but don't hurt to run the MemTest x86.
acsock64.sys error, try uninstall that driver ( Cisco Any Connect ). The ntoskrnl is system files. I have other question, that is when you reinstall the win10, do you only connect the M2? or do you also plug in other HDD too?

You may try reinstall the win10 with only the M2, also don't install other software yet, like the Brother MFL-Pro Suite , Cisco Any Connect to see your PC will act the same or not, I think the problem may from the software compatibility.

More info for the ntoskrnl http://www.processlibrary.com/en/directory/files/ntoskrnl/22115/