Question BSoD and the sudden inability to enter BIOS

[TheHangryHog]

Hi, thanks for checking in! My PC would suffer a random BSoD every now and then, nothing too frequent so I didn't bother investigating until today because all of the sudden I was unable to access BIOS. It crashed while gaming, and from what little I know of Event Viewer, it shows Event 161, volmgr. I tried entering BIOS afterwards as I read that it might have something to do with power(?)but to my surprise I was now unable to enter it. If I attempt to enter BIOS, the PC will not boot further and it'll stay on the mobo logo until restarted - so, ideally, I'd love to find out what caused the BSoD in the first place, but I am now more interested in my newfound inability to enter BIOS which I had flashed a couple of months ago to accomodate my new Ryzen cpu.

Windows 11
Ryzen 9 5900x
Gigabyte Aorus X570 Elite
64gb of 3200 RAM in A1, B1
RTX 2080 Ti
NVMe Samsung 990 Pro & SSD Samsung 860 Evo
Corsair 700W Gold PSU (6-10yo at this point)

How do I go about troubleshooting this badboy?

Many thanks in advance, mwah!

 

[Darkbreeze]

Well, first of all your memory is the wrong DIMM slots. On ALL modern motherboards since the advent of DDR memory the population rules due to problems with signal termination have always been A2 and B2 for two DIMM population. This is always the second and fourth slots to the right of the CPU socket, for ALL boards with four DIMM slots. I would begin by moving those.

Secondly, there's a really good chance that ALL of your problems are due to your 6-10 year old power supply. What is the ACTUAL model of that unit? If you are not sure, check the label on the side of the PSU. All power supplies have one, they must, by law, and the model should be printed on there somewhere.

Get back to me on that and we can go from there. In the meantime, you might also want to try doing a hard reset of the BIOS. This will often help in a variety of situations and is always a good idea when things seem to be "stuck".

BIOS Hard Reset procedure

Power off the unit, switch the PSU off and unplug the PSU cord from either the wall or the power supply.

Remove the motherboard CMOS battery for about three to five minutes. In some cases it may be necessary to remove the graphics card to access the CMOS battery.

During that five minutes while the CMOS battery is out of the motherboard, press the power button on the case, continuously, for 15-30 seconds, in order to deplete any residual charge that might be present in the CMOS circuit. After the five minutes is up, reinstall the CMOS battery making sure to insert it with the correct side up just as it came out.

If you had to remove the graphics card you can now reinstall it, but remember to reconnect your power cables if there were any attached to it as well as your display cable.

Now, plug the power supply cable back in, switch the PSU back on and power up the system. It should display the POST screen and the options to enter CMOS/BIOS setup. Enter the bios setup program and reconfigure the boot settings for either the Windows boot manager or for legacy systems, the drive your OS is installed on if necessary.

Save settings and exit. If the system will POST and boot then you can move forward from there including going back into the bios and configuring any other custom settings you may need to configure such as Memory XMP, A-XMP or D.O.C.P profile settings, custom fan profile settings or other specific settings you may have previously had configured that were wiped out by resetting the CMOS.

In some cases it may be necessary when you go into the BIOS after a reset, to load the Optimal default or Default values and then save settings, to actually get the hardware tables to reset in the boot manager.

It is probably also worth mentioning that for anything that might require an attempt to DO a hard reset in the first place, IF the problem is related to a lack of video signal, it is a GOOD IDEA to try a different type of display as many systems will not work properly for some reason with displayport configurations. It is worth trying HDMI if you are having no display or lack of visual ability to enter the BIOS, or no signal messages.

Trying a different monitor as well, if possible, is also a good idea if there is a lack of display. It happens.

 

[TheHangryHog]

Well, first of all your memory is the wrong DIMM slots. On ALL modern motherboards since the advent of DDR memory the population rules due to problems with signal termination have always been A2 and B2 for two DIMM population. This is always the second and fourth slots to the right of the CPU socket, for ALL boards with four DIMM slots. I would begin by moving those.

Secondly, there's a really good chance that ALL of your problems are due to your 6-10 year old power supply. What is the ACTUAL model of that unit? If you are not sure, check the label on the side of the PSU. All power supplies have one, they must, by law, and the model should be printed on there somewhere.

Get back to me on that and we can go from there. In the meantime, you might also want to try doing a hard reset of the BIOS. This will often help in a variety of situations and is always a good idea when things seem to be "stuck".

BIOS Hard Reset procedure

Power off the unit, switch the PSU off and unplug the PSU cord from either the wall or the power supply.

Remove the motherboard CMOS battery for about three to five minutes. In some cases it may be necessary to remove the graphics card to access the CMOS battery.

During that five minutes while the CMOS battery is out of the motherboard, press the power button on the case, continuously, for 15-30 seconds, in order to deplete any residual charge that might be present in the CMOS circuit. After the five minutes is up, reinstall the CMOS battery making sure to insert it with the correct side up just as it came out.

If you had to remove the graphics card you can now reinstall it, but remember to reconnect your power cables if there were any attached to it as well as your display cable.

Now, plug the power supply cable back in, switch the PSU back on and power up the system. It should display the POST screen and the options to enter CMOS/BIOS setup. Enter the bios setup program and reconfigure the boot settings for either the Windows boot manager or for legacy systems, the drive your OS is installed on if necessary.

Save settings and exit. If the system will POST and boot then you can move forward from there including going back into the bios and configuring any other custom settings you may need to configure such as Memory XMP, A-XMP or D.O.C.P profile settings, custom fan profile settings or other specific settings you may have previously had configured that were wiped out by resetting the CMOS.

In some cases it may be necessary when you go into the BIOS after a reset, to load the Optimal default or Default values and then save settings, to actually get the hardware tables to reset in the boot manager.

It is probably also worth mentioning that for anything that might require an attempt to DO a hard reset in the first place, IF the problem is related to a lack of video signal, it is a GOOD IDEA to try a different type of display as many systems will not work properly for some reason with displayport configurations. It is worth trying HDMI if you are having no display or lack of visual ability to enter the BIOS, or no signal messages.

Trying a different monitor as well, if possible, is also a good idea if there is a lack of display. It happens.

Thanks for the reply! I reset bios by taking out the battery and I can now access it just fine - I also changed ram slots to a2/b2 now - thanks. The psu is Corsair RM850x actually, so not 700w, but just as old. I'll update you if another bsod occurs as they seem to happen when playing a particular video game as I've been playing multiple games in the past few weeks with no issues, though a video game shouldn't be the sole cause of a bsod, right?

 

[TheHangryHog]

Well, first of all your memory is the wrong DIMM slots. On ALL modern motherboards since the advent of DDR memory the population rules due to problems with signal termination have always been A2 and B2 for two DIMM population. This is always the second and fourth slots to the right of the CPU socket, for ALL boards with four DIMM slots. I would begin by moving those.

Secondly, there's a really good chance that ALL of your problems are due to your 6-10 year old power supply. What is the ACTUAL model of that unit? If you are not sure, check the label on the side of the PSU. All power supplies have one, they must, by law, and the model should be printed on there somewhere.

Get back to me on that and we can go from there. In the meantime, you might also want to try doing a hard reset of the BIOS. This will often help in a variety of situations and is always a good idea when things seem to be "stuck".

BIOS Hard Reset procedure

Power off the unit, switch the PSU off and unplug the PSU cord from either the wall or the power supply.

Remove the motherboard CMOS battery for about three to five minutes. In some cases it may be necessary to remove the graphics card to access the CMOS battery.

During that five minutes while the CMOS battery is out of the motherboard, press the power button on the case, continuously, for 15-30 seconds, in order to deplete any residual charge that might be present in the CMOS circuit. After the five minutes is up, reinstall the CMOS battery making sure to insert it with the correct side up just as it came out.

If you had to remove the graphics card you can now reinstall it, but remember to reconnect your power cables if there were any attached to it as well as your display cable.

Now, plug the power supply cable back in, switch the PSU back on and power up the system. It should display the POST screen and the options to enter CMOS/BIOS setup. Enter the bios setup program and reconfigure the boot settings for either the Windows boot manager or for legacy systems, the drive your OS is installed on if necessary.

Save settings and exit. If the system will POST and boot then you can move forward from there including going back into the bios and configuring any other custom settings you may need to configure such as Memory XMP, A-XMP or D.O.C.P profile settings, custom fan profile settings or other specific settings you may have previously had configured that were wiped out by resetting the CMOS.

In some cases it may be necessary when you go into the BIOS after a reset, to load the Optimal default or Default values and then save settings, to actually get the hardware tables to reset in the boot manager.

It is probably also worth mentioning that for anything that might require an attempt to DO a hard reset in the first place, IF the problem is related to a lack of video signal, it is a GOOD IDEA to try a different type of display as many systems will not work properly for some reason with displayport configurations. It is worth trying HDMI if you are having no display or lack of visual ability to enter the BIOS, or no signal messages.

Trying a different monitor as well, if possible, is also a good idea if there is a lack of display. It happens.

Alright, so, this particular game went on for hours without a crash and I believed the problem to be gone, however, I was just greeted with another bsod - event 161, volmgr once again. Any suggestions on where we go from here?

 

[Darkbreeze]

If your RM850x is 6-10 years old, and you are getting volmgr, then the first place I'd start is replacing it with something both new and of at least halfway good quality. PSU prices is unfortunately very high right now, so don't expect to find something trustworthy in the 750w and higher range, which is what you really want for that 2080 ti, for less than like at least 90 bucks. These options below are about the least expensive models I'd honestly feel comfortable recommending without seriously rolling the dice on quality and dependability. Either of them is very high quality and if you drop down about ten bucks you already start getting into somewhat crappy or questionable models.

PCPartPicker Part List

Power Supply: Super Flower Leadex III Gold 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($99.99 @ Newegg Sellers)
Total: $99.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-12-29 01:19 EST-0500


PCPartPicker Part List

Power Supply: Corsair RM750x (2021) 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($104.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $104.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-12-29 01:22 EST-0500


Also, make sure you have the MOST current stable motherboard BIOS version installed. If you do not, then I would definitely update. I've seen some cases where problems with early BIOS versions triggered some of those volmgr 161 errors before, and also, I would go to the product page for your motherboard, download and install all the latest drivers for the chipset, network adapters and audio drivers.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Did you ever make any further progress on resolving this?

 

[TheHangryHog]

I've sorted out the drivers, and followed a guide on how to ensure a dump file gets created upon encountering a bsod, but I've stopped playing said game and have so far had no bsods despite performing cpu-intense tasks

 

[Darkbreeze]

What was the game title?

 

[TheHangryHog]

Might & Magic Heroes 6 / 7 - both ended up giving me bsods, prior to playing those, I've been playing other games for several days in a row and no issues with those.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Had you said that in the beginning I'd likely have told you that M&M Heroes has pretty much always been buggy and the latest two versions are no different. Pretty typical for Ubisoft. I'd make sure to check frequently for patches or update releases and then update as necessary. Much the same as quite a few other Ubisoft titles have been in the past. If those are the only games you are having problems with I'd likely chalk it up to the games themselves too, as you have pretty much done.

 

[TheHangryHog]

Had you said that in the beginning I'd likely have told you that M&M Heroes has pretty much always been buggy and the latest two versions are no different. Pretty typical for Ubisoft. I'd make sure to check frequently for patches or update releases and then update as necessary. Much the same as quite a few other Ubisoft titles have been in the past. If those are the only games you are having problems with I'd likely chalk it up to the games themselves too, as you have pretty much done.

Funny that, shortly after these messages I tried playing Cyberpunk and within minutes I had the BSoD - I'll get a new PSU and potentially reinstall all GPU drivers in the meantime I guess unless you can think of anything else worth trying?

 

[Darkbreeze]

PSU is where I'd start. Even if it turns out you still have a problem, it is always the case that when you don't have a known good and known reliable quality PSU that it's the first thing you should do otherwise you might be chasing ghosts for no reason. Without a known good PSU that's at least decent quality, there's not much point in even looking at other potential issues, so do that first and then the number of things that can be causing it will be greatly narrowed down. Plus, unless you have a top notch modern PSU that came with a ten year warranty, it's a really bad idea to be using a 5+ year old PSU with the kind of hardware you have in that system.

 

[TheHangryHog]

PSU is where I'd start. Even if it turns out you still have a problem, it is always the case that when you don't have a known good and known reliable quality PSU that it's the first thing you should do otherwise you might be chasing ghosts for no reason. Without a known good PSU that's at least decent quality, there's not much point in even looking at other potential issues, so do that first and then the number of things that can be causing it will be greatly narrowed down. Plus, unless you have a top notch modern PSU that came with a ten year warranty, it's a really bad idea to be using a 5+ year old PSU with the kind of hardware you have in that system.

Having initially bought a PSU that wouldn't fit into the case due to side-oriented cabling, I now have a brand new RM1000x from Corsair, flashed BIOS to the absolute latest version too. Hopefully, this fixes things - either way, I'll be back to let you know one way or another!

 

[Darkbreeze]

Sounds good.

 

[TheHangryHog]

Sounds good.

Seems to be fixed! Ran cyberpunk for about 16 hours, no crash, thanks for your help!

 

[Darkbreeze]

Perfect man. Glad you got it sorted out.