BSOD DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION Windows 8.1 on Asus Laptop

[npt2404]

Just about a month ago, I started getting blue screens of death out of nowhere. Lately it's been after 15-30 minutes of browsing the web or just letting the machine "idle". I enabled error logs and changed crash screen to stay for 30 secs. The error at 9 am today was DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION. Specs of the machine are below. I am also linking the DMP file which was from one of the crashes this morning. (At this point, I'll probably just shut the machine down and let it rest.)

Model: F55U-NH21
CPU: AMD Dual-Core E2-1800 (1.7GHz)
RAM: 4GB
Hard Drive: 320GB HDD
GPU: AMD Radeon HD 7340
OS: Windows 8.1

Link to DMP file

I have not been able to make any sense of the file when I opened it using Debugger for Windows on a Windows 7 machine. (It read with a bunch of errors.) Wondering if anyone can help. Thanks in advance.

 

[johnbl]

it is a old machine, I would blow the dust out of the fans and make sure the fans are spinning.

the bios date was in sept of 2012

I would remove aicharger.sys it is form 2011 and will cause problems for your system. it is a motherboard utility to allow the USB ports to run twice the max current thru the usb system so you can charge apple products.

generally you will find your usb3 just will not work correctly with this bios version. you should update the bios to the most current version that the motherboard vendor provides on the website and install the corresponding drivers from the same website.

overall, I kind of think you have a overheating problem but I can not be sure with the info from the memory dump. With this old of a machine you can have fans clogged by dust, or that just stop spinning . sometimes just blowing into the fan will get them to spin up again. it is hard to tell the cause of the problem

 

[npt2404]

it is a old machine, I would blow the dust out of the fans and make sure the fans are spinning.

the bios date was in sept of 2012

I would remove aicharger.sys it is form 2011 and will cause problems for your system. it is a motherboard utility to allow the USB ports to run twice the max current thru the usb system so you can charge apple products.

generally you will find your usb3 just will not work correctly with this bios version. you should update the bios to the most current version that the motherboard vendor provides on the website and install the corresponding drivers from the same website.

overall, I kind of think you have a overheating problem but I can not be sure with the info from the memory dump. With this old of a machine you can have fans clogged by dust, or that just stop spinning . sometimes just blowing into the fan will get them to spin up again. it is hard to tell the cause of the problem

Thanks for the response. In a separate thread last summer, I asked some questions about improving performance of this machine. I followed advice of an individual who suggested tear down and clean up. I got it done in August of last year. And I've been monitoring temps. Pretty sure they've been stable. So I don't think dust is an issue. This is the URL to the discussion.

As to BIOS, it's never been updated. (The machine was purchased new in mid-2013.) I've never updated BIOS but will look into it.

I rarely use USB ports but will look up that file and remove it.

Mid-day UPDATE: Several starts of the system resulted today in almost immediate BSOD so can't get much done. I did manage to get Winflash installed but the computer crashed the time I tried to run in. Luckily I'm not bricked yet.

I read that some people had issues with Windows Updates installed in 2018 so I'm removing them all one by one. It looks like a ton of updates were installed on 1/10/18 which is probably when troubles began. (All are for Office 2007 which is what I'm primarily running on that machine in addition to Web browsing.) At the moment the system is stable -- I turned off wi-fi -- and temps are in low 50's (Celcius). We'll see...

 

[johnbl]

the bios update is needed because the USB specifications were changed over the years and the changes in the specification required both the BIOS to be changed and the drivers to be changed. if you don't update the BIOS and you have updated windows then you have new drivers with a old bios and this can lead to data corruption.
you can also get this particular error in a round about way but you can not tell if it is related unless you look at a kernel memory dump. (basically, happens when a usb driver is being updated by one cpu core, but another core attempts to use the device and has to wait for the first update to complete. problem is the first update gets an error and just tries again. Then after a timeout period the second core calls a bugcheck thinking the first core is hung)

it generally only happens with old bios versions, or usb drivers. Microsoft error detection can detect the problem put can not install the updated bios. often you can find the automated debug log on your machine but in the end you have to update the BIOS and use the updated drivers for the motherboard

it is a old machine, I would blow the dust out of the fans and make sure the fans are spinning.

the bios date was in sept of 2012

I would remove aicharger.sys it is form 2011 and will cause problems for your system. it is a motherboard utility to allow the USB ports to run twice the max current thru the usb system so you can charge apple products.

generally you will find your usb3 just will not work correctly with this bios version. you should update the bios to the most current version that the motherboard vendor provides on the website and install the corresponding drivers from the same website.

overall, I kind of think you have a overheating problem but I can not be sure with the info from the memory dump. With this old of a machine you can have fans clogged by dust, or that just stop spinning . sometimes just blowing into the fan will get them to spin up again. it is hard to tell the cause of the problem

Thanks for the response. In a separate thread last summer, I asked some questions about improving performance of this machine. I followed advice of an individual who suggested tear down and clean up. I got it done in August of last year. And I've been monitoring temps. Pretty sure they've been stable. So I don't think dust is an issue. This is the URL to the discussion.

As to BIOS, it's never been updated. (The machine was purchased new in mid-2013.) I've never updated BIOS but will look into it.

I rarely use USB ports but will look up that file and remove it.

Mid-day UPDATE: Several starts of the system resulted today in almost immediate BSOD so can't get much done. I did manage to get Winflash installed but the computer crashed the time I tried to run in. Luckily I'm not bricked yet.

I read that some people had issues with Windows Updates installed in 2018 so I'm removing them all one by one. It looks like a ton of updates were installed on 1/10/18 which is probably when troubles began. (All are for Office 2007 which is what I'm primarily running on that machine in addition to Web browsing.) At the moment the system is stable -- I turned off wi-fi -- and temps are in low 50's (Celcius). We'll see...

 

[npt2404]

I'm almost done with uninstalling various WU files. So far the system is still stable. BIOS update is next although the newest version for this old machine isn't that much newer than the one currently installed. I have been looking for AI Charger Plus plus but can't find it anywhere: checked files, processes, programs.

UPDATE: WU files I could uninstall are gone and BIOS updated successfully according to Winflash from ASUS. Have not found the USB file. Crashes are still happening, unfortunately, as if nothing got done. Should I try to retrieve the crash report again and post?

the bios update is needed because the USB specifications were changed over the years and the changes in the specification required both the BIOS to be changed and the drivers to be changed. if you don't update the BIOS and you have updated windows then you have new drivers with a old bios and this can lead to data corruption.
you can also get this particular error in a round about way but you can not tell if it is related unless you look at a kernel memory dump. (basically, happens when a usb driver is being updated by one cpu core, but another core attempts to use the device and has to wait for the first update to complete. problem is the first update gets an error and just tries again. Then after a timeout period the second core calls a bugcheck thinking the first core is hung)

it generally only happens with old bios versions, or usb drivers. Microsoft error detection can detect the problem put can not install the updated bios. often you can find the automated debug log on your machine but in the end you have to update the BIOS and use the updated drivers for the motherboard

 

[johnbl]

it would be a really bad idea to remove the window updates. They have years of fixes that actually expected to be on your system. For example, the GPU drivers for your system are likely to expect that old bugs in windows are fixed by the various windows update patches. if you update the GPU driver you have to have the windows updates just since the new graphics drivers no longer work around bugs in the old versions of windows. if you roll back windows updates you will find it very hard to find old versions of OEM drivers that will work correctly with the old windows build.

I'm almost done with uninstalling various WU files. So far the system is still stable. BIOS update is next although the newest version for this old machine isn't that much newer than the one currently installed. I have been looking for AI Charger Plus plus but can't find it anywhere: checked files, processes, programs.

UPDATE: WU files I could uninstall are gone and BIOS updated successfully according to Winflash from ASUS. Have not found the USB file. Crashes are still happening, unfortunately, as if nothing got done. Should I try to retrieve the crash report again and post?

the bios update is needed because the USB specifications were changed over the years and the changes in the specification required both the BIOS to be changed and the drivers to be changed. if you don't update the BIOS and you have updated windows then you have new drivers with a old bios and this can lead to data corruption.
you can also get this particular error in a round about way but you can not tell if it is related unless you look at a kernel memory dump. (basically, happens when a usb driver is being updated by one cpu core, but another core attempts to use the device and has to wait for the first update to complete. problem is the first update gets an error and just tries again. Then after a timeout period the second core calls a bugcheck thinking the first core is hung)

it generally only happens with old bios versions, or usb drivers. Microsoft error detection can detect the problem put can not install the updated bios. often you can find the automated debug log on your machine but in the end you have to update the BIOS and use the updated drivers for the motherboard

 

[npt2404]

Agree. I only uninstalled updates associated with Office, the update date stamp was 1/10/18. The rest were untouched even though I now see that several Windows (not Office) updates were installed in Jan too.

Now, I did not disable automatic WU so it looks like some of those updates got installed right back last night. As I mentioned yesterday, it didn't really have any immediate impact anyway as I had several crashes after BIOS updates and WU removal.

UPDATE: The system has been running fine for whatever reason this morning. Was able check drivers, Windows Updates, download and run BlueScreenView, etc. "ASUS Wireless Radio Control" (wireless airplane mode on/off) was the only driver that needed an update per Device Manager. Just don't get it.

it would be a really bad idea to remove the window updates. They have years of fixes that actually expected to be on your system. For example, the GPU drivers for your system are likely to expect that old bugs in windows are fixed by the various windows update patches. if you update the GPU driver you have to have the windows updates just since the new graphics drivers no longer work around bugs in the old versions of windows. if you roll back windows updates you will find it very hard to find old versions of OEM drivers that will work correctly with the old windows build.

 

[npt2404]

Haven't used the machine in several months. Powered it up today. So far so good as far as BSOD is concerned although the battery is dead. All indicators are normal -- it's charging based on the light indicator but the Windows icon shows 0% and charging -- so given what I'm seeing, a new battery is needed. (I tried unplugging the power cord... the machine powers off almost instantly.)

FYI, HWMonitor is telling me this...
Current voltage: 10.8V
Designed Capacity 47520 mWh
Full Charge Capacity 32950 mWh
Wear Level 31%

The battery has not been lasting as long lately as it did when it was new but it looks like the is no bringing it back to life.

EDIT: Now we have a charge... just had to wait for an hour. Probably has something to do with it sitting w/o being powered on for a couple of months. Duh.

 

[npt2404]

Sadly, BSOD is back:

DMP file

Any thoughts as to next steps?

 

[npt2404]

Have not used the PC much last 6-9 months but this issue kept occurring whether it was after one hour of relatively light use or after 5 minutes. So I decided to use the Windows Refresh capability built into the OS. Done. All files appear to have been preserved but pretty much all software, Windows updates and Win8.1 need to be reinstalled.

Left the "refreshed" PC alone to update overnight - looks like it didn't crash! We'll see how this goes...

 

[npt2404]

After a couple of days or updating the machine in order to upgrade back up to 8.1... the PC is no longer booting up. I had a whole host of Windows updates loaded, machine restarted a few times, some software downloaded/installed (that was uninstalled as part of the refresh) but it appears that starting about two or three days after the refresh, for whatever reason, when I start the PC, the HDD doesn't engage or something else happens that doesn't even bring up the ASUS logo as it normally would on start up. So doesn't boot at all.

At this point, I don't think it's worth tinkering with this budget machine any longer. I'll probably see if I can't put the HDD into an enclosure (hopefully it's still usable), maybe use RAM for something else but otherwise, don't see how I can make much use of the machine or its components. Bummer.

May 2019 update: thought I'd try to either part out/recycle parts of the PC or... attempt to boot it one last time. Well, it booted up! I was able to upgrade to 8.1 successfully even. So far appears to be stable. We'll see.