[SOLVED] BSOD error every time I use a system image restore.

[Arbiter051]

Hello, I have been having some really annoying bsod problems lately and idk why.

9900kf
32gb @3000 Corsair LPX Ramp x2 sticks
msi gtx 970
Gigabyte z390 aorus pro
Corsair RMX850 gold psu
Nothing is OC except my Ram using XMP. System is almost 2 years old.

This all started when I updated to 20h2 on Tuesday of last week. When I did, while playing a game, my pc Blue Screened. I then got very scared and restored back to 1909 from 2 months ago, using an image backup. I've done plenty of Image backups in the past and used this particular image 2 other times and never had any problems. I updated windows to the latest updates (which I always do) and went to bed. However, this time, the next day, I got a blue screen of death error again and with a different error message (I didn't take note the first time). Sadly I don't remember the error message, but I discovered Who Crashed and when I ran it, it pointed to my nvidia drivers. I used DDU in safe mode, cut my internet off so that Windows 10 couldn't install its own driver, reinstalled the drivers from the nvidia website and didn't have a problem after that.

A few days later, I was having a bit of a problem with a game that uses .Net Framework. While googling I found using SFC to repair .Net framework sometimes fixes the problem. So I did it, it said it repaired some stuff and restarted. A few hours later while playing a game (All different games caused these problems, it wasn't just one game), I got a BSOD error again with a different error code. I freaked out and used Who Crashed again. Each time, it gives 2 things it was probably caused by. One is ntoskrnl.exe and this time it gave errors to ntkrnlmp.exe as well. It said it was a bug check. In the conclusion it pointed to nvidia again. I used DDU, cut off the internet, installed the drivers manually and it was fine for another couple of days.

I then decided to upgrade to 20H2 again since 1909 will be unsupported soon. When I did it, I did my nvidia drivers, just to be safe, when I hit restart to go into safe mode, I got a bsod again... This time I checked the error and it said reference by pointer. When I checked Whocrashed, it didn't give me any indication on what caused it, it just said no third party driver caused this and that is all it said. I decided not to worry, updated my gpu drivers and everything was fine. I ran memtest just to make sure overnight and I got no errors on either stick. Here we are a few days later again and sadly last night I deleted some files related to work because I am dumb and so I restored using my system image to my new 20h2 image. When I woke up this morning, I was playing a game and another BSOD error. This time it said irql_not_less_or_equal. I ran who crashed and the same thing came up again. ntoskrnl.exe and ntkrnlmp.exe, both were said to be bug checks and the conclusion said no third party was the cause.

I literally just uninstalled and reinstalled my Nvidia drivers again as of writing this. (Same method as always) and I am a little on edge because I have no idea what is causing this stuff to happen. It seems every time I use a system image now, I have to uninstall and reinstall my Nvidia drivers or else Windows gets extremely angry.

Other than all this, my games run fine, nothing out of the ordinary that I notice. PC boots up fine (Although ever since december, the bios splash screen is taking 2-3 seconds longer randomly), I have no audio issues or any problems at all really.

Can anyone shed some light on what might be happening? Thank you.

 

[Colif]

Who crashed just does that. It shows you what crashed but it doesn't really help as most of the time it points at the windows kernel

NTOSKRNL = windows kernel. It handles all driver requests, power management, and memory management. It sits between Hardware and Applications. It got blamed but its not the cause
ntkrnlmp - we never really worked out meaning of the initials but its part of the kernel based on ntkrnl part of name.

whocrashed has its good points, it creates minidumps

• Open Windows File Explorer
• Navigate to C:\Windows\Minidump
• Copy the mini-dump files out onto your Desktop
• Do not use Winzip, use the built in facility in Windows
• Select those files on your Desktop, right click them and choose 'Send to' - Compressed (zipped) folder
• Upload the zip file to the Cloud (OneDrive, DropBox . . . etc.)
• Then post a link here to the zip file, so we can take a look for you . . .

 

[Arbiter051]

Is there a way for me to look at the mini dumps myself? Just want to see if I can find what happened so that if it happens again (knock on wood I hope not), I at least know how to look in the future and I don't need to make another post etc

Sorry if I am being rude by asking this.

 

[gardenman]

Hi, you are not being rude. I can tell you how, but I believe you'll find it more complicated that you would like. You can read the basics (analysis) by downloading Win Debug from the Windows Store. It might be called "Debugger" or something along those lines. Load up the dump file(s) and analyze them.

In about 5% of the cases it will show you an exact driver name and you can update/rollback that driver to try to fix the issue. Five percent is not a typo. 95% of the time it's more complicated.

We have a bit more experience here and can list only the 3rd party drivers from the dump files which will show the dates on them, and we can analyze the dump a bit more. We also know certain drivers to watch out for that cause BSODs often, and how to fix them most of the time. We can also help you with hardware testing, etc.

If you can't figure it out, or find it too complicated, upload the dump files. This is as far I'll go with showing you how to read them on here.

 

[Arbiter051]

Hi, you are not being rude. I can tell you how, but I believe you'll find it more complicated that you would like. You can read the basics (analysis) by downloading Win Debug from the Windows Store. It might be called "Debugger" or something along those lines. Load up the dump file(s) and analyze them.

In about 5% of the cases it will show you an exact driver name and you can update/rollback that driver to try to fix the issue. Five percent is not a typo. 95% of the time it's more complicated.

We have a bit more experience here and can list only the 3rd party drivers from the dump files which will show the dates on them, and we can analyze the dump a bit more. We also know certain drivers to watch out for that cause BSODs often, and how to fix them most of the time. We can also help you with hardware testing, etc.

If you can't figure it out, or find it too complicated, upload the dump files. This is as far I'll go with showing you how to read them on here.

I understand and thank you very much. So far as of writing this, since doing my whole gpu driver routine, I haven't had a problem.(knock on wood, fingers crossed, all that). I just don't understand why it keeps happening.

 

[Colif]

In about 5% of the cases it will show you an exact driver name and you can update/rollback that driver to try to fix the issue. Five percent is not a typo. 95% of the time it's more complicated.

5%? I beg to differ... I think its lower, the number of times I see the actual driver name in a dump file are all the ones you get the Best answer for as the result speaks for itself

50% of the time its like... what is it doing? NO idea, check drivers...
most of time its work out what might be cause based on stack text and knowledge earned from answering um... too many bsod posts in the last 5 years. I don't know everything, I sometimes find results from questions I previously gave.

10% are whea errors and the dumps very rarely help beyond giving driver names.

 

[Arbiter051]

5%? I beg to differ... I think its lower, the number of times I see the actual driver name in a dump file are all the ones you get the Best answer for as the result speaks for itself

50% of the time its like... what is it doing? NO idea, check drivers...
most of time its work out what might be cause based on stack text and knowledge earned from answering um... too many bsod posts in the last 5 years. I don't know everything, I sometimes find results from questions I previously gave.

10% are whea errors and the dumps very rarely help beyond giving driver names.

sorry it took me a bit to reply. I looked at the mini dumps in the program you told me about and I didn’t see any specific driver or folder or anything to point to.

I did however do my usual routine with my gpu drivers and so far, everything is fine... again... yay.

I am starting to suspect it’s bitdefender free. A weird thing happened when I went back to my 1909 image that I honestly forgot about.

I restored to 1909, had a bsod, did my gpu drivers, was fine for a couple of days. I hadn’t checked bitdefender in those 2 days. I suspect when bitdefender updated itself something changed. When the went to look at it, it asked me to log in for the first time since installing it long ago, but clicking the login button did nothing, I tried clean uninstalling it 3 times using revo uninstaller, but nothing happened. I hadn’t tried to look at bitdefender for a few days remember, so for all I know, it was like that the whole couple of days I didn’t look at it and caused the blue screen when I went back to 1909.

On 20h2, it also gave me the need to login again crap after it updated to the latest updates, but this time luckily it worked. I then decided to leave my pc alone and play some games to test, but still the bsod stuff happened until I reinstalled my drivers. I’m starting to suspect it is bitdefender since it’s the only common denominator between the 2 images.

knock on wood I think I may have figured out why this crap is happening and hopefully no damage has been done long term.

One more thing I forgot about. I never had a problem before on my 1909 image before this. A few days before all this really started to become a frequent occurrence, I did a sfc to try and repair my .net framework because one of games that uses it was acting up a tiny bit so I figured it might help. A few hours later and bam, bsod. This was the first time I tried who crashed and it told me it was the nvidia drivers. All of my bsod, happened while having the latest driver for my gpu at the time.

 

[Colif]

if you have dumps, show us. I might see something obvious... or not. But I don't know without looking

I didn't know Bitdefender free needed a login, I knew the paid version did for subscription purposes, but not free. Must be to restrict usage or something.

Have you tried removing it and just using defender to see if it is cause.

 

[Arbiter051]

if you have dumps, show us. I might see something obvious... or not. But I don't know without looking

I didn't know Bitdefender free needed a login, I knew the paid version did for subscription purposes, but not free. Must be to restrict usage or something.

Have you tried removing it and just using defender to see if it is cause.

I sent you a pm.

I haven’t tried to remove it because I didn’t think of it till today and yea, it requires a login :/

 

[Colif]

dump results not very conclusive

your Bluetooth drivers are old, do you have a BT dongle? I ask as most times BT comes with WIFI and I don't see any wifi drivers.
Your ethernet drivers aren't that old really, Nov 2020

why are you running empty standby list? stutters in games? thats only use I see for it.
its one of those crashes that really doesn't tell me anything

 

[gardenman]

I noticed that program running too. It could very well be the cause of the crash. The program used to free up the RAM. Try to stop using it for a while.

 

[Colif]

The standby list is in effect a list of pages of memory that are currently cached, but can be discarded in order to free memory for other applications.

All it does is clear ram, but empty ram isn't helping system. it just slows system down as if windows wants anything that isn't in ram already, its slower to get it off ssd. So while ram might appear to be full, the way win 10 memory management works is it caches anything you have used today into ram and only if a program needs that ram will it move it to ssd. You have 32gb of ram, there shouldn't be many times you run out?

 

[Colif]

if you clean installed recently again and still getting BSOD, it would be bad luck indeed to get the same drivers so we might need to look at hardware.

try running this on CPU - https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/19792/Intel-Processor-Diagnostic-Tool

ram most common cause of odd errors during install

Try running memtest86 on each of your ram sticks, one stick at a time, up to 4 passes. Only error count you want is 0, any higher could be cause of the BSOD. Remove/replace ram sticks with errors.
Memtest is created as a bootable USB so that you don’t need windows to run it

 

[Arbiter051]

if you clean installed recently again and still getting BSOD, it would be bad luck indeed to get the same drivers so we might need to look at hardware.

try running this on CPU - https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/19792/Intel-Processor-Diagnostic-Tool

ram most common cause of odd errors during install

Try running memtest86 on each of your ram sticks, one stick at a time, up to 4 passes. Only error count you want is 0, any higher could be cause of the BSOD. Remove/replace ram sticks with errors.
Memtest is created as a bootable USB so that you don’t need windows to run it

I tried memtest but it never showed anything on either stick. I don’t think it is my cpu.

Today it blue screen when I was trying to create a new system image back up. So far for the past 8 hours after updating my bios, nothing bad has happened.

if it (please for the love of all things holy don’t) happens again, I will reply to the thread. Since it happened on a fresh install in 10 minutes. Im
Suspecting it’s either my ram, drives or bios update. But nothing points to my hardware having a problem.

 

[Colif]

the dump didn't show anything conclusive, it happened after it checked in ram but that could mean its a driver.
I don't know windows well enough to know exactly what it was doing, seems it was an operation in Virtual memory that needed to be moved back into ram or checked with ram - as I said, not sure what it was doing. No drivers mentioned directly, as usual.

I have seen Logitech drivers cause BSOD before, what Logitech are you using? LGS may have been replaced by G Hub, for your device.

Maybe you should stop using the program that clears the standby list, while you run the image creation. It appears it could be a conflict, removing things from ram that the program expects to be there. I would expect images would use a lot of ram, they have to be somewhere.

 

[Arbiter051]

the dump didn't show anything conclusive, it happened after it checked in ram but that could mean its a driver.
I don't know windows well enough to know exactly what it was doing, seems it was an operation in Virtual memory that needed to be moved back into ram or checked with ram - as I said, not sure what it was doing. No drivers mentioned directly, as usual.

I have seen Logitech drivers cause BSOD before, what Logitech are you using? LGS may have been replaced by G Hub, for your device.

Maybe you should stop using the program that clears the standby list, while you run the image creation. It appears it could be a conflict, removing things from ram that the program expects to be there. I would expect images would use a lot of ram, they have to be somewhere.

I just removed standby list, what’s weird though is that I didn’t have it installed during the clean install, but I am willing to believe it was causing problems.

I hope the memory leak paged pool isn’t around still 🙁

I used LGS but I never have it running, I only open it when i check to see if my mice firmware needs to be updated or to check the battery life. After that I close out of it.

 

[Colif]

so it crashed during the install? as thats not a windows driver problem. What stage of install? before or after the step where you show it what drive to install on?

Program was what was running during dump. So if it was running during image creation, it could be clearing the ram before windows has a chance to use it.

drivers run anyway since hardware installed, you don't need to open program.
Jun 09 2015 - lgcoretemp.sys - CPU Core Temperature Monitor http://support.logitech.com/
Jun 13 2016 - LGBusEnum.sys - Logitech GamePanel Virtual Bus Enumerator driver http://support.logitech.com/
Jun 13 2016 - LGJoyXlCore.sys - Logitech Gaming Software driver http://support.logitech.com/
Logitech pretty good, all their drivers signed to work with win 10, even 2012 Webcam drivers.

 

[Arbiter051]

It crashes 10 minutes after windows installed. Windows installed and it was idling then it crashed shortly after.

Thankfully I don’t think Logitech is causing anything but hey it could be possible.

 

[Colif]

I would expect 10 minutes after an install it was probably installing new drivers, as it doesn't just sit there waiting for you, it grabs updates via windows store and Windows Update.

 

[Arbiter051]

I would expect 10 minutes after an install it was probably installing new drivers, as it doesn't just sit there waiting for you, it grabs updates via windows store and Windows Update.

I agree, but whatever it was doing, it blue screened. My guess was that it installed drivers my hardware didn’t agree with. But I could also be talking about of me behind.

 

[Colif]

9900kf
32gb @3000 Corsair LPX Ramp x2 sticks
msi gtx 970
Gigabyte z390 aorus pro
Corsair RMX850 gold psu

so nothing else attached?
as we have to figure out what driver might have been cause. or what hardware
windows update history might show it in the other drivers area. Or you can look in Reliability History as it should show what was installed by the store before the crash

 

[Arbiter051]

so nothing else attached?
as we have to figure out what driver might have been cause. or what hardware
windows update history might show it in the other drivers area. Or you can look in Reliability History as it should show what was installed by the store before the crash

I have a 500gb 850 evo which has the OS
1tb 860 evo for games
1tb crucial mx500 for storage
All drives report good and are up to date with firmware

I have a g900 mouse, currently I have an mm711 (I test mice for fun for it changes all the time but g900 is my daily driver), I have a blue yeti, a Corsair k95 platinum and a Bluetooth adapter

I also have 2 different usb hubs and a usb extension cord attached. That is all the hardware other than my asus monitors of which I have 3.

I do check the reliability checker, but it never showed anything of note on either the 1909 incident or the 20h2 incidents.

the new bios I just installed had also firmware security updates. Is it possible that the security firmware updates and windows seeing I wasn’t on the latest bios, pissing windows or my mb off?

I am sure bios being outdated could have also for sure not been meshing well with current drivers.

 

[Colif]

Only way to know is wait.

USB hubs and BT adapter are maybe causes. if they always attached. I doubt a cord would be problem
it shouldn't be keyboard since you don't even have Icue installed so should be using default windows drivers.

 

[Arbiter051]

I just pray it’s over. I’m hoping this bios flash was what I needed to do all along.

if it happens again, idk what the heck to do.

 

[Colif]

if it happens again, idk what the heck to do.

we keep looking