[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.

 

[Arbiter051]

we keep looking

I really can’t tell you thank you enough for trying to help. It means a lot truly.

 

[Arbiter051]

Hey Idk if this is related. But around the time the bsod stuff started happening. Sometimes when I restart my pc for the second time in a row, my post screen will hang for a good 8-10 seconds, maybe a little longer.

my keyboard and mouse will be off, but the bios screen with options just stays there. Then when I check my last bios time, it was 20+ seconds.

it isn’t a constant thing, but it does happen. I don’t remember it happening before the bsod stuff started happening.

it happened a little bit ago, I restarted to get into safe mode so I could ddu (read about nvidia security issues today so I installed the newest driver) and after the driver was installed, I restarted again as usual. Also had a problem where my control panel wouldn’t open… never ending problems.

I have the latest bios also and this still happened. My bios time has also gotten longer since around December and my PCs initializing from a cold boot seems like it takes longer then I remember, also started in December. Mind you I was on 1909 at the time.

I am starting to question whether or not all these things are related. The thing is, my pc runs fine I think, so idk what to think.

 

[Colif]

my last bios time is about 16 seconds every boot. I have found out its a "feature" of X570 bios from Gigabyte. So I stopped worrying, pc loads instantly right after. Feature in that they all do it.

I would unplug everything that isn't essential, including all the ssd except the main one, and see if it changes that behaviour. Including speakers , as it can be anything slowing it down.

I don't know how to set the bios post screen to verbose - meaning it tells you what is happening instead of just showing the flash screen. Might tell us what its halting on.

Win 10 by default uses a hybrid hibernate meaning its not really off except when you do a restart. So if its slow on a restart, its because it has to actually initialise all the hardware, as opposed to a normal startup where its actually just reloading previously loaded drivers.

its not caused by software, as the opposite would happen if it was a driver - normal startup would be buggy but restart would be fine.

 

[Arbiter051]

It’s been a while since I posted in this thread, but I wanted to give an update after waiting so long to make sure things were fixed.

*knock on wood. A big shoutout to Colif and Gardenman for helping me and putting up with me for so long XD.

After trying just about everything, a Bios update was what fixed the issue. My bios was quite outdated and so it wasn’t all that surprising, but I am skeptical to update my bios unless I absolutely as a last resort have to.

the way I found this out was when I reinstalled windows one day, it blue screened within 10 minutes, which made me believe it was a hardware issue and so far it’s been fine since updating the bios.

i am not saying this will fix BSOD for everyone who gets basic errors such as irq_not_less_or_equal because not everyone’s machine is made equal even if your machine is the same part for part, but this is luckily what helped me.