Question BSOD: "KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED" with ntoskrnl.exe ?

[Zigaurd31]

Hi there!

Since a few weeks ago, I got BSOD quite frequently. I tried to analyze my dump logs, but I didn't find anything, so I'm coming here looking for help.

A few words first of all :
- most hardware parts of this pc are new and just 4 months old (CPU, Motherboard, RAM, etc.). The only old parts are the power supply, the graphic card and hard drives/nvme.
- I had a series of crash (no BSOD, just hard crash) a few months ago which would occur at very random times (while gaming, just on a browser, 10 minutes after startup, 6 hours later, etc.) which seems to have been corrected by putting the frequency of my RAM at the maximum frequency of my motherboard in my bios (I misread the specs when I bought it). Since then, it was doing okay.

So since 2 or 3 weeks, I started to have BSOD at random moments. As when my crashes occurred, it could be when playing a game, just using my browser or even just a few minutes after arriving on my desktop.
The error code is "KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED" with ntoskrnl.exe targeted, and you will find the last dumps in date here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/103IECDQMLcsEP3DqJO6fBIxf5Y1P1IT9/view?usp=sharing.

I tried unpluging a few peripherals, nothing changed.
When I had hard crashes a few months ago I already made a MemTest86 which resulted with 0 errors. But maybe I didn't do it with the right settings as I went with default settings.
I think the BSOD errors appeared at the same time than 2 other problems :
- quite often, my discord app reboots itself, can happen up to 0 at 8 times a day
- I have a very big usage of my browsers (I'm the type of user with 12 windows with a lot of tabs opened) and it has never been a problem before. Now, quite frequently, I have tabs crashing. Even worse, the same GoogleDrive tab on Chrome can crash 4 or 8 times in a minute
I don't know if those could be related, but I prefer to put it here, just in case.

So after a few research, it sounds like it could be a problem about drivers. And I have no clue how to identify the culprit and solve this.

Here is my config:
Motherboard - ROG MAXIMUS Z790 HERO
BIOS ver/date - American Megatrends Inc. ver. 1501 10/06/2023
CPU - Intel Core i9-14900K
GPU - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER
RAM - Corsair Vengeance DDR5 2x32GB 6400MHz
SSD - Samsung SSD 960 EVO 1TB
PSU - Corsair AX1600i

Thanks for reading and answering me.

 

[Bob.B]

Hi there!

Since a few weeks ago, I got BSOD quite frequently. I tried to analyze my dump logs, but I didn't find anything, so I'm coming here looking for help.

A few words first of all :
- most hardware parts of this pc are new and just 4 months old (CPU, Motherboard, RAM, etc.). The only old parts are the power supply, the graphic card and hard drives/nvme.
- I had a series of crash (no BSOD, just hard crash) a few months ago which would occur at very random times (while gaming, just on a browser, 10 minutes after startup, 6 hours later, etc.) which seems to have been corrected by putting the frequency of my RAM at the maximum frequency of my motherboard in my bios (I misread the specs when I bought it). Since then, it was doing okay.

So since 2 or 3 weeks, I started to have BSOD at random moments. As when my crashes occurred, it could be when playing a game, just using my browser or even just a few minutes after arriving on my desktop.
The error code is "KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED" with ntoskrnl.exe targeted, and you will find the last dumps in date here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/103IECDQMLcsEP3DqJO6fBIxf5Y1P1IT9/view?usp=sharing. I tried unpluging a few peripherals, nothing changed.
When I had hard crashes a few months ago I already made a MemTest86 which resulted with 0 errors. But maybe I didn't do it with the right settings as I went with default settings.
I think the BSOD errors appeared at the same time than 2 other problems :
- quite often, my discord app reboots itself, can happen up to 0 at 8 times a day
- I have a very big usage of my browsers (I'm the type of user with 12 windows with a lot of tabs opened) and it has never been a problem before. Now, quite frequently, I have tabs crashing. Even worse, the same GoogleDrive tab on Chrome can crash 4 or 8 times in a minute
I don't know if those could be related, but I prefer to put it here, just in case.

So after a few research, it sounds like it could be a problem about drivers. And I have no clue how to identify the culprit and solve this.

Here is my config:
Motherboard - ROG MAXIMUS Z790 HERO
BIOS ver/date - American Megatrends Inc. ver. 1501 10/06/2023
CPU - Intel Core i9-14900K
GPU - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER
RAM - Corsair Vengeance DDR5 2x32GB 6400MHz
SSD - Samsung SSD 960 EVO 1TB
PSU - Corsair AX1600i

Thanks for reading and answering me.

You might want to update the bios your a little behind.

Also check the chipset driver.

 

[Zigaurd31]

You might want to update the bios your a little behind.

Also check the chipset driver.

Thanks for your recommendation. Just did the bios and chipset drivers update.
If I get any new crash, I'll come back here o7

 

[ubuysa]

It's always best to upload all dumps that you have, generally the more dumps we have the better our analysis. Dump analysis is rather like being a police detective, we gather clues from all your dumps to build up a picture - more dumps means a more accurate picture.

That said, in both of those dumps there were two third-party drivers called in the lead-up to the bugcheck. One was nvlddmkm.sys, the Nvidia graphcis driver. This is sometimes a source of problems, especially if the driver is old. In your case however this driver is quite recent, dating from Feb 15th 2024. The other driver is atc.sys, a BitDefender driver, and this one is a little older, dating from Dec 11th 2023.

All third-party anti-virus tools cause BSODs on many systems quite often, and BitDefender is no exception. I don't see any drivers loaded for any other security products but if you are running another security tool as well as BitDefender then that's a known problem. In any case, it would be wise to fully uninstall BitDefender as a test - be sure to use the specific BitDefender uninstall tool.

If the BSODs cease then you'll know that BitDefender was the problem. If the BSODs continue without BitDefender then please upload all the new dumps you have.

 

[Zigaurd31]

Hello again,

Sooooooo sadly if there was only one or two BSOD in the whole month, today I just happened to suffer 3 BSOD in the evening. You will find the logs here!
Beginning of the month: https://drive.google.com/file/d/15ImKk3ckMw5hEzj6A3xaIIiZzOOwJR8k/view?usp=drive_link
The most recents to date: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KIG9Tkd6SJUTR9sw--69e32Kp9Z4nHLB/view?usp=drive_link

I still haven't followed Ubuysa recommendations (sorry) cause I have a lot of settings registered in my BitDefender and if I can avoid to redo them all in Windows Defender, I would like to do it.
BUT, seeing what happened tonight, if you experts mainly see BitDefender as the main target here, I'll definitely uninstall it.

 

[ubuysa]

I was about to write that there is no evidence that Bitdefender is to blame, despite it being a common cause of BSODs. Then I looked at the dumps you just uploaded and there it is. This is just a fragment of the raw call stack for one of these latest dumps (which are mostly very similar)...

ffff8407`2a456708  fffff807`79393dab atc+0x3e3dab
ffff8407`2a456710  00000000`000000a8
ffff8407`2a456718  ffffc20d`a71fc8a0
ffff8407`2a456720  00000000`00000000
ffff8407`2a456728  ffffffff`ffffffff
ffff8407`2a456730  00000000`00000000
ffff8407`2a456738  00000000`00000000
ffff8407`2a456740  ffffc20d`c1c84080
ffff8407`2a456748  00000000`00000001
ffff8407`2a456750  fffff807`795946e0 atc+0x5e46e0
ffff8407`2a456758  00000000`000000a8
ffff8407`2a456760  ffffc20d`b6f87ee0
ffff8407`2a456768  fffff807`79393c85 atc+0x3e3c85
ffff8407`2a456770  ffffc20d`a71fc8a0
ffff8407`2a456778  ffffc20d`9cd71ca0
ffff8407`2a456780  ffff8407`2a456828
ffff8407`2a456788  ffffc20d`9cd71ca0
ffff8407`2a456790  ffffc20d`c1c84001
ffff8407`2a456798  00000000`00007280
ffff8407`2a4567a0  ffff8407`2a4567b0
ffff8407`2a4567a8  ffff2135`247392ed
ffff8407`2a4567b0  00000000`00002601
ffff8407`2a4567b8  ffff8407`2a456a60
ffff8407`2a4567c0  00000000`00000000
ffff8407`2a4567c8  00000000`000026ec
ffff8407`2a4567d0  fffff807`795946e0 atc+0x5e46e0
ffff8407`2a4567d8  ffff8407`2a456a00
ffff8407`2a4567e0  00000000`00007280
ffff8407`2a4567e8  fffff807`79394491 atc+0x3e4491

The atc.sys driver is a BitDefender driver and is almost certainly responsible for these BSODs, it's called dozens and dozens of times in each dump.

Please uninstall Bitdefender using the provided tool at https://www.bitdefender.com/uninstall/. I would strongly adcvise against reinstalling it too. All of the third-party anti-malware tools cause BSODs quite often on many systems and Bitdefender is certainly no exception. TBH you don't need third-party anti-malware systems these days.

 

[Zigaurd31]

Hi guys,
Since then, I uninstalled BitDefender like you suggested with the appropriate tool on their website.
Sadly, my computer just BSOD again with the same error : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hUCDJ4143JpcATL7E7eM7K1egf_w44rB/view?usp=drive_link

But, before it happened, a W10 pop up appeared, telling me there was an error on a disk that needed to be fixed. So I did what it said and reboot my computer, letting it repair my C Drive.
The BSOD happened after the reparation, a few minutes after getting on the desktop. Don't know if this little bit of context can help...

 

[ubuysa]

It's risky making a diagnosis based on only one dump, but this one looks very much like a RAM problem to me. The bugcheck occurs when freeing a memory heap - these are memory pools allocated and used by threads. Thee bugcheck occurs as soon as the nt!ExFreeHeapPool function is called, and since this is a Windows kernel function it's not at fault.

I can see that your overclocking your RAM, quite hard too, though I assume the RAM is rated at 6400MHz? Firstly I'd like you to disable the XMP profile you're using and run the RAM at stock frequency, which is probably 4800MHz. You'll need to run like this for some time, a week or more I'd suggest, to be certain whether or not it BSODs. Of course as soon as it does BSOD at stock frequencies let us know.

 

[Zigaurd31]

Wait... I'm overclocking my RAM???
I'm just trying to make it run normally...

Also, little information that I just remembered : My RAM is indeed 6400Mhz but my CPU can only deal with 5600Mhz at most.

So i just restarted my computer and did what you said. I've taken some photos from my Bios, could you check that I did nothing wrong since I apparently don't know how to configure my RAM? ^^"
https://drive.google.com/file/d/14kfM_c9UvwGIWFlp5zmpetOj92XbwGpj/view?usp=drive_link
And yes, I'll let you know ASAP if there is another one BSOD!

 

[ubuysa]

Re overclocking your RAM; yes and no. The RAM you have is part number CMK64GX5M2B6400C32 (from the dump) and that's verified at 6400MHz. If you look at the tech spec for your RAM you see that the base frequency is 4800MHz, in order to run it at 6400MHz you need to overclock it via XMP (or similar). From the BIOS screen images you're not doing that, the RAM frequency is set at 4800MHz. That's fine, but it means you're not exploiting the full potential of that expensive 6400MHz RAM. Here's the relevant RAM details from your dump...

  Part Number                   CMK64GX5M2B6400C32 
  Attributes                    2
  Extended Size                 32768
  Configured Memory Speed       4800
  Minimum Voltage               1100
  Maximum Voltage               1400
  Configured Voltage            1100

I should have looked at this earlier, because my suggestion above to run at 4800MHz you're already doing! This still looks most likely to be a RAM issue however, so please do these three things....

• Check in your motherboard manual that you have the two RAM cards in the correct slots for two sticks. It look to be fine from the dump, but just check.
• Remove and re-seat both RAM cards. The tiniest spec of dust can cause problems, but DO NOT blow on the motherboard slots with your mouth!
• If neither of the above help then remove one stick and run on just the other for a few days, or until it BSODs again. Then swap sticks and run on just that for a few days, or until it BSODs again.

Let us know how you get on with that.

 

[Zigaurd31]

Sorry, It seems I provoked a misunderstanding with my last answer ^^"
Before your last-last message, my RAM was set on Auto mode in my BIOS, which probably made it run at 6400Mhz.
Since your message, I changed that to set it up to Manual and set the frequency at 4800 Mhz. Then I asked for your confirmation that I did well with the photos that I shared!

I'll wait for the next BSOD, but I think it is RAM problem too... Since these BSODs, my browsers seems to not like having too much tabs open and they often "crash". And Discord randomly restarts itself sometimes 15 times in 3 minutes...

I just checked and I'm sure that my RAM cards are in the right slots.
I can try to reseat them when I have some time, but the cooler is in the way so it troublesome to interact with it.

Thanks for your help, as usual! You're a lifesaver!

 

[ubuysa]

Ah, thanks for the clarification. Yes, you set the RAM frequency correctly. See how it goes but if it's stable at 4800MHz and not at the stated 6400MHz you might want to RMA it....

 

[Zigaurd31]

I was kinda busy last week, I wasn't able to report it on the day itself.
I got 2 new BSOD with a new error code. As usual, the trigger is pretty random.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1j_jxw-AfpCny_B5NzkrBhYty84MhAjow/view?usp=drive_link

I also checked that my 2 RAMs on the right slots and I also swapped them.

A friend of mine saw articles like this one where Intel's CPU like 13900K or 14900K would have big manufacturer problem.

Intel Responds to Core i9 Stability Issues

Intel responds to stability issues and problems currently affecting the company's 13th gen and 14th gen Intel Core i9 processors.

gamerant.com

Should I just.... Repay for another CPU? I don't really have that kind of money but if that's the final solution...

 

[ubuysa]

Ah, I should have spotted the i9-14900 CPU. Yes, there is a known issue with both of the flagship i9s (13th and 14th gen). Check your motherboard vendor's website, many are providing Beta BIOS updates with mitigations to address this. If you do a web search you'd find that you're not alone. Join the Intel forum on this and add your voice.

I would not just replace the CPU because ALL i9-14900 CPUs have this issue and, as you say, this is not your problem, Intel will have to fix this. At their cost not yours.

One workaround you might want to try is to disable hyperthreading in the BIOS. That seems to have stopped the crashes for many users.

FWIW both those dumps are similar, they're both 0x50 bugchecks. That error is typically only seen n third-party drivers but there are no third-party drivers on the call stack leading up to the bugcheck. That's generally indicative of a hardware cause - which is why I suggested you look at RAM. But these BSODs could well be related to the Intel CPU issue you mentioned.

 

[Zigaurd31]

Well, I went to Intel's forum and found a few topics related to my Motherboard.

I proceeded to update my BIOS to 2202, switched the Package Power Limit 1 & 2 to 253W, ICCMAX to 400A and disabled Asus Multicore Enhancement.

So far, it seems like Discord didn't reboot on itself since then, which could be a good sign...
But I had an interesting event. While I was afk, My machine rebooted on itself. I have no traces of a BSOD log, no update has been made by Windows. And usually if the computer freezes, it needs to be shut down manually.
So I don't know what happened but something did happen. And I don't know what.

 

[Zigaurd31]

And Mamma Mia, here we go again!
Soooo I just had a new BSOD with a new error. And I realized that I apparently had an older BSOD that I never saw happening.
Here are the logs: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XLyyI4whNcWqVpFn202woJFQHH1juYTH/view?usp=drive_link

Since my tweakings on my BIOS settings, the system is much more stable. I still get Discord's autoreboot and Firefox/Chrome pages crash, but it's now very few per week. But still happens...