Question BSOD of hell. Gaming Laptop

[NerdyPastry]

Hello,

I have a GT83VR6RF MSI gaming laptop. It's about 3 years old now, but the things has always ran without any issues. About 2 months ago the unit started giving BSOD while in Windows 10 and during various activities. I tried a number of things - including a fresh reinstall of Windows 10 and a BIOS uprade, but none of those fixed the issue permanently.

I had the unit shipped over to Poland - MSI's main depot for Europe, and there their technician had changed a faulty sound board, as they themselves said. The unit came back with a document stating various hardware checks were made and passed, however it is still giving off BSOD.

Any help is appreciated!

 

[cdrkf]

Hello,

I have a GT83VR6RF MSI gaming laptop. It's about 3 years old now, but the things has always ran without any issues. About 2 months ago the unit started giving BSOD while in Windows 10 and during various activities. I tried a number of things - including a fresh reinstall of Windows 10 and a BIOS uprade, but none of those fixed the issue permanently.

I had the unit shipped over to Poland - MSI's main depot for Europe, and there their technician had changed a faulty sound board, as they themselves said. The unit came back with a document stating various hardware checks were made and passed, however it is still giving off BSOD.

Any help is appreciated!

I am surprised it's still giving you problems after being returned... what you are describing sounds very much like an overheating problem- typical of a machine that age as the cooling fans get clogged up with dust pretty easily.

That said, I would have thought that would be the first thing MSI would have checked.... still worth taking a look.

The other thing that tends to cause BSOD is faulty ram, if your machine is equipped with two ram modules try the machine with each on individually and see if it's more stable.

 

[NerdyPastry]

Thank you for the quick reply!

Over the years I've taken a lot of care with temperatures. I've monitored what they are during various activities and if they go over 75 Centigrade I'd do something about. The laptop itself has a very solid cooling system and it's Dragon Center is monitoring GPU and CPU temps alike. Unless that software is faulty I really don't see how it could be related - I am not saying it's impossible, I just don't know how. In addition I've cleaned the fans myself with a special blow CompuCleaner - a tool specifically modeled for electronic equipment, while, naturally, making sure the three fans are immobilized. There is also a super blow option - 5k rpm which I'd activate for about 10 seconds every now and again to blow stuff out of the vents.

On different forums I got advised to use memtest86 - allegedly a tool to test RAM. Is that a good option?

I will, of course, test the laptop with the RAM plates removed.

On yet another forum I got asked to provide the stop code generated on the BSOD, so here it is, if that helps at all.

 

[NerdyPastry]

I will provide some more information in case somebody gets and idea they want to share(these forums have been quite silent on the issue, not that anyone is obliged to help, rather just making an observation.)

So I got a number of tips, one of which was to run the laptop while plugged off.

It ran for a full battery cycle without any problems. This already could be pointing at a few issues - I am not an expert, though, I really am not that good with PC/laptop stuff.

Anyways.

I did some more testing for unplugged today and this is how it went:

I put the laptop to charge while switched off. Once charged I unplugged it and did stuff for about 40 minutes without any problem, then I remembered that it was set to switch off within 5 minutes of inactivity while on battery power. I went to control panel to change that and it froze - no BSOD. I plugged it in and switched it off/on then went back to doing something and it BSOD within 5 minutes while plugged in and it gave this stop code:

I plugged it off and wait for Windows to restart. It went BSOD twice on Windows startup, giving a WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR then it gave a message that Windows did not start properly at which point I selected restart anyways. It did go into Windows this time, but at that point I switched it off and went back to the drawing board

This is something coming from other forums:

''Battery power is already DC, wall power is AC and has to be run through a transformer to get to DC? So if the transformer (or rectifier maybe?) is bad... it causes fluctuating current and the over/under volt protection in the laptop kicks in?

I mean, I would have thought that would cause outright crashes/dying rather than BSODs or revert to using battery power, but 'bad' power from a dying psu can give some pretty baffling symptoms as well. I've also had plenty of non computer stuff fix itself by changing a power cord.''

 

[geofelt]

Memtest86 is a nice utility.
You boot it from a usb port and it exercises ram.
It does not use windows.
You should be able to complete a full pass with NO errors.

If the msi site returned the unit as functioning, I might expect some sort of a software issue.
If the memtest passes, try booting in safe mode.
That runs with a minimum of drivers which may be your issue.
If you had a bad sound processor, that would be the first driver that I would suspect.

Strange things can happen with a bad battery.
An obvious one is if a battery will not hold a charge.
If you have had to replace the battery, did you pay more for an original battery or for a "compatible" replacement?
Some replacements do not have proper electronics.

 

[NerdyPastry]

Memtest86 is a nice utility.
You boot it from a usb port and it exercises ram.
It does not use windows.
You should be able to complete a full pass with NO errors.

If the msi site returned the unit as functioning, I might expect some sort of a software issue.
If the memtest passes, try booting in safe mode.
That runs with a minimum of drivers which may be your issue.
If you had a bad sound processor, that would be the first driver that I would suspect.

Strange things can happen with a bad battery.
An obvious one is if a battery will not hold a charge.
If you have had to replace the battery, did you pay more for an original battery or for a "compatible" replacement?
Some replacements do not have proper electronics.

I will try booting in safe mode later on today .

Thanks for the suggestions.

I've never had to replace anything on the laptop, except this one time I shipped it back due to the BSODs.

In the mean time:

memtest86 ran for 7 hours plugged in and gave 0 errors in the end.

Managed to open bluescreenviewer in windows unplugged. It froze once in between but did not produce a dmp file. This what I managed to take:

https://imgur.com/MWIfXfb

View: https://i.imgur.com/MWIfXfb.png

https://imgur.com/8C86zTe

View: https://i.imgur.com/8C86zTe.png

https://imgur.com/K2jjkfa

View: https://i.imgur.com/K2jjkfa.png

https://imgur.com/oVbnx7W

View: https://i.imgur.com/oVbnx7W.png

https://imgur.com/xvcDYqv

View: https://i.imgur.com/xvcDYqv.png


On first glance they all look like driver related issues.

If anything rings a bell...

 

[geofelt]

Safe mode will run with a minimum of drivers.
I suspect a driver issue. Most common might be the graphics driver.
Windows has been known to update graphics drivers to less than optimal versions.
In a gaming laptop you have both integrated and discrete adapters.
I might try reinstalling the graphics drivers for your laptop directly from asus.
I note that the driver available seems to be old, released on 8/2016
Alternately, install the mobile graphics driver directly from nvidia.

If you can access the desktop, select to run using the integrated adapter.
That will be the default when running on battery.
Plugged in, the default will be the discrete adapter.
Look through your dumps and google any code that looks involved; that might give you a clue as too what is involved.

 

[NerdyPastry]

Ugh... the thing went to BSOD while in safe mode. IRQL error.

 

[stonecarver]

Have you tried to test it on wall power WITH OUT battery. It won't hurt it and you at least can check that off the list. And or throw a volt meter on your power brick to see if DC volts are at least stable and Correct.

And also If I was working on your laptop at this point I would just grab a spare Hard Drive and leave YOUR MAIN drive alone and just start fresh with windows just to reduce as many gremlins

 

[NerdyPastry]

Have you tried to test it on wall power WITH OUT battery. It won't hurt it and you at least can check that off the list. And or throw a volt meter on your power brick to see if DC volts are at least stable and Correct.

I'd love to do that, but as far as I understand it, the thing has got an integrated battery. It was one of the things I was weary off when making the purchase roughly 3 years ago.

Tomorrow I will be calling MSI and seeing what I can do with all that information that I've managed to gather over the weekend.

On the flip side - the thing does appear to be running overall most stable in Safe mode. I am still running it even now - I was about to start uninstalling drivers when that BSOD happened.

Another forum suggestion is to start with a fresh copy of Windows and just wipe everything - factory image and all.

 

[stonecarver]

You could try going to your start and in your search bar type msconfig and choose Diagnostic startup than it will only load min drivers and just see what happens.

 

[NerdyPastry]

You could try going to your start and in your search bar type msconfig and choose Diagnostic startup than it will only load min drivers and just see what happens.

Done that. Will see if it behaves.

Some searching yielded a case of a blown-up capacitor and a pretty comprehensive disassembly video in french. I believe they showed the battery. But I will save that tomorrow when I make that call.

 

[NerdyPastry]

You could try going to your start and in your search bar type msconfig and choose Diagnostic startup than it will only load min drivers and just see what happens.

It has ran for about 4 hours now under Diagnostic Startup. Slight caveat - I can't turn sleep off so it goes to sleep every now and again, but no BSOD so far. I don't know if that's significant in any way.

And also If I was working on your laptop at this point I would just grab a spare Hard Drive and leave YOUR MAIN drive alone and just start fresh with windows just to reduce as many gremlins

I ran into some write protect issues with my 125 gb pen drive as I was about to make a Windows image and start a full fresh install. Ordered a new one for tomorrow.

When you say a ''spare hdd'', what do you mean? Forgive me the stupid question, I am really not that good with these things. The laptop does not have any important info on it. I can wipe everything if that would fix the issue.

 

[NerdyPastry]

Today I started it up under Ubuntu from flashdrive and it has ran for hours, plugged in and without issue.

I called MSI, as well. I wanted to try and restore the factory image, but it wasn't working. Instead they said that because I've shipped the unit recently for inspection I am entitled to a 3 months extended warranty period for free. They have stated somewhere in their documents that they do not handle software problems, although I do not know how the issue would be classified.

Opinions?

 

[stonecarver]

It's like if you got your phone wet and tried warranty on your phone it would be a no go, that's why people used to just put there phone under there car tire and run it over you would get a new phone. Ya didn't get it.

So your factory hidden restore partition is gone?

 

[NerdyPastry]

It's like if you got your phone wet and tried warranty on your phone it would be a no go, that's why people used to just put there phone under there car tire and run it over you would get a new phone. Ya didn't get it.

lol

So your factory hidden restore partition is gone?

I don't rightfully know. The option ''reset to factory settings'' only becomes available when I use Shift + Restart from Windows, but it basically goes into the normal Reset option available through F3 on laptop startup. That one installs an updated Windows build together with a number of firmware and drivers... probably the cause of the whole thing.

 

[okcnaline]

Ugh... the thing went to BSOD while in safe mode. IRQL error.

Which driver is it this time?

 

[NerdyPastry]

Which driver is it this time?

The compact info is hal.dll+6deb ntoskrnl.exe+2acf6c 0x0000000a IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

I can provide a screenshot if you want.

I know earlier I said those look like driver related issues at first glance, but that's only because I looked up the files involved and the first few searches provided driver related issues. hal indicates hardware problem, while ntoskrnl is basically handling most of the windows base functions. On another forum they suspect an ACPI issue.

 

[okcnaline]

Can you try reinstalling the latest DirectX redistributable?

 

[NerdyPastry]

Can you try reinstalling the latest DirectX redistributable?

I will try that

EDIT:

Can you try reinstalling the latest DirectX redistributable?

Ok... so a slight update.

First, when you say ''latest Directx redistributable'' that doesn't mean much to one such as myself because I am rather bad with technical pc stuff .

Anyways, between the time you gave me that advice and my last post before that I've also installed a clean Windows version off of USB on the same system drive the old Windows was. It has probably used some of the previous files and updates. It was also unstable with 5 minutes BSODs.

After you advised me to reinstall Directx redistributable, I went into Diagnostic startup and used device manager to uninstall the Display Adapter drivers. I then installed Directx 11. I then restarted in Normal Startup. DxDiag still shows Directx 12, but that Windows installation is running without crash so far, as opposed to 5 minutes BSOD before...

 

[stonecarver]

Sorry I have been off line been busy. I hope you on the right track now.

 

[NerdyPastry]

Sorry I have been off line been busy. I hope you on the right track now.

Yeah, no worries, man .

Any help was appreciated, don't worry.

 

[NerdyPastry]

I checked SMART via Command Prompt and didn't give any errors. If there's any program that does it better...

Windows appears to be stable so far.

But I came across a strange error, though.

I was installing basic drivers - some from the manufacturers' websites, some from MSI's. In between every install I'd also restart to see if it will work.

MSI's Dragon Centre is a decent app that can control cpu clocks and fan speed, as well as provide info on temps and a few other things. It has some additional features in the forms of apps, one of which can control blue light levels. I like that one a lot. But after I installed it - MSI True Colour, as it's called, the aforementioned error started appearing. Of course I uninstalled the app and rested again, this time with no error. The error appeared again when I got to sound drivers - Realtek High Definition Audio and Nahamic. The error appeared between installations of both, after which I uninstalled both drivers, and also Nvidia's Audio driver, as well. I installed GeForce Experience and updated gpu drivers, but that didn't fix the issue. The error is still there although the code it gives slightly changes.

 

[stonecarver]

Instead they said that because I've shipped the unit recently for inspection I am entitled to a 3 months extended warranty period for free.

Being as there offering and this is just not coming to a solution for getting her stable. I bet having SLI in the laptop is not helping with all the issues as well. Throw in Windows 10 keeps reinventing itself with wonderful cough cough updates. Don't get me wrong updates are good and evil. But maybe MSI as they built your machine SHOULD be able to get it working. I just hate to tell you to ship it in at this time of the year. Case in point I bought a PC case as a present came yesterday and its shattered. ...................sigh

 

[NerdyPastry]

Being as there offering and this is just not coming to a solution for getting her stable.

I went into Diagnostic startup and used device manager to uninstall the Display Adapter drivers. I then installed Directx 11. I then restarted in Normal Startup. DxDiag still shows Directx 12, but that Windows installation is running without crash so far

Managed to make Windows run without crash so far. The latest error is just something produced on restart and shutdown, and most probably originates from Nvidia. Windows gives and update service error now but I am still keeping it under minimal startup. I am guessing it probably wants to install Nvidia Display drivers after I removed all of them. But if I am reading this correctly they are actually causing some issue with the top's drivers and firmware.