[SOLVED] BSOD on Windows 10 Boot

[LloydAZ]

My Windows 10 system will not boot. I get random BSODs during the boot process. Now I cannot even boot from a Windows 10 installation USB. This will probably get long. I'll try and provide as much detail as I can. I'm almost to the point of throwing it all away and starting over!

This system is one I built. Here are the components:

• MSI MPG Z390 GAMING PRO CARBON AC LGA 1151 (300 Series) Intel Z390 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.1 ATX Intel Motherboard
• Intel Core i9-9900K Coffee Lake 8-Core, 16-Thread, 3.6 GHz (5.0 GHz Turbo) LGA 1151 (300 Series) 95W BX80684I99900K UHD Graphics 630
• Intel 660p Series M.2 2280 1TB PCIe NVMe 3.0 x4 3D2, QLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) SSDPEKNW010T8X1
• CORSAIR Vengeance LPX 32GB (2 x 16GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3200 (PC4 25600) Desktop Memory Model CMK32GX4M2B3200C16
• (2) WD Red 10TB NAS Hard Disk Drive - 5400 RPM Class SATA 6Gb/s 256MB Cache 3.5 Inch - WD100EFAX
• Seasonic FOCUS Plus 650 Gold SSR-650FX 650W 80+ Gold ATX12V & EPS12V

I built this system about 10 months ago. It's purpose is a media server. I'm running Plex. It has very little else installed. Some tools for ripping DVDs, browser, etc. All basic stuff. It's not a gaming machine. I'm not overclocking or doing anything special. It's actually a pretty vanilla system. I put an i9 in it for the horsepower to do video processing. I don't keep a monitor hooked to it. Instead I use Remote Desktop to connect.

This ran flawlessly for 7 months or so. Then one morning I could not connect via RDC. So I plugged in a monitor and saw that every couple of minutes it would BSOD and reboot. The errors were, and still are random. Page faults, KMODE exception, memory faults, WHEA errors, etc. I've seen about 10 different errors. Here's what I've tried:

1. My first suspicion was bad memory. I put MEMTEST86 on a USB stick and ran it for hours, 4-5 passes with no errors. I've since tried each 16GB stick by itself and still don't see errors. So I concluded it wasn't memory.
2. Next I thought it was the SSD. I have several SATA HDs not in use. So removed the SSD and installed a 500GB HD and installed Windows 10 on it. It ran for about 5 minutes. I was able to log in, look around a bit, then got a BSOD. After that, it would not boot. So it appears that once the original error occurs, whatever it is, the drive is corrupted in some way and will no longer boot.
3. I tried repairing Windows using the USB install stick. (BTW, it's one I ordered from Microsoft.) That yielded no results.
4. Then at some point, I could not even boot from the USB stick for installing Windows. It would BSOD while the little initial spinner was going, or I'd get the initial menu after which whatever I chose, it would start to load files and then shortly after BSOD.
5. Next up, motherboard issue. I RMA's the motherboard back to MSI and they sent me a replacement.
6. When I installed the replacement, I installed the CPU and DRAM, connected the basic things so I have power button, reset button, etc. I did not connect USB ports on the case front panel. I plugged in the 500GB HD on which I installed Windows. I did not connect the 2 original HDs, either to the motherboard or the power supply.
7. Nothing changed. It would not boot from the HD, which didn't surprise me. But it would not boot from the Windows USB stick either.
8. Next, must be power supply. I RMA'd the power supply back to Seasonic and they sent a replacement.
9. Nothing changed with the replacement power supply.
10. I even disconnected the HD, leaving only the USB stick as a boot device. No change.
11. Cables? I bought replacements for the motherboard and CPU power cables. Installed those, nothing changed.
12. I created a new USB bootable install stick using the Microsoft Media Creation tool. Nothing changed.
13. I created a new USB install stick using Rufus and an Windows 10 ISO. Nothing changed.

That's where I am right now. The ONLY component left to possibly swap is the CPU. I don't have a spare of any kind. I'm not going to buy a new one to try. So I'd have to RMA this one back to Intel and wait on a replacement. This does not seem like it's a CPU issue. I think a bad CPU will typically not even POST.

I have a system with a MB, CPU, DRAM and on board I/O that won't boot from a USB stick. I don't even have the I/O ports in the case connected. I've changed the BIOS boot options trying different things. I disabled Legacy and tried with just UEFI. Secure boot is disabled. None of these changes have made a difference. Still random BSOD on boot from the USB stick.

BTW, in this age of COVID doing RMAs takes forever and a day. Everyone is working with reduced staff.

Thanks for any help anyone out there can provide. This is the strangest issue I've ever encountered.

 

[LloydAZ]

Here's some new information. I did a CMOS reset by unplugging the power cord and removing the battery for a while. Then put the battery back and powered up. It told me on-screen that the BIOS had been reset. It then proceeded to boot correctly from the installation USB stick.

I plugged in the HD on which I'd installed Windows 10. I let it boot from that HD. Initially, it had to "repair it", but then on restart it booted into Windows. I logged in and was then thinking the CMOS reset had gotten me going again. But after three or four minutes it died and rebooted. There was no BSOD, it just rebooted. On reboot, I got a BSOD with "page fault in non-paged location". The next reboot resulted in BSOD with "kmode exception". I'm back to the same place as before. It will not boot from the HD or the installation USB. I was going to re-install Windows 10 on that HD, but I can't get it booted.

I may try the CMOS reset again and see if it will boot from the USB stick, then re-install Windows. But I really believe this is a hardware/BIOS issue of some kind. If I'm lucky enough to get all the way through the Windows installation, I don't have any confidence it will run for more than a couple minutes.

I didn't mention in my original post that early on I updated the BIOS to the latest version. That didn't change anything. The replacement motherboard I received from MSI has the latest BIOS installed.

 

[LloydAZ]

My issue ended up being a bad CPU. After more than a week of back-and-forth with Intel, they refunded what I paid for the CPU. I ordered a new one, installed it and all is working. The CPU was the last component I suspected and the only one left that I hadn't swapped out.