[SOLVED] Constant BSOD's even after clean install

[Genralkidd]

I originally thought my CPU was failing because I bought it used from a somewhat sketchy seller on ebay. So I ended up upgrading to a Core i9 9900 but I still get the same bluescreen errors constantly. Most of these errors include things like (Critical Process Died, System Service Exception, Unhandled Store Exception) and they all seem to be failing in the ntoskrnl.exe. I've already tried doing a clean install of Windows as well.

My specs:
Core i9 9900
16 GB DDR4 RAM
RTX 2060
MSI H310M PRO-VD (latest BIOS is installed)
EVGA 850 GQ PSU
CPU temps average around 60-70, up to around 80 C under heavier loads
GPU temps up to around 70 C as well under heavier loads
1x 500 GB Samsung Evo SSD
1x 256 GB Samsung M.2 SSD (M.2 to SATA adapter)
1x 500 GB WD Black HDD
Windows 10 Pro 1809

This primarily seems to happen more frequently when I'm doing a lot of heavy downloads such as Windows Updates, steam game updates, driver updates, and so on. What usually happens is that during these updates, if I'm doing other stuff like web browsing or even going through windows explorer. The system will suddenly become unresponsive. I can still move the mouse cursor around but clicking on stuff will do nothing. The taskbar becomes totally frozen and some things still open like task manager might still be running correctly but I can't actually click that window to bring it into focus. About a minute or so after this unresponsiveness, the system will finally bluescreen (each time with slightly different errors) and after the reboot, there's a high chance it won't actually successfully reboot. Either it will hang on the motherboard logo at boot, or it will go into Windows Boot Manager with an error saying it couldn't find or access a device needed to boot. Usually manually powering off at this point and turning it back on fixes that issue though.

Minidumps: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/3myugtgcmf3t8xs/AACl0IDp_KFKwN362ZFz3G3oa?dl=0

Edit: I heard someone mention elsewhere that these errors could be caused by a faulty wifi driver. Not sure if that's the case here but I am using a Linksys AC 1200 (WUSB6300) for my wifi adapter.

 

[rgd1101]

motherboard and psu make and model?
latest bios for the motherboard?
cpu/gpu temp?

 

[Genralkidd]

motherboard and psu make and model?
latest bios for the motherboard?
cpu/gpu temp?

Motherboard: MSI H310M PRO-VD (latest BIOS is installed)
PSU: EVGA 850 GQ
CPU temps average around 60-70 under normal loads while under heavier loads like gaming it goes up to around 80 C.
And GPU temps don't go much about 70 C either in most cases.

Edit: I've also run memtest64 for a whole day but no issues ever came up. I'm currently running a chkdsk /r just in case but in the past before my clean install that never really did anything either. SFC also just fails even in safe mode saying Windows Resource Protection couldn't perform the operation.

 

[Abhinav2005]

60-70 seems to be high temperature. Isn't it?

 

[Colif]

Crash dump conversion - https://quixoticburmese.htmlpasta.com/

both blame win 8 drivers without naming one. Debugger sees win 10 as win 8 so that description really doesn't narrow it down.
first was a SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION (3b) and crashed the registry
Second was CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED (ef) and crashed Service Host.

this might help with 2nd error -
right click start button
choose powershell (admin)
type SFC /scannow and press enter
once its completed, copy/paste this command into same window:
Repair-WindowsImage -Online -RestoreHealth and press enter
SFC fixes system files, second command cleans image files, re run SFC if it failed to fix all files and restart PC

All critical processes are part of windows, that might fix it.

are you using Intel Extreme Tuning utility? as its installed. It can mess with cpu settings. Version installed is from 2017

Oct 25 2017

iocbios2.sys

!!! Overclocking Software - Intel(R) Extreme Tuning Utility Performance Tuning driver

update intel chipset drivers, latest on motherboard website are December.
Update intel management engine interface, yours is from 2018, latest are December.

https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/support/H310M-PRO-VD#down-driver&Win10 64

Realtek, who make the chipset in the Wifi card haven't released new drivers since 2018 which is tricky as your drivers are dated March 22 2019. I assume LInksys have just redated them, or your realtek drivers are from Microsoft.

Mar 22 2019

rtwlanu.sys

Realtek WLAN USB NDIS Driver

chipset - https://www.realtek.com/en/component/zoo/category/rtl8812au-software (don't dl, just to show dates).

 

[Genralkidd]

Crash dump conversion - https://quixoticburmese.htmlpasta.com/

both blame win 8 drivers without naming one. Debugger sees win 10 as win 8 so that description really doesn't narrow it down.
first was a SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION (3b) and crashed the registry
Second was CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED (ef) and crashed Service Host.

this might help with 2nd error -
right click start button
choose powershell (admin)
type SFC /scannow and press enter
once its completed, copy/paste this command into same window:
Repair-WindowsImage -Online -RestoreHealth and press enter
SFC fixes system files, second command cleans image files, re run SFC if it failed to fix all files and restart PC

All critical processes are part of windows, that might fix it.

are you using Intel Extreme Tuning utility? as its installed. It can mess with cpu settings. Version installed is from 2017

Oct 25 2017

iocbios2.sys

!!! Overclocking Software - Intel(R) Extreme Tuning Utility Performance Tuning driver

update intel chipset drivers, latest on motherboard website are December.
Update intel management engine interface, yours is from 2018, latest are December.

https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/support/H310M-PRO-VD#down-driver&Win10 64

Realtek, who make the chipset in the Wifi card haven't released new drivers since 2018 which is tricky as your drivers are dated March 22 2019. I assume LInksys have just redated them, or your realtek drivers are from Microsoft.

Mar 22 2019

rtwlanu.sys

Realtek WLAN USB NDIS Driver

chipset - https://www.realtek.com/en/component/zoo/category/rtl8812au-software (don't dl, just to show dates).

Running SFC the first time didn't seem to find any issues but I went ahead with the steps. I wasn't aware I had Intel Extreme Tuning Utility installed, doesn't show up anywhere on my system so I'm not sure how to remove it. I don't suppose I can just delete that particular file?

As for the wifi adapter, looks like the main driver is indeed from Realtek and perhaps Linksys did indeed just redate it. But the vwifibus.sys is a Microsoft driver though.

I recall having a similar issue on another PC before. Different hardware but I basically bought a 4 TB WD Red NAS drive and used it as a secondary drive on that PC for backups and as a network drive. But every time the downloads to that drive got heavy, the PC would bluescreen. Even though I'm using a couple SSD's now, that seems to be a similar issue this time around. These BSOD's may vary in errors sometimes, but the common trend seems to happen when large files are being downloaded (eg Steam game updates). So I'm not sure if the two are related but that seems to be a common cause.

 

[Colif]

try using auto runs to stop the overclocking driver from running at startup. If any program decides it needs it after startup, it can run it - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/autoruns

the chipset drivers i mentioned might help with the download thing.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

how did you perform this "clean install" you mentioned?

1. reset bios to DEFAULTS
2. clean install windows and be done with it. if that doesn't fix it, it's hardware.

 

[Genralkidd]

try using auto runs to stop the overclocking driver from running at startup. If any program decides it needs it after startup, it can run it - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/autoruns

the chipset drivers i mentioned might help with the download thing.

I successfully disabled the XTU driver with that tool and with the latest chipset driver from the mobo manufacturer, it seems like the blue screens are less frequent. So far with a large Steam download and a Windows Store download across multiple drives, I haven't had the freeze then bsod issue yet. However, I did leave my PC on for a couple days on a lock screen, freshly logged in with no other activity, and one of the nights it must've blue screened and rebooted because when I checked today it was on the BIOS loading screen but stuck on the mobo logo which it does that a lot after a blue screen requiring me to manually power the PC off, wait a few seconds, then power on again in order to get past that logo. Otherwise it will just hang on that logo indefinitely. No minidump was generated either it seems.

how did you perform this "clean install" you mentioned?

1. reset bios to DEFAULTS
2. clean install windows and be done with it. if that doesn't fix it, it's hardware.

I just used the Windows Upgrade Assistant to do a clean install as per the instructions provided by that tool. I have not reset my BIOS though. I assumed from the start it was probably hardware but I incorrectly assumed it was the CPU and replaced that but the issue still persists. I'm worried it might be the hard drive or RAM but extensive tests of both of those revealed no issues.

 

[laptop-Tech]

consatn you say if so get an anti virus to help i recomennd Total Av pro

 

[Deleted member 14196]

You did not do a clean install then. Boat from the USB format the drive and reinstall

 

[Genralkidd]

Alright I think I understand this issue a bit better now. So after disabling all those potentially bad drivers, it seems like it worked but a few days later the problems came back. I have positively narrowed down the bsods to occurring during moments of either high SSD usage (particularly on the C drive though not always), high network usages, or both. So the most common way to reproduce this is to either download a large game from steam, a large file from the browser, or unzip and extract a lot of files or install a large program like Visual Studio. Anything that pushes the SSD to 100% has a high chance of causing the bsod.

What usually happens right before the bsod is suddenly file I/O drops to 0%, the OS starts to hang. Things like opening new tabs in a browser doesn't do anything. Hovering over the taskbar highlights stuff but doesn't unhighlight. Then more and more of the OS stops responding until it gets a BSOD which is most commonly CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED and rarely SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION. After the BSOD, the PC tries to restart itself but it either gets stuck on a black screen, goes straight to the BIOS, or the Windows Boot Manager says the boot device could not be found. If I check the actual BIOS and see what's plugged into the board, the boot drive SSD is not detected anymore. Completely powering off the PC and powering it back on fixes the problem until the next BSOD.

So it looks like it's either the SSD (relatively new) or the motherboard that's failing here. In your opinions, which one is the most likely point of failure? Is the SSD failing and getting disconnected? Or is the motherboard failing and losing connection with the SSD?

 

[Colif]

SSD fail much more often than motherboards. If I had to guess on which, I would say ssd.

You cannot test a motherboard which makes it a difficult choice, as only one would have software you could use to test the theory.

You can test the Samsung drives using - https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/download/tools/
The WD HDD with - - https://support.wdc.com/downloads.aspx?p=3&lang=en

 

[Genralkidd]

SSD fail much more often than motherboards. If I had to guess on which, I would say ssd.

You cannot test a motherboard which makes it a difficult choice, as only one would have software you could use to test the theory.

You can test the Samsung drives using - https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/download/tools/
The WD HDD with - - https://support.wdc.com/downloads.aspx?p=3&lang=en

Just wanted to check in and wrap this up. Hopefully this might help others having the same issues in the future. It turns out it was the SSD after all. I swapped it with a cheap no brand SSD and under the same stress tests there were no BSOD issues at all when the same tests would've instantly blue screened on the previous Samsung SSD. I ended up upgrading the motherboard and SSD though just because the H310 was a pretty limited motherboard for an i9 9900 CPU. Thanks for all the help!