Question Constant BSOD's with no dump file

Icy_Tuna

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Jan 8, 2020
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Alright so here's the long story of my crashes:

To start off, here's a Speccy snapshot: http://speccy.piriform.com/results/yr3A6dMmgAiCZpzooyeh3Dr

I upgraded to the mentioned GPU a few months ago now, along with a new PSU. Ever since though, Every 2 weeks or so I get a bluescreen right out of the blue (saying CRITICAL PROCESS DIED), not doing anything in particular. Rebooting the PC afterwards gives me another BSOD after about 5 minutes. Here's a short list of what I've tried so far:

-Reinstalled Win10
-Reset and updated Bios
-Bought new SATA cables
-hecked every single cable in the PC
-Ran check software on every piece of hardware including RAM
-Reinstalled GPU driver several times
-Contacted AMD support, their methods didn't help
-Ran all the usual stuff like sfc, chkdsk and so on
-Stayed in Safe Mode for a long time to check if the hardware was any problem, which worked fine
-Checked all the temps, was fine

The big problem now is that my PC also cannot create dump files for some reason.
When I leave the BSOD screen running (even over the night) it stays on 0% constantly and if I hard reset, the event viewer says this: Dump file creation failed due to error during dump creation.
I'm honestly so tired of this happening, especially since I just cant find out what the problem is. The only thing that kinda stops the constant Bluescreens is simply waiting for some reason (sometimes reinstalling the GPU driver helps for some reason but that might aswell just randomly appear so)

I am seeking help from you guys now, any help would be much appreciated!
 

Abhinav2005

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Jan 1, 2020
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To get dumpfiles:-
  1. Click Start, and then click Control Panel.
  2. Double-click System, and then click Advanced system settings.
  3. Click the Advanced tab, and then click Settings under Startup and Recovery.
  4. In the Write debugging information list, click Small memory dump (64k).
I think your settings are like that.
If you get dumpfiles, then upload it here.
 
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Icy_Tuna

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Jan 8, 2020
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To get dumpfiles:-
  1. Click Start, and then click Control Panel.
  2. Double-click System, and then click Advanced system settings.
  3. Click the Advanced tab, and then click Settings under Startup and Recovery.
  4. In the Write debugging information list, click Small memory dump (64k).
I think your settings are like that.
If you get dumpfiles, then upload it here.
Thanks for your response, but that exactly is the problem, I am not getting these dumpfiles. Like I said in the post, BSOD is not moving forward and event viewer says "Dump file creation failed due to error during dump creation ". I have tried turning off automatic restart and I also do not have any cleaning application on my drives.
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
You could look in system information, click software environment in left hand column and then Windows Error reporting. It may give a clue as to errors cause.

can you run this as it collects the same info - https://www.sysnative.com/forums/pages/bsodcollectionapp/

have you run this on ssd - https://www.adata.com/us/ss/software-6/
could run this on hdd but unlikely cause unless boot partition is on hdd - https://www.seagate.com/au/en/support/downloads/seatools/seatools-win-master/

Critical process can be a number of windows services, such as files needed for boot, files needed for login and files needed for windows to run. Its not my fav BSOD (not sure I do have a fav actually)

I assume you haven't changed the page file as that is one reason it doesn't get created.
 

Icy_Tuna

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You could look in system information, click software environment in left hand column and then Windows Error reporting. It may give a clue as to errors cause.

can you run this as it collects the same info - https://www.sysnative.com/forums/pages/bsodcollectionapp/

have you run this on ssd - https://www.adata.com/us/ss/software-6/
could run this on hdd but unlikely cause unless boot partition is on hdd - https://www.seagate.com/au/en/support/downloads/seatools/seatools-win-master/

Critical process can be a number of windows services, such as files needed for boot, files needed for login and files needed for windows to run. Its not my fav BSOD (not sure I do have a fav actually)
Thanks for your response, the Windows Error Reporting is not showing anything worthwhile and I have actually run the SSD program you mentioned.

I have run the program you wanted me to, would you mind telling me how to send the zip file to you?
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
Thanks for your response, the Windows Error Reporting is not showing anything worthwhile and I have actually run the SSD program you mentioned.

I have run the program you wanted me to, would you mind telling me how to send the zip file to you?

Yes, sorry. upload it to a file sharing website and show link here.

it might give me some clues or send me on a wild goose chase. we shall see.
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
yeah, windows isn't even recording Blue screens. All the crashes in it are Onedrive.

this even shows PC is set up for minidumps
DebugFilePath=%SystemRoot%\MEMORY.DMP
DebugInfoType=3
Description=
ExpandedDebugFilePath=C:\WINDOWS\MEMORY.DMP
ExpandedMiniDumpDirectory=C:\WINDOWS\Minidump
KernelDumpOnly=FALSE
MiniDumpDirectory=%SystemRoot%\Minidump
Name=Microsoft Windows 10 Home|C:\WINDOWS|\Device\Harddisk1\Partition4
OverwriteExistingDebugFile=TRUE

Perhaps its because its only 1gb
AllocatedBaseSize=1024
Caption=C:\pagefile.sys
CurrentUsage=0
Description=C:\pagefile.sys
and you have 16gb ram

is page file set to auto?
right click my PC on desktop
choose properties
in next screen click Advanced system Properties
Under Performance, click Settings
Click Advanced tab
What does it show as total paging space for all drives? mine shows 16gb, if it is less it should match amount of ram on PC (PC won't use it all, its the max. Mine normally only uses 394mb, Win 10 hardly uses page file unless you close to using all your ram.

Now to change it to auto, click change...
tick the box next to Automatically manage paging file size for all drives)
 
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Icy_Tuna

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yeah, windows isn't even recording Blue screens. All the crashes in it are Onedrive.

this even shows PC is set up for minidumps


Perhaps its because its only 1gb

and you have 16gb ram

is page file set to auto?
right click my PC on desktop
choose properties
in next screen click Advanced system Properties
Under Performance, click Settings
Click Advanced tab
What does it show as total paging space for all drives? mine shows 16gb, if it is less it should match amount of ram on PC (PC won't use it all, its the max. Mine normally only uses 394mb, Win 10 hardly uses page file unless you close to using all your ram.

Now to change it to auto, click change...
tick the box next to Automatically manage paging file size for all drives)
First of all, thank you so much for looking into this.

Weirdly, the Automatically Manage Paging Size box is already ticked, I tried re-ticking it and then rebooting the pc, yet it stays at 1024 MB. Additionally, I'm sending you a screenshot of the page.
Notice that under D: it says "none". Is this normal? Also, should I just try setting a custom value?

View: https://imgur.com/a/23r9WGQ
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
the none is normal, mine says the same as they aren't OS drives

my bottom is similar, except 1 thing
Minimum, is 16, recommended is 2936 (close) but last is 16384, not 1gb...

So what does it say next to total paging space for all drives? its on the step before that page

your greyed out space available there is 16384, mine is 178415 which is my total free space on C...

edit - my eyes are not as good as they used to be. your total is 168364, i think i was just seeing connections that didn't exist. So you have enough space??

I still don't understand why its only 1gb there.

might as well do this bit below

can you right click start
choose disk management
expand the window to show all the columns.
take a screenshot and put it on imgur and link here.
 
Last edited:

Icy_Tuna

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the none is normal, mine says the same as they aren't OS drives

my bottom is similar, except 1 thing
Minimum, is 16, recommended is 2936 (close) but last is 16384, not 1gb...

So what does it say next to total paging space for all drives? its on the step before that page

your greyed out space available there is 16384, mine is 178415 (how many years before we have 178gb page files?)

Something odd here. how much free space on this ssd? How big is C partition? its a 240gb ssd so shouldn't be cramped.

when you reinstalled win 10, was it a clean install deleting partitions or just a reinstall?
On "total paging space for all drives" it says exactly the same value as the allocated one in the picture I provided - 1024 MB.

At work right now so I can't exactly tell you how much space there is left on my SSD but I think from memory it should be something around 160gb (so not really stuffed, I never install anything on there that shouldnt be)

When I reinstalled Windows 10 I used the recovery option provided by the system itself. All my data was basically erased then except for drivers and such of course, so i believe it was a clean install. One thing I forgot to mention that might be interesting to you is the fact that whenever I boot up my PC, the Windows Boot Manager pops up and asks me what OS I wish to use - Both options are WIN 10, but after 30 seconds windows chooses the "standard option" so usually I just let it do that. So after all I might have screwed up there at some point, but if I knew enough about Windows I wouldn't be here. Additionally, that didn't actually fix the BSOD's back when I did that.
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
i edited my post, I misread the greyed out total. You have enough space, I am not sure why its only giving 1gb. But that is reason you not getting dumps I think.

I have to go now anyway so I will find other reasons why dumps don't happen.
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
One thing I forgot to mention that might be interesting to you is the fact that whenever I boot up my PC, the Windows Boot Manager pops up and asks me what OS I wish to use - Both options are WIN 10, but after 30 seconds windows chooses the "standard option" so usually I just let it do that. So after all I might have screwed up there at some point, but if I knew enough about Windows I wouldn't be here. Additionally, that didn't actually fix the BSOD's back when I did that.

only a small thing to forget :)

showing the disk management screen might help. Its possible we just use MSConfig to select the right version of win 10 to load at startup. I wonder if you get two choices if you boot into advanced startup, I have seen this before.
 

Icy_Tuna

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Jan 8, 2020
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only a small thing to forget :)

showing the disk management screen might help. Its possible we just us MSConfig to select the right version of win 10 to load at startup. I wonder if you get two choices if you boot into advanced startup, I have seen this before.
Alright, I'll show you as soon as I get home.
Do you think manually changing the min and max of custom paging file size would be helpful?
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
just leave it until we look at the disk management.

When I reinstalled Windows 10 I used the recovery option provided by the system itself.
this is a reset. All iit does is deletes the contents of C partition, all other partitions on drive/pc are ignored.

A clean install wipes all partitions on the ssd, and starts from a blank ssd. It might be one thing to consider since I assume all your data is on the hdd (I only install win 10 + applications that need to be reinstalled with windows on my ssd, everything else on hdd)

Don't do this yet, its just for possible future use

if you don't have an installer, download the Windows 10 media creation tool and use it to make a win 10 installer on USB

follow this guide: https://forums.tomshardware.com/faq/how-to-do-a-clean-installation-of-windows-10.3170366/

If you clean install, remove hdd from data connection in case as win 10 has a wonderful habit of putting its boot partition on any blank space on other drives. Only having ssd attached stops it from doing that. You don't want ssd booting via a hdd anyway.
 

Icy_Tuna

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just leave it until we look at the disk management.


this is a reset. All iit does is deletes the contents of C partition, all other partitions on drive/pc are ignored.

A clean install wipes all partitions on the ssd, and starts from a blank ssd. It might be one thing to consider since I assume all your data is on the hdd (I only install win 10 + applications that need to be reinstalled with windows on my ssd, everything else on hdd)

Don't do this yet, its just for possible future use

if you don't have an installer, download the Windows 10 media creation tool and use it to make a win 10 installer on USB

follow this guide: https://forums.tomshardware.com/faq/how-to-do-a-clean-installation-of-windows-10.3170366/

If you clean install, remove hdd from data connection in case as win 10 has a wonderful habit of putting its boot partition on any blank space on other drives. Only having ssd attached stops it from doing that. You don't want ssd booting via a hdd anyway.
View: https://imgur.com/a/l8T4vZp

There you go!
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
While it is odd your EFI is 1gb, it wouldn't have any effect on the error. My efi is only 100mb. Its the boot partition. You just have more space for the files than they should need.
its normal for C to be the disk 0 but it shouldn't cause PC to show 2 windows at boot up.

A normal win 10 install has a OEM partition. It contains info windows 10 uses for troubleshooting
Essentially the recovery partition is used in the event that your Windows installation goes belly up, it's the first thing you see when your Windows installation is corrupt and gives you essential tools to troubleshoot. It has no practical use while Windows is running
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...n/790f137a-2cb3-4523-bc4e-118f6230bba7?auth=1
it might be why its not creating minidumps. Maybe? I am not convinced.

Did you make this PC? Install win 10 the 1st time? Was hdd originally the boot drive and you bought an ssd later?

Clean install would fix the boot choice. MIght make PC create a dump file in the correct location too. Would also give you normal amount of space in EFI (more free space elsewhere) and create the necessary partitions. Could also fix the BSOD that is main reason we here.
 

Icy_Tuna

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While it is odd your EFI is 1gb, it wouldn't have any effect on the error. My efi is only 100mb. Its the boot partition. You just have more space for the files than they should need.
its normal for C to be the disk 0 but it shouldn't cause PC to show 2 windows at boot up.

A normal win 10 install has a OEM partition. It contains info windows 10 uses for troubleshooting

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...n/790f137a-2cb3-4523-bc4e-118f6230bba7?auth=1
it might be why its not creating minidumps. Maybe? I am not convinced.

Did you make this PC? Install win 10 the 1st time? Was hdd originally the boot drive and you bought an ssd later?

Clean install would fix the boot choice. MIght make PC create a dump file in the correct location too. Would also give you normal amount of space in EFI (more free space elsewhere) and create the necessary partitions. Could also fix the BSOD that is main reason we here.
Hey Colif, sorry for taking my time responding, but I had some family matters to resolve over the last weeks.

Just wanted to let you know I am currently doing the clean install guide you recommended, I'll get back to you if the problem persists/if I can get dump files finally.
On a side note, can you analyze the dump file yourself or would you rather have me sending it someplace else (if it all works out)?
Thanks for your continued help!
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
If you keep getting errors and if it creates a dump file, after a clean install, then Yes I can help you with the dump files. I have a friend who will help with the conversion.

If you keep getting BSOD after a clean install, it would lead me to think there is a hardware cause.. so lets wait and see :)
 

Icy_Tuna

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If you keep getting errors and if it creates a dump file, after a clean install, then Yes I can help you with the dump files. I have a friend who will help with the conversion.

If you keep getting BSOD after a clean install, it would lead me to think there is a hardware cause.. so lets wait and see :)
Update: After doing the clean install, the problem still persists, with the exact same symptoms. Still no dump files, still no clue. I still keep getting "volmgr: 161 Dump File Creation failed due to to error during dump file creation."

Honestly, at this point I'm just so damn exhausted of this s***, here's a Speccy snapshot, I hope you can tell me what part I should replace at the very least so I don't have to deal with this anymore:
http://speccy.piriform.com/results/lEhZu8duJxzM0WsuNgAOZsK

Edit: PSU is:

be quiet! Pure Power 11 500W 80+ Gold
 
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Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
Are you still getting the windows boot manager at startup thing?

I would love too have a crystal ball and tell you what cause is. I think its related to the ssd though, as now you clean installed there should be nothing to stop it making a dump.

What is causing the ‘Dump file creation failed due to error during dump creation’ error?
We investigated this particular issue by looking at various user reports and the repair strategies that are commonly being used to fix this error message. As it turns out, the apparition of this issue can be facilitated by a multitude of factors. Here’ s a shortlist of potential culprits that can cause this issue:



  • A Cleanup application is deleting the dump file – As it turns out, there are several different cleanup or system optimizing 3rd party apps that will delete/prevent the dump file from being created to improve the performance of the computer. If this scenario is applicable, you will be able to resolve the issue by uninstalling the application that is deleting the dump file.
  • System File corruption – As it turns out, system file corruption can also be responsible for this particular error message. Corruption may have reached some dump dependencies, so the file can no longer be created properly. In this case, you should be able to solve the problem by resolving the corrupted items with utilities like SFC and DISM. In more severe cases, the only fix might be to perform an in-place repair.
  • Outdated / Unstable BIOS – A severely outdated BIOS version or some issues stability issues can also be responsible for the dump file problem. In some cases, the BSOD can also be caused by your BIOS firmware, not just the dump problem. If this scenario applies to your current situation, you should be able to resolve the issue by updating your BIOS version to the latest version.
https://appuals.com/how-to-fix-dump-file-creation-failed-due-to-error-during-dump-creation/

I assume you aren't using ccleaner

to test if its sys file corruption
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

As for the 3rd reason, you appear to be on the newest BIOS now.

If windows is corrupted right after a clean install it would make me think there is something wrong with the ssd.

The problem with critical process died BSOD is it can be caused by a range of windows processes, some are used for logon, some are used for user services and others relate to boot up. Because you can't actually get any dumps and they weren't showing as errors in that sysnative report I am sort of locked out of knowing which process is crashing. I could guess its login but only as its confirms my idea its the ssd. But I am not sure.