- Sep 7, 2024
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Laptop model: Dell G7 7588
OS: Windows 11
Hey all,
I've been having frequent BSODs, mostly occurring I believe shortly (1-3min) after waking from sleep, locking up except for the mouse, then locking up fully, then BSOD. This has been ongoing for about a week I believe. For the most part, they do not clear and restart on their own, staying at 0%, though two did immediately restart even without progress moving past 0%. These two then sent me to the Dell pre-boot system performance check. Otherwise, I've had to power cycle my computer to clear them. After a fresh boot, they don't seem to occur.
There's been a range of stop codes, including KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED, CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED, etc. They do not appear in event viewer (except as power on from unsafe shutdown), nor is a memory dump written, or at least fully written. I have been messing around trying to get a dump, switching between "active memory dump" and "small memory dump" (minidump). Two days ago, an active memory dump was started, and is 6.5GB on disk, but it can't be opened by WinDbg or WhoCrashed etc. The Minidump folder was created after changing to minidumps, but is empty. There have been at least 4 BSODs since either of these.
The laptop has a 1TB Samsung 970 EVO SSD installed, swapped in as the boot drive several years ago.
I think that this drive may be the suspect, but I may be wrong. This is because I believe a similar issue 2 years ago was related to this drive. My previous frequent problem was that, specifically during gaming sessions (of any game), the game would lock up, with sound still playing for a bit longer, then bluescreening. Sometimes immediately after, the laptop would boot into the Dell pre-boot check, which I believe only occurs when nothing else is found in the boot order. I interpreted this as the boot drive (this SSD) not appearing immediately after the reboot from BSOD.
No dumps were created nor did anything but an unsafe power cycle appear in event viewer. I reasoned that it was heat related, and after passing memtest86 and not seeing anything wrong except for high temps recorded in SMART, I added a small heatsink to my SSD. The problem did not recur after adding the heatsink. I suspect the SSD controller was overheating and shutting down, preventing disk access, which then would persist to the next restart if not given time to cool, sending me down the boot order to the Dell pre-boot check.
This time around, the issue is clearly not heat relating, with my system feeling cold to the touch. But the lockups->BSOD->pre-boot check with no memdumps or events makes me think the problems are again with the SSD, but I'd like to try everything I can before replacing this disk. I'm unsure of the connection to waking from sleep, though it reminds me of what I've seen happen on systems (linux) booted from USB when the USB is removed while the system was asleep, and then are brought back awake, with temporary function before locking up and crashing. Maybe the SSD is not coming back awake with the rest of the components?
Things I've checked:
- Memtest86, no failures
- chkdsk and sfc /scannow, no corrupted files
- nothing appears out ofthe ordinary in SMART for the suspect drive
- other tests I can't remember
I don't know enough to actually rule out that this is driver-related, CPU-related, etc., but I'm pretty suspicious of the SSD. Has anyone had experiences like this or some idea of where I should go next?
Please let me know what logs and files to attach that may be helpful!
OS: Windows 11
Hey all,
I've been having frequent BSODs, mostly occurring I believe shortly (1-3min) after waking from sleep, locking up except for the mouse, then locking up fully, then BSOD. This has been ongoing for about a week I believe. For the most part, they do not clear and restart on their own, staying at 0%, though two did immediately restart even without progress moving past 0%. These two then sent me to the Dell pre-boot system performance check. Otherwise, I've had to power cycle my computer to clear them. After a fresh boot, they don't seem to occur.
There's been a range of stop codes, including KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED, CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED, etc. They do not appear in event viewer (except as power on from unsafe shutdown), nor is a memory dump written, or at least fully written. I have been messing around trying to get a dump, switching between "active memory dump" and "small memory dump" (minidump). Two days ago, an active memory dump was started, and is 6.5GB on disk, but it can't be opened by WinDbg or WhoCrashed etc. The Minidump folder was created after changing to minidumps, but is empty. There have been at least 4 BSODs since either of these.
The laptop has a 1TB Samsung 970 EVO SSD installed, swapped in as the boot drive several years ago.
I think that this drive may be the suspect, but I may be wrong. This is because I believe a similar issue 2 years ago was related to this drive. My previous frequent problem was that, specifically during gaming sessions (of any game), the game would lock up, with sound still playing for a bit longer, then bluescreening. Sometimes immediately after, the laptop would boot into the Dell pre-boot check, which I believe only occurs when nothing else is found in the boot order. I interpreted this as the boot drive (this SSD) not appearing immediately after the reboot from BSOD.
No dumps were created nor did anything but an unsafe power cycle appear in event viewer. I reasoned that it was heat related, and after passing memtest86 and not seeing anything wrong except for high temps recorded in SMART, I added a small heatsink to my SSD. The problem did not recur after adding the heatsink. I suspect the SSD controller was overheating and shutting down, preventing disk access, which then would persist to the next restart if not given time to cool, sending me down the boot order to the Dell pre-boot check.
This time around, the issue is clearly not heat relating, with my system feeling cold to the touch. But the lockups->BSOD->pre-boot check with no memdumps or events makes me think the problems are again with the SSD, but I'd like to try everything I can before replacing this disk. I'm unsure of the connection to waking from sleep, though it reminds me of what I've seen happen on systems (linux) booted from USB when the USB is removed while the system was asleep, and then are brought back awake, with temporary function before locking up and crashing. Maybe the SSD is not coming back awake with the rest of the components?
Things I've checked:
- Memtest86, no failures
- chkdsk and sfc /scannow, no corrupted files
- nothing appears out ofthe ordinary in SMART for the suspect drive
- other tests I can't remember
I don't know enough to actually rule out that this is driver-related, CPU-related, etc., but I'm pretty suspicious of the SSD. Has anyone had experiences like this or some idea of where I should go next?
Please let me know what logs and files to attach that may be helpful!
Last edited:
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