Hardware or software causing my BSODs?

[NerevarReborn]

I have been having issues for a few months now with random BSODs of my system. It runs Windows 10 Pro 64 bit, and was stable for many months before these issues started. No new hardware has been added.

It comes up as something like "the PC has rebooted from a bugcheck" in event viewer. I have analyzed the minidumps and it seems to point to different drivers every time. I first updated every driver I could, then started uninstalling stuff as new BSODs kept coming for weeks. After a while I decided to reinstall Windows 10 fresh and clean, and got a BSOD within 48 hours of my fresh install. And they keep coming every 1-2 days or so. They can happen at a complete idle with nothing demanding running at all, and nothing being opened or closed, and they can happen when I'm using the PC. Playing games or pushing it a bit seems to have no effect on the issue, it doesn't happen more often then.

I have ran my memory in memtest86+ for eight full runs without any errors reported, so I'm fairly certain it isn't my memory.

I have had an issue with this motherboard about 9 or so months ago when the onboard ethernet adapter failed and the system wouldn't boot until I disabled the adapter in BIOS, and bought a cheap PCI-E adapter instead. The system ran fine like that for about 6 months afterwards, but my confidence in the quality of this MSI Z97 Gaming 7 board is not very high now.

Could this be a motherboard failure issue? The fact that the BSODs happen just as much in idle as under any sort of load makes me a bit uncertain, but since no errors have ever pointed to my EVGA 980Ti card or nvidia drivers, I don't think that would be the problem either. Also, that would almost ceartinly BSOD more often when being used than in idle without any monitor even turned on if that was failing...

I have a strong and good power supply in a Corsair AX760, which isn't very old, so that should also be fine, and again, if it fails would do so under load, not in idle...

Can these sort of random BSOD reboots in idle and anytime be due to a motherboard failing? Capacitors going bad or something? The board isn't old, less than 2 years, but even new hardware can be bad...

Help please! About to buy a new mobo and cpu/memory (changing to 1151/DDR4), but want to make sure that mobo is likely to be what is causing this first.

 

[Tradesman1]

Do you have the latest BIOS?

 

[NerevarReborn]

Do you have the latest BIOS?

Yes, I do.

 

[Tradesman1]

I'm thinking mobo too, especially after the Ethernet adapter failure, MSI doesn't have very good QC which is why I won't build on them...but was sort of hoping the BIOS might have been it (they tend to be slow on updates on that). Could check mobo drivers for updates, might all check the Win files themselves (go to command prompt as Admin and run the command SFC /SCANNOW.... Could also check your drive with the command CHKDSK C: /F (this can take hours, I normally run it overnight)

 

[NerevarReborn]

I'm thinking mobo too, especially after the Ethernet adapter failure, MSI doesn't have very good QC which is why I won't build on them...but was sort of hoping the BIOS might have been it (they tend to be slow on updates on that). Could check mobo drivers for updates, might all check the Win files themselves (go to command prompt as Admin and run the command SFC /SCANNOW.... Could also check your drive with the command CHKDSK C: /F (this can take hours, I normally run it overnight)

Thanks for the answer =)

Yea, I regret choosing MSI last time. Will probably go with Asus if I buy a new system now, since I've had some issues with Gigabyte in the past as well, and I mostly decide between those three manufacturers.

I have checked for any updates with MSI Live Update, and everything is using the latest BIOS and driver right now. Checking windows files even though I did a fresh re-installation of Windows (using a different release of Win10 to install even, to try something else) and kept getting the same issues after?`

OS drive is a SanDisk Extreme Pro SSD btw, checked that with SanDisk SSD Dashboard, and everything is fine and up to date there as well. Haven't run chkdsk command on it though.

Lastly, before I go and order myself a new rig, how could a mobo fail in a way that makes BSODs just as likely in idle as under any load? What would fail that doesn't seem to be affected by system load? Could some capacitors do that? Other components?

 

[NerevarReborn]

Edit: Ran a chkdsk c: /f on a reboot now and it only took around 60 seconds on that drive, so no errors I'm guessing (didn't get any report summary after it logged back into windows, kinda sucks)

 

[Tradesman1]

Should take longer than that, might try back to command prompt as Admin and run CHKDSK /R and see what it does

 

[NerevarReborn]

Should take longer than that, might try back to command prompt as Admin and run CHKDSK /R and see what it does

I was using elevated cmd, but with the /r it now took 8 minutes. Was stuck at 13% for most of that time so I thought there might be something. Log afterwards says otherwise though:

Checking file system on C:
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is SanDisk Extreme Pro.

A disk check has been scheduled.
Windows will now check the disk.

Stage 1: Examining basic file system structure ...
293888 file records processed. File verification completed.
4328 large file records processed. 0 bad file records processed.
Stage 2: Examining file name linkage ...
375848 index entries processed. Index verification completed.
0 unindexed files scanned. 0 unindexed files recovered to lost and found.
Stage 3: Examining security descriptors ...
Cleaning up 12 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 12 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 12 unused security descriptors.
Security descriptor verification completed.
40981 data files processed. CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
38632792 USN bytes processed. Usn Journal verification completed.

Stage 4: Looking for bad clusters in user file data ...
293872 files processed. File data verification completed.

Stage 5: Looking for bad, free clusters ...
24480819 free clusters processed. Free space verification is complete.

Windows has scanned the file system and found no problems.
No further action is required.

233849855 KB total disk space.
135365500 KB in 247742 files.
154804 KB in 40982 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
406275 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
97923276 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
58462463 total allocation units on disk.
24480819 allocation units available on disk.

Internal Info:
00 7c 04 00 6c 67 04 00 96 ad 08 00 00 00 00 00 .|..lg..........
ad 02 00 00 32 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ....2...........

Windows has finished checking your disk.
Please wait while your computer restarts.

Are we looking at the most likely scenario being a bad mobo, and again, could capacitors failing cause it to BSOD just as much in idle as under load like that?

 

[Tradesman1]

Could try a reinstall of Win, but I'm with you and thinking mobo

 

[NerevarReborn]

Could try a reinstall of Win, but I'm with you and thinking mobo

Last reinstall of Windows was a week ago, and completely fresh. Issues appears just as regularly after as before.

Last thing, like I asked earlier. Could capacitors behave this way when failing, causing the system to get BSODs in idle as well as under load? If capacitors fail, shouldn't the system just fail and reboot instantly, without a BSOD and memory dump and such? Or will voltages slowly dropping cause a BSOD similar to how an OC might, like the system suddenly is pushed too hard, even though it is running stock now, but the failing capacitors cant handle even that at times?

 

[Tradesman1]

Could take a look at them (bulging is a telltale sign), could be a bad trace or one with a scratch, could be a lot of things

 

[NerevarReborn]

Could take a look at them (bulging is a telltale sign), could be a bad trace or one with a scratch, could be a lot of things

Can't see any obvious issues. I also got to thinking that it could be the power supply as well though, right? That isn't old either, but still. I faintly recall getting home one day a few months back, might be around the time this all started, and smelled that distinct burned electronics odor in my apartment. Not overwhelming, and it slowly went away, even though I kept using the PC and everything else, so I forgot about it and thought it might had come from outside.

If that was from my PC there should be visual signs somewhere that something got hot or burned one would think...and since I don't see anything on the mobo the PSU comes into question. It has a 5 year warranty, so I'd rather not open it to have a look. And sending it in claiming it is faulty might just cost me shipping and take time if it isn't the issue....

Sigh...what to do?

 

[Tradesman1]

Was heading there, do you have another PSU or could you borrow one to try with?

 

[NerevarReborn]

Was heading there, do you have another PSU or could you borrow one to try with?

My old PSU is running my NAS, so it will be a pain to remove it for this, but I guess that's what I will have to do. Oh well.

 

[NerevarReborn]

I went ahead and bought a new mobo/cpu/ram combo, and that has almost certainly fixed it. System has been stable for over a week now with no BSOD or strange happenings.

I suspect it was a faulty mobo with failing capacitors or something such that was the issue. The RAM is now in my NAS and that has been stable for the same period of time, so I think I can rule that out as well. CPU is only other possibility, but it seems less likely. PSU/GPU or any software seems to be cleared as well then, since I run the exact same things now as I did before.

Just thought I'd share if someone stumbles across this in the future looking for answers.

 

[Tradesman1]

Glad all is well 😉