Help with multiple BSODs

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lemelecode

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Jul 28, 2017
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Hi all,
since about a week or so I've been getting major problems with my PC.
The first BSOD happened while streaming a torrent on BitX. Gave me the message "Unexpected store error". Upon rebooting, I got an error saying winload.exe was corrupt or missing. I believe the error was 0xc000000e. I was unable to access any startup repair option, cmd, safe mode boot whatsoever.
I then proceeded to download windows again through my laptop and created a bootable usb stick. Booting from said stick, I was unable to perform a startup repair, or use SFC /scannow and DISM.
I managed to restore the system to a previous restore point.
Then 2 days with no errors, the system ran just fine.

3 Days ago it started again. This time the BSOD message was "Critical Process Died" and it happened while playing Assassin's Creed: Origins.
Since then I managed to format and reinstall windows about 8 times, all ending in a BSOD, with no option to reboot the system, fix the boot and restore the computer. I have followed guides to boot in safe mode, use bcdedit (which ended up in a access denied for the /fixboot cmd), and all the sorts.

After all the googling I did, it appears these 2 errors are mainly caused by either bad/old drivers or broken/dying HDD/SSD. And since every time I had to format, I reinstalled windows AND upgraded all the drivers, I decided to run one more test: try to stress the system when no drivers were installed. So today I did one more format, one more clean Windows install, and run an AIDA64 stress test without installing anything else but the 4-5 windows updates i had available.
The system crashed after 39 minutes, again giving me the winload.exe error on reboot. This should theoretically exclude any drivers issue?

At this point I went ahead and dismounted the HDD from the laptop, installed it on the PC, format and clean windows install to make sure the SSD was the cause. BUT, and here comes the real mindblowing part, when I put the SSD from my PC onto my laptop to format it again, there it goes! It starts! I have no freaking idea how is that even possible.

To recap:


  • BSOD while watching movie on BitX and while playing Assassin's Creed: Origins (either "UNEXPECTED STORE ERROR or CRITICAL PROCESS DIED)

    Unable to reboot after BSOD, error 0xc000000e with Winload.exe missing

    Fresh Win10 install, driver/bios update solved nothing

    Pulled SSD from PC after crash (winload.exe missing, impossible to reboot)

    Put SSD into laptop, windows starts just fine

    SFC /scannow and DISM didnt work after the first BSOD but they did work after the clean install and didn't find any issue, still got BSOD

    chkdsk found no errors/bad sectors

I am at a complete loss.
I can provide, unfortunately, only one minidump.

My specs
Motherboard: MSI Z170a Gaming M3
CPU: Intel i7 6700k
RAM: Corsair Vengeange LPX DDR4 4x8GB @stock speed
VGA: NVidia GeForce GTX 1060 from ASUS Strix
OS SSD: Samsung 840 PRO 512 GB
PSU: Modular Corsair HX850 850W 80Plus Gold
CPU Cooling: Noctua NH-D9L
Windows 10 Home 64bit
 
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Winload errors are boot files, normally if you update the bios it should reset the settings. It seems odd that it continues to happen over multiple installs, makes me wonder if its a bios setting in the PC since it booted in the laptop

So only 1 drive in PC?

Are you using Live update 6 from the MSI to update the drivers after install? (would be on utilities tab of motherboard drive page)

try running this on ssd in PC while booting off a USB: https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-rebuild-the-bcd-in-windows-2624508
 
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Hi,
I have 2 drives on the pc, the second one being a 1tb sata 3 hdd for personal files only.
Yes I do have live update. I tried both using it and downloading the drivers manually from the websites.
I've tried rebuilding the bcd but it didnt work. The /rebuildbcd command came back with 0 installations found and the /fixboot command said "access denied"
 
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can you right click start button
choose disk management
take a screenshot and upload it to a image sharing site like imgur, and share link here.

Curious if there are any hidden partitions on that hdd. Sometimes win 10 will put boot partitions on 2nd hdd if there is space there. Handy unless you move hdd out, but yours appears to have some boot files on ssd since it booted in laptop, so maybe there is one of hdd conflicting with it? Was the hdd ever an install drive?

the page i linked shows what to do if you find 0 installations (from memory)
 
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Hi, to my memory the second hdd was never an OS drive. I bought it around 2010 so im not really sure now.
I am almost sure it had no hidden partition. Unfortunately I am no longer able to check since I accidentaly formatted it yesterday evening... 😀 I need to find a program to recover my data which I dont have to spend 90 bucks for.

Edit: right now I unplugged the second drive, plugged the SSD back in and went for another clean install
 
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Once you have win 10 on ssd again, install Samsung Magician and check if you have current firmware on ssd, and also check its smart score.

At least not having hdd attached will remove chances of the hdd being included in the boot sequence

Does boot order include a choice called windows Boot Manager? If so, this should be 1st item in boot order (assuming hdd is set up as GPT, and BIOS set up as UEFI boot). windows should configure boot order after install anyway. It shouldn't just forget where winload.exe is.
 
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Here is a screenshot of the smart values. I have 0 idea what they mean 😀
SSD firmware is up to date.
BIOS boot order is:

  • UEFI Hard Disk:Windows Boot Manager (P5: Samsung SSD 840 PRO Series)
    UEFI CD/DVD
    UEFI USB Hard Disk
    UEFI USB CD/DVD
    UEFI USB Key
    UEFI Network
    Hard Disk: Samsung SSD 840 PRO Series
    CD/DVD:HL-DT-ST BDDVDRW CH10LS28
    USB Hard Disk
    USB CD/DVD
    USB Key
    USB Floppy
    Network

BIOS boot mode is LEGACY+UEFI.
 
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I just ran a memtest too, just to make sure. No errors were detected. The systems seems to be working fine for now. I'm gonna have to spend the night re-downloading Assassin's Creed and see if that makes it crash again.

Did you get any valuable info back from the SMART screenshot i posted?
 
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The main bit is every SMART score had a value of OK. If you ever see warnings it might be time to back up data on ssd. But that isn't now.

its likely the BIOS boot order should just be UEFI as since the boot drive is UEFI, and for some random reason the PC can't see the install sometimes, it will try to boot using LEGACY and that will not find your boot disk in that mode.

Difference between LEGACY & UEFI are many but main one that effects you is the location of the boot files,
On a LEGACY disk, the boot files are in the 1st partition of the disk and BIOS will only look here.
On UEFI, the boot files can be in any partition on any hdd, or even in a network location (as shown by the choices in your boot order), so the Windows Boot Manager has the locations of all Windows installs & their winload.exe stored in it and uses that to boot.

That alone explains the winload errors, as the normal format for a UEFI hdd is 4 partitions and the boot partition is 2nd in that, and if PC trying to boot legacy, it would only look in 1st partition.

I would disable all the boot choices you have in list except UEFI USB & the 1st one (UEFI Hard Disk:Windows Boot Manager (P5: Samsung SSD 840 PRO Series)) as then the system won't try to boot off anything else, and may speed up boot times. UEFI USB is handy to keep for emergencies like this. Could leave CD Drive as wall if you wish.
 
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Ok, but even if that fixes the winload.exe error (I will surely do what you suggested here), that does nothing for the "critical process died" and "unexpected store error" BSODs which caused the error in the first place. Right?
 
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Until you BSOD on current install, I am not going to look at historical dump files. It won't tell us anything about what is happening now.

critical process died is a windows error, normally associated with parts of windows not loading, might have been tied to your winload error as well. Was it an unexpected store exception? it too seems to be a windows error and not necessarily drivers.

Since you assume you might BSOD again, do this now
Can you follow option one here
and then do this step below: Small memory dumps - Have Windows Create a Small Memory Dump (Minidump) on BSOD

that creates a file in c windows/minidump
copy that file to documents
upload the copy from documents to a cloud server and share the link here and I will get a friend to look at dump files and convert them into a format I can understand - he might look at original dumps while you wait as I think i asked him to look already.

 
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OK, I will proceed to stress the system a bit and come back with a result. If i BSOD again I will hopefully be able to reboot and get the minidump.
Two more questions:
1) I still don't understand if I need to install the Intel RST drivers or not

2) My ASMedia USB 3.1 eXtensible host controller is functioning with default windows drivers
(Version 10.0.16299.15; Release Date 9/28/2017).
On the MSI website I have listed these drivers:
ASMedia USB3.0/3.1 Drivers (Version 1.16.36.1 Release Date 2017-01-03)
On Live Update 6 I have nothing listed as far as USB drivers are concerned.
Which one should I pick?

 
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Thank you very much for your help so far. I will get back to you with results probably tomorrow as my internet is really slow and it will take at least 12 hours to download Assassin's Creed again. (I'm gonna use it as a reference since most of the BSODs happened while trying to play it)
 
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the only driver on the old build that I saw instantly that can cause BSOD was Killer internet drivers

I would suggest using the Killers driver installation - 64 bit from here: http://www.killernetworking.com/driver-downloads/category/other-downloads

the error happened after you left sleep mode or hibernate as it mentions

hiber_dumpfve.sys
hiber_storahci.sys
hiber_storport.sys

which are all to do with hibernate.
 
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Colif,

I've reinstalled Assassin's Creed. The previous times the system crashed with a BSOD while I was still in the menu. Now I've been playing for a little more than an hour without any issue.
Could it be that the data HDD was causing the issue? Even if nothing is installed over there?
I will keep playing/testing in the next days anyway. I sincerely hope it's alright now though.

EDIT: I just saw the other reply about the Killer Network drivers. As it happens I didn't install them this time around. I might stick with Windows default for now.

 
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Status update: the system ran just fine for all of yesterday. However this morning I started having random 100% disk usage spikes. I went on Samsung Magician and saw that RAPID mode was halted because of some internal errors. After a quick google I decided to try and swap the SATA cable. It seems running fine now.

I know that for most of the 100% disk usage cases the "fix" is to mess around with the page file. I however decided not to do that, since I dont really feel like assigning more than what the systems says when I have 32GB of physical RAM.

 
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i would leave page file set to auto (Let system work it out) as with that much ram it will never use it anyway. I have it set to auto with 16gb of ram and yet my page file is only 1gb

I don't use rapid as its a ram drive and anything in it when/if PC crashes will be lost. SSD don't feel slow to me, I used hdd for 16 years before getting one so there is that.

Download Process explorer and run it as admin (it comes from Microsoft so its safe)

the default view is tree structure meaning like your task manager screen, it will show what processes are under each service, but unlike task manager, it shows the ram usage of each part.

Private bytes = actual ram usage
Working set = Ram + page file usage << this should be where any ssd activity shows.

This page shows what all the colours and headings mean, link at bottom of it shows how to use it to find problems. You can right click headers and run an av scan from within the program.

I don't know if process explorer will help here, I normally use it for figuring out ram problems.

Have you installed motherboard drivers? Sometimes 100% can be wrong drivers?
 
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By motherboard drivers you mean Chipset drivers? If so yes I have installed them, but I'm sure I got the right ones from this link

It appears the disk usage is fixed now by the way. It really might have been the old/perhaps broken SATA cable.
 
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Colif: No, so far nothing wrong. Although I didn't dare reinstall my data HDD. I'm getting a new one today, and I'm gonna need to recover and copy all my documents on this one.

The problem seems to be fixed. Thank you very much
 
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