Question Multiple BSOD's. Hardware ram/mobo issue?

[smithm7861]

It has been some time since I've had to post here, but I am glad you all are going strong. My old pc took its final bow in January. It was due to be replaced anyways and I wanted to upgrade. This PC was built in a hurry due to also using it partially for my business. When I built it I had POST issues and it seemed like a common ram issue with the mobo. I had three different types of ram sticks as I planned to use a 2 or 4 stick setup, but I am currently using one 16GB due to the PC not waiting to POST with other combinations of ram. Once I got the ram situation seated to where it would POST life seemed good on a 16gb stick. However for the past few months I keep getting BSOD's typically for ntoskrnl.exe, MEMORY_MANAGEMENT, page fault, and dxgmms2.sys. I also get complete system restarts with no blue screen. Screen goes black and computer restarts. I'm slowing down now so I have some time to see if I can get this figured out and fixed.

I can replicate the BSOD almost every time the PC sits for several hours. It is like a wake up issue where I enter my pin and start my day. Then it blue screens. Typically is will be good after that or will do it another time and be good for several hours or the whole day. The next day, first time logging in and it will BSOD or it will BSOD over night. It doesn't happen every time, but frequent enough to see the pattern. I am at the point of restarting the computer as soon as I get to it the next day to see if I can avoid it. The black screen restart is infrequent. Sometimes happens on heavier graphic intense games, but that one is also sporadic. I have few event errors that occur as well. Really not sure where to start at this point to verify if I am at a software or hardware issue. I see chrome and brave browsers are typically listed in windbg, but they are typically being used when the crashes happen.

I have tried to run windbg and verify issues and it may be hardware/ram related. I update my mobo bios to current stable version 9.11 a few weeks ago. Windows update is up to date. No drivers in device manager appear to need attention. I have the ASRock Z790 which after I bought and was running through POST issues I found multiple people who were struggling with POST and ram issues. I just want to make sure this is not a software issue prior to trying to get another board, cpu, and/or ram.

Spoiler: Build Info

OS Name Microsoft Windows 11 Home
Version 10.0.22631 Build 22631
Other OS Description Not Available
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name MAXPC
System Manufacturer ASRock
System Model Z790 Pro RS WiFi
System Type x64-based PC
System SKU To Be Filled By O.E.M.
Processor 12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-12700KF, 3600 Mhz, 12 Core(s), 20 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date American Megatrends International, LLC. 9.11, 4/9/2024
SMBIOS Version 3.5
Embedded Controller Version 255.255
BIOS Mode UEFI
BaseBoard Manufacturer ASRock
BaseBoard Product Z790 Pro RS WiFi
BaseBoard Version
Platform Role Desktop
Secure Boot State Off
PCR7 Configuration Elevation Required to View
Windows Directory C:\Windows
System Directory C:\Windows\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume5
Locale United States
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "10.0.22621.2506"
User Name MaxPC\smith
Time Zone Eastern Daylight Time
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 16.0 GB
Total Physical Memory 15.8 GB
Available Physical Memory 7.89 GB
Total Virtual Memory 62.7 GB
Available Virtual Memory 52.6 GB
Page File Space 46.9 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys
Kernel DMA Protection On
Virtualization-based security Running
Virtualization-based security Required Security Properties
Virtualization-based security Available Security Properties Base Virtualization Support, DMA Protection, UEFI Code Readonly, SMM Security Mitigations 1.0, Mode Based Execution Control, APIC Virtualization
Virtualization-based security Services Configured Hypervisor enforced Code Integrity
Virtualization-based security Services Running Hypervisor enforced Code Integrity
Windows Defender Application Control policy Enforced
Windows Defender Application Control user mode policy Off
Device Encryption Support Elevation Required to View
A hypervisor has been detected. Features required for Hyper-V will not be displayed.

Let me know if you can't access the drive folder. There should be several dump files and two screenshots of event viewer. Let me know if you want more info from event viewer.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1nM07W8S51NQC5b_DTvexSfGqcND2KqP6?usp=drive_link

Thank you .

 

[ubuysa]

Three things leap out at me having looked through your dumps.....

1. These dumps have all the hallmarks of bad RAM. Three dumps in particular are memory related...
   

   FAILURE_BUCKET_ID:  0x1a_61941_PAGE_TABLE_RESERVED_BITS_SET_IMAGE_hardware_ram
   FAILURE_BUCKET_ID:  AV_nt!MiGetPage
   FAILURE_BUCKET_ID:  AV_nt!MiResolveProtoPteFault

   
   
2. The one RAM stick you have appears to be in slot A1...
   

   Device Locator                Controller0-ChannelA-DIMM0

   Your motherboard manual indicates (on page 17) that one RAM stick should be in slot B2.
   
   
3. The one RAM stick that you have (Corsair CMH32GX5M2B5600C40) is not on the QVL for the motherboard (see https://www.asrock.com/MB/Intel/Z790 Pro RS WiFi/index.asp#MemoryADL). Whilst non-QVL RAM does often work, when you're having BSODs that look like bad RAM running non-QVL RAM is always a concern.

I would try that one RAM stick in slot B2. If that doesn't help then I would look for RAM that's on the QVL and try that.

 

[smithm7861]

Makes sense. I was swapping around 3 different brands of ram when I first built it because I couldn't get it to post. All three are not on the QVL list which may explain part of my issue. I think it settled on A1 because it posted with a single stick and that is where is got left, until now when i have time to do something about BSOD's. Since I had POST issues before I will get some QVL ram this weekend and report back in a week or so with the results. Thank you.

 

[smithm7861]

Three things leap out at me having looked through your dumps.....

1. These dumps have all the hallmarks of bad RAM. Three dumps in particular are memory related...
   

   FAILURE_BUCKET_ID:  0x1a_61941_PAGE_TABLE_RESERVED_BITS_SET_IMAGE_hardware_ram
   FAILURE_BUCKET_ID:  AV_nt!MiGetPage
   FAILURE_BUCKET_ID:  AV_nt!MiResolveProtoPteFault

   
   
2. The one RAM stick you have appears to be in slot A1...
   

   Device Locator                Controller0-ChannelA-DIMM0

   Your motherboard manual indicates (on page 17) that one RAM stick should be in slot B2.
   
   
3. The one RAM stick that you have (Corsair CMH32GX5M2B5600C40) is not on the QVL for the motherboard (see https://www.asrock.com/MB/Intel/Z790 Pro RS WiFi/index.asp#MemoryADL). Whilst non-QVL RAM does often work, when you're having BSODs that look like bad RAM running non-QVL RAM is always a concern.

I would try that one RAM stick in slot B2. If that doesn't help then I would look for RAM that's on the QVL and try that.

Alright had some more time to play around. I had the CMH32GX5M2B5600C40 stick. I moved it around and my board is throwing a DRAM post light on every slot except for A1. Now when I insert the stick into A1 I do get the DRAM post to light up, but it cycles and clears then goes to boot just fine.

I purchased CMT32GX5M2B5600C36 which is on the QVL list for testing. Same symptoms. I tried dual sticks in A2, B2 and A1,B1 just to see what would happen. When trying to run both sticks the DRAM post light comes on and I noticed my upper fans start to flicker and jump in speed like they are getting slight power surges. Trying to run a single stick of the new CMT32GX5M2B5600C36 ram I get DRAM post errors in every slot except for A1 with both of the new sticks. I currently have the new 36 ram in slot A1 to have this pc functional. The current bios in v9.1 which would be new enough to cover the sticks. The fans don't appear to flicker with one stick. These sticks all have rgb lighting too if that were to make any issues with the surging.

The post issue is something I dealt with when this was first slapped together in a hurry. The Z790 boards sound like they have issues with post errors and ram. Wondering if this should be moved to hardware issues?

 

[ubuysa]

I would get the thread moved to hardware. This doesn't sound like Windows at all any more. Best of luck.

 

[smithm7861]

Thank you. We will see if anyone in hardware has any suggestions prior to trying to RMA the board.