Hello everyone,
I come here looking for help as I'm struggling to find the underlying cause of my roommate's computer's problems.
To put it simply, his computer has been having BSOD on a regular basis. On average, he has about 2 to 5 crashes a day. So he's asked me to look into it. I've spent the last four days on it and while I have made progress, it just never seems to work well for very long. I've gotten a bunch of different errors :
- MEMORY_MANAGEMENT (for the most part)
- IRQL_NOT_GREATER_OR_EQUAL
- PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA
- SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED
- DRIVER_VERIFIER_DETECTED_VIOLATION
- DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION
- KERNEL_MODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED_M
I've established that one of his sticks of RAM was faulty, as I couldn't get the computer to boot on it at first and when it finally did, it crashed as soon as I opened a tab in firefox. Having then replaced the RAM, I saw major improvement and I haven't been getting BSODs since. However, for some reason the screen sometimes freezes and some things just don't seem to work. I'll open windows parameters and as I click on the different options nothing seems to happen, it just gets "stuck" as if I wasn't done clicking. Here's a (maybe non-exhaustive) list of all the troubleshooting I've attempted :
- Read that MEMORY_MANAGEMENT was usually a faulty RAM issue, so I changed the RAM. I also read some built-up dust might be impacting the ability of the RAM to work properly so I removed the bit of dust that was in the slots.
- Noticed his CPU was sitting at around 80° at idle, which I thought was a lot so I went ahead and changed the thermal paste and it went down 10°.
- I've converted his M2 from MBR to GPT as I noticed his computer was booting in UEFI and it didn't seem to make much sense for the drive to be in MBR, which I assumed might be causing issues. The PC is way faster since then than it was prior to this change (we're talking lightning fast in comparison) so at least there's that.
- After some research, it would seem his GPU is known for causing some crashes. It would seem fine tuning it manually in Adrenalin Software could help, which I did using some suggested parameters some people online suggested in other threads. However, I don't think it was really the problem as I tried replacing the GPU too with one of mine (GTX 1060) that I know to be perfectly fine and I still got crashes at that point.
- I've re-enabled secure boot as I thought it was weird that it was disabled in the first place.
- I've noticed the RAM wasn't working at its actual speed (supposed to be 2400 Mhz with the new sticks but is only 2133 Mhz) so I enabled XMP profile to get it at its actual speed. I unfortunately had to go back and undo the change as I noticed the pc froze even more after that. Tried changing it manually by inserting the values myself but it didn't solve it. As of this moment, I've reverted the settings to Auto in BIOS and it runs at 2133 Mhz.
- I updated the BIOS to its latest version (f67b) hoping it would make a difference, but I don't think it has made any real changes aside from the boot logo resolution actually being nicer to look at since it's now the right resolution.
- I've ran a bunch of diagnostic tools : sfc /scannow, chkdsk, windows memory diagnostics, etc. Pretty much everything came back empty.
- Ran a few different antivirus software looking for rootkits or other forms of malware. Nothing was found.
All the drivers are up to date, there's no awaiting update and Windows is freshly installed. I haven't gotten a BSOD after all these changes so I think part of what I did has helped but as I stated, some things still seem to simply not work for some reason. I'm starting to consider the possibility that the motherboard might be faulty or that worse, he's gotten a rootkit that just wrecked his computer. Which I'm beginning to think might make sense as it would explain why every component/software in his computer seemed to have some sort of issue.
Is there anything that you guys could suggest ?
Here's the specs :
Motherboard : Aorus b450 elite
CPU : AMD Ryzen 5 3600x
RAM : HyperX Fury 8GB x2 (16GB) 2666 Mhz originally, but now replaced with Corsair Vengeance 8GB x 2 (16GB) 2400 Mhz
M2 SSD : LDLC 500GB M2
GPU : Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 5600 xt
PSU : Textorm 500+
I come here looking for help as I'm struggling to find the underlying cause of my roommate's computer's problems.
To put it simply, his computer has been having BSOD on a regular basis. On average, he has about 2 to 5 crashes a day. So he's asked me to look into it. I've spent the last four days on it and while I have made progress, it just never seems to work well for very long. I've gotten a bunch of different errors :
- MEMORY_MANAGEMENT (for the most part)
- IRQL_NOT_GREATER_OR_EQUAL
- PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA
- SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED
- DRIVER_VERIFIER_DETECTED_VIOLATION
- DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION
- KERNEL_MODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED_M
I've established that one of his sticks of RAM was faulty, as I couldn't get the computer to boot on it at first and when it finally did, it crashed as soon as I opened a tab in firefox. Having then replaced the RAM, I saw major improvement and I haven't been getting BSODs since. However, for some reason the screen sometimes freezes and some things just don't seem to work. I'll open windows parameters and as I click on the different options nothing seems to happen, it just gets "stuck" as if I wasn't done clicking. Here's a (maybe non-exhaustive) list of all the troubleshooting I've attempted :
- Read that MEMORY_MANAGEMENT was usually a faulty RAM issue, so I changed the RAM. I also read some built-up dust might be impacting the ability of the RAM to work properly so I removed the bit of dust that was in the slots.
- Noticed his CPU was sitting at around 80° at idle, which I thought was a lot so I went ahead and changed the thermal paste and it went down 10°.
- I've converted his M2 from MBR to GPT as I noticed his computer was booting in UEFI and it didn't seem to make much sense for the drive to be in MBR, which I assumed might be causing issues. The PC is way faster since then than it was prior to this change (we're talking lightning fast in comparison) so at least there's that.
- After some research, it would seem his GPU is known for causing some crashes. It would seem fine tuning it manually in Adrenalin Software could help, which I did using some suggested parameters some people online suggested in other threads. However, I don't think it was really the problem as I tried replacing the GPU too with one of mine (GTX 1060) that I know to be perfectly fine and I still got crashes at that point.
- I've re-enabled secure boot as I thought it was weird that it was disabled in the first place.
- I've noticed the RAM wasn't working at its actual speed (supposed to be 2400 Mhz with the new sticks but is only 2133 Mhz) so I enabled XMP profile to get it at its actual speed. I unfortunately had to go back and undo the change as I noticed the pc froze even more after that. Tried changing it manually by inserting the values myself but it didn't solve it. As of this moment, I've reverted the settings to Auto in BIOS and it runs at 2133 Mhz.
- I updated the BIOS to its latest version (f67b) hoping it would make a difference, but I don't think it has made any real changes aside from the boot logo resolution actually being nicer to look at since it's now the right resolution.
- I've ran a bunch of diagnostic tools : sfc /scannow, chkdsk, windows memory diagnostics, etc. Pretty much everything came back empty.
- Ran a few different antivirus software looking for rootkits or other forms of malware. Nothing was found.
All the drivers are up to date, there's no awaiting update and Windows is freshly installed. I haven't gotten a BSOD after all these changes so I think part of what I did has helped but as I stated, some things still seem to simply not work for some reason. I'm starting to consider the possibility that the motherboard might be faulty or that worse, he's gotten a rootkit that just wrecked his computer. Which I'm beginning to think might make sense as it would explain why every component/software in his computer seemed to have some sort of issue.
Is there anything that you guys could suggest ?
Here's the specs :
Motherboard : Aorus b450 elite
CPU : AMD Ryzen 5 3600x
RAM : HyperX Fury 8GB x2 (16GB) 2666 Mhz originally, but now replaced with Corsair Vengeance 8GB x 2 (16GB) 2400 Mhz
M2 SSD : LDLC 500GB M2
GPU : Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 5600 xt
PSU : Textorm 500+
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