This is an ongoing problem that pops up quite inconsistently, taking days to resurface. It could therefore take a while before i can verify whether anything that's been attempted works. I'm keeping a regular log of events. What i've got so far is this:
Me and my girlfriend have a pair of almost identical PCs which we've been using for about 1.5 years. Hers has a slightly better GPU, and an M2 SSD instead of my SATA. I will post the exact specs later once i can have a look at them. She might also have a better power supply, but i'm not sure. They are both running on windows 10. Hers has recently developed a variety of problems that i can't seem to find an explanation for. The current sequences of events is this (dates are not exact, but near enough insofar i can remember):
- Dec 19th: I updated the BIOS to prevent CPU damage as per the recent trouble with intel CPUs. I performed the update for both PCs in the exact same way, applying default settings on both. There were no immediate problems, and my system runs fine.
- Jan 10th: Her PC bluescreened during regular browsing. The percentage indicated on there remained at 0%, and the system rebooted afer a while on its own, into BIOS. The BIOS could not find the boot drive. I messed around with it for a bit (reboots, exploring menus, more reboots, but changed no settings), and finally settled on trying to arrange for a system recovery/repair, when the problem fixed itself before i did anything. We could just boot into windows as normal, and i did not do a repair.
There is no dump file for the BSOD. Logs were already enabled, and there is a file for the 4th of january, but nothing for the 10th. I'm positive that it did not happen on the 4th. I'm assuming this is because it never got past 0%, and had no drive to write it to at the time. Some older logs were also present. I have these logs in a zip file, and i can post these if you like.
- Jan 11th: Just in case, i switched the SSD to a different M2 port. According to the motherboard manual, this should be fine. The PC booted with no issues. I took the opportunity to run a health check for the drive using Samsung Magician, and it all came back healthy. Maybe the SSD is fine, but the system struggles to reliably access it? i don't know.
- Jan 14th: At 10:00, The PC booted, but was unable to properly load windows. It got past the login screen, but then entered an endless cycle of crashing and loading explorer. This was accompanied by the screen flashing black, but with visible cursor. She tried again at 11:00, but that time only got as far as the login screen. I have videos of both events if you want them. I suspect another attempt to boot was made at around 14:00. I'm currently waiting for conformation on that.
At 18:00 or so, i tried booting the system myself, and was able to boot normally, as if nothing was wrong. After that i did the following things:
- I ran sfc/ scannow. This seemed to fix some things, though i can't make much sense of the log. It seemed to just repair some duplicates. I'll try to post the log after this.
- Ran dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth. Found nothing.
- I changed the memory dump settings to a small memory dump, and told to PC to not automatically restart on a system failure. This is in case it BSODs again.
- I did a startup repair. This failed because it found nothing to repair, judging by the log file. I have this log, and can post it if you want.
- I explored the event viewer, which revealed some things: There are occasional series of memory access errors, mostly (if not all) from the time of the explorer crash loop. There were also a few WHEA-logger errors, ID 3. One of those dates to May last year, the other 3 up to a few weeks after the BIOS update. I have a screenshot of them, with data. My system does not have these events.
- I ran the Windows Memory Diagnostic tool. 2 passes, no errors. I have a screenshot of this result from Event Viewer.
- I updated the graphics drivers, and removed Armoury Crate.
- Given that our systems are largely identical, i swapped our RAM sticks to see if it would transfer the problem to my PC. The systems booted as normal.
I am as of the 15th waiting to see if the above actions did anything. Is there anything else i can do to improve the system health or find the problem? I was personally thinking of doing some more hardware swaps, but i'd rather not. They could be a real pain. Maybe try some driver updates?
Me and my girlfriend have a pair of almost identical PCs which we've been using for about 1.5 years. Hers has a slightly better GPU, and an M2 SSD instead of my SATA. I will post the exact specs later once i can have a look at them. She might also have a better power supply, but i'm not sure. They are both running on windows 10. Hers has recently developed a variety of problems that i can't seem to find an explanation for. The current sequences of events is this (dates are not exact, but near enough insofar i can remember):
- Dec 19th: I updated the BIOS to prevent CPU damage as per the recent trouble with intel CPUs. I performed the update for both PCs in the exact same way, applying default settings on both. There were no immediate problems, and my system runs fine.
- Jan 10th: Her PC bluescreened during regular browsing. The percentage indicated on there remained at 0%, and the system rebooted afer a while on its own, into BIOS. The BIOS could not find the boot drive. I messed around with it for a bit (reboots, exploring menus, more reboots, but changed no settings), and finally settled on trying to arrange for a system recovery/repair, when the problem fixed itself before i did anything. We could just boot into windows as normal, and i did not do a repair.
There is no dump file for the BSOD. Logs were already enabled, and there is a file for the 4th of january, but nothing for the 10th. I'm positive that it did not happen on the 4th. I'm assuming this is because it never got past 0%, and had no drive to write it to at the time. Some older logs were also present. I have these logs in a zip file, and i can post these if you like.
- Jan 11th: Just in case, i switched the SSD to a different M2 port. According to the motherboard manual, this should be fine. The PC booted with no issues. I took the opportunity to run a health check for the drive using Samsung Magician, and it all came back healthy. Maybe the SSD is fine, but the system struggles to reliably access it? i don't know.
- Jan 14th: At 10:00, The PC booted, but was unable to properly load windows. It got past the login screen, but then entered an endless cycle of crashing and loading explorer. This was accompanied by the screen flashing black, but with visible cursor. She tried again at 11:00, but that time only got as far as the login screen. I have videos of both events if you want them. I suspect another attempt to boot was made at around 14:00. I'm currently waiting for conformation on that.
At 18:00 or so, i tried booting the system myself, and was able to boot normally, as if nothing was wrong. After that i did the following things:
- I ran sfc/ scannow. This seemed to fix some things, though i can't make much sense of the log. It seemed to just repair some duplicates. I'll try to post the log after this.
- Ran dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth. Found nothing.
- I changed the memory dump settings to a small memory dump, and told to PC to not automatically restart on a system failure. This is in case it BSODs again.
- I did a startup repair. This failed because it found nothing to repair, judging by the log file. I have this log, and can post it if you want.
- I explored the event viewer, which revealed some things: There are occasional series of memory access errors, mostly (if not all) from the time of the explorer crash loop. There were also a few WHEA-logger errors, ID 3. One of those dates to May last year, the other 3 up to a few weeks after the BIOS update. I have a screenshot of them, with data. My system does not have these events.
- I ran the Windows Memory Diagnostic tool. 2 passes, no errors. I have a screenshot of this result from Event Viewer.
- I updated the graphics drivers, and removed Armoury Crate.
- Given that our systems are largely identical, i swapped our RAM sticks to see if it would transfer the problem to my PC. The systems booted as normal.
I am as of the 15th waiting to see if the above actions did anything. Is there anything else i can do to improve the system health or find the problem? I was personally thinking of doing some more hardware swaps, but i'd rather not. They could be a real pain. Maybe try some driver updates?
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