Question PC is riddled with different BSODs ?

[ubuysa]

I would be very wary of trying solutions that worked for others. I'd really want to see whether it remains stable in Safe Mode because that will tell us whether to look at hardware or software.

 

[Sierrus]

Welp, it just crashed in safe mode with a good ol' PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA as I clicked on a program. 1 RAM stick was in.

...Scratch that, I swapped the other stick too and it crashed almost immediately in safe mode, again PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA. So it's hardware. 🤷‍♂️

 

[ubuysa]

That it BSODs in Safe Mode does point at a hardware cause. Is there any chance you could upload the two dumps from those BSODs?

That it BSODs on either RAM stick does probably eliminate the RAM, although that RAM is not on the QVL for the board and CPU and that's always a concern with these sorts of BSODs.

I think as a 'belt-and-braces' test it might be worth downloading a Linux distro (Mint is good) onto a USB drive (on another PC of course). Most Linux distros (like Mint) can run off the USB drive and don't need installing. Try booting a Linux USB then and see whether the system remains stable.

 

[Sierrus]

Here's the dumps, I grabbed what was in the folder at the time and right after booting the PC this time, it was hit with a "REGISTRY ERROR" BSOD, and then another PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA right when I plugged the USB in. I added those too.

And yeah, unfortunately I am aware that the RAM is not on the MB QVL, but while I was doing the research of what was compatible for this system I saw many people state things like that shouldn't really be an issue, and that similar types are on the QVL so this one should be fine as well etc... I'm still going back to the fact it worked for a year before experiencing these constant BSOD so it makes no sense to me. It's like it was compatible for a year and then randomly decided to not be compatible anymore. 🤷‍♂️

What I'm kinda noticing is that the single stick that's in right now seems to be BSODing more often and more frequently than the other one, but they both still BSOD. Is there a need to swap them anymore, should I add the 2nd one in and keep them both in from now on, or...?

 

[ubuysa]

The thing about the QVL is that RAM on there has been tested and verified as fully compatible. Other RAM probably will work, but there is no guarantee - and that's a bit of a gamble. It also raises flags for us when you later get BSODs that look RAM related. It may not be an issue at all, but on the other hand we can't just ignore it.

Why now? Components age and their characteristics change very slightly as they do. It's not impossible that the RAM was just about compatible when new but in ageing it's now just out of compatibility.

All that said, the two latest dumps (in Safe Mode I think?) are useful.

One is a 0x51 REGISTRY_ERROR bugcheck, which is interesting. I can see that the failure happened early on in a search of the registry hive (it's just at the "Category" level). The registry hives are loaded from the system drive at boot time and then referenced only in memory from then on. That means there are two potential failure areas here...

• Bad RAM that is fouling up the registry hive contents loaded in to it (we've looked hard at RAM)
• Bad system drive that is loading corrupted registry data (we haven't looked here at all yet)

There is another feature of this dump that is generally caused by BAD RAM but which could also be a bad drive; a checksum mismatch...

*** WARNING: Check Image - Checksum mismatch - Dump: 0x23298, File: 0x26bf9 - W:\Symbols\crashdmp.sys\F69BF9371e000\crashdmp.sys

What that tells us is that the checksum of the driver in the dump does not match the Microsoft checksum for that driver. That is typically caused by bad RAM corrupting the driver in the dump but could potentially be caused by the driver being corrupted as it's loaded. That driver (crashdmp.sys) is not always loaded and is loaded on demand, so perhaps this is a system drive issue?


The other dump also might point at the system drive. It's a 0x50 PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA bugcheck, which means a reference to a page that cannot be paged was unavailable. Since this happened in Safe Mode we know that this is not a driver error, so bad RAM is a distinct possibility.

However, in the call stack of this dump we can see disk accesses taking place, the ntfs.sys driver is called. We also see the fltmgr.sys driver called, this is the filter driver manager and usually that might indicate a flaky third-party filter driver, but again we're in Safe Mode, so that's not the case.

We're looking at a bad RAM reference whilst reading (or writing) to the disk and we know this cannot be a bad driver. That means it's either RAM (which we've looked at) or it's a drive (which we've not looked at), and that's probably the system drive since we're in Safe Mode.

Based on these two dumps I would suggest you now look at the system drive (and the boot drive if they are different). That will be the Kingston 250GB NVMe drive I think? Download the Kingston SSD Manager and see whether that reports any issues with the drive, especially with the SMART data, or whether there is a firmware update for it? If that tool has a diagnostic function then use it to test the drive.

 

[Sierrus]

Ah, to be clear, 2 of the dumps are in safe mode and different RAM sticks, and 2 from today are not in safe mode (registry error and the last page fault). The minidumps are appearing very weirdly in that folder, I can't tell which one appears when and some get overwritten since only 5 ever show up at once. They don't seem to always be chronologically listed. Some are also 0 bytes so I usually skip those. So I THINK the 2 latest ones are NOT in safe mode. The safe mode ones should be from yesterday.

That said, I tried the Linux USB thing, and it might be too soon to say, but it hasn't crashed at all yet and I've been trying to force it in a few ways. I wanna keep it as bare as possible so I'm not connecting it to the internet or installing any programs yet. But it's on a single RAM stick at the moment, the one I mentioned seemed to BSOD more frequently. Now I'm back to thinking it's Windows-related, LOL. Make it make sense, please... 😐

As far as the system drives go, I now have both the 500GB and 250GB NVMEs loaded with Windows, both of which were BSODing. And I've had Hard Disk Sentinel for a while, and the drives were always showing as healthy with no errors really being reported, however after a year the one that originally had the Windows installation (250GB) had its health dropped to about 97% but was still saying it's healthy. The 500GB and the HDD were always on 100%. I can check this further, then.

 

[JayBuild00]

Having similar issues. Less than 1 year old build Core i9 13900k, asus rog z790 maximus hero, maxed out ram with 128gb corsair dominator, evga 3080, corsair 1000watt psu. Always ran pretty cool. Started freezing, video TDR failure. Replaced GPU with asus 4090 tuf, replaced cpu with core i9 14900k, replaced cpu fan with corsair liquid cooling, clean install windows 11. Constant bsod errors. Replaced SSD, clean install, same thing. Upgraded bios, same thing. Replaced mobo and ram with same as before. Pretty much a whole new system. Same errors after a clean install. I'm at my wits end. From the 1st build to the rebuild, almost $7k spent and its worse than ever before. I'm afraid to attempt another build. I tried EVERY "fix" I can find. scannow always finds corrupt files and repairs them. When all seems to be working fine, I cannot run any installer for drivers or software/apps. Upgraded the bios on the new mobo and same issues. I see they seem to br pretty common issues. Is this the end?

 

[Sierrus]

I tried the Linux USB thing, and it might be too soon to say, but it hasn't crashed at all yet and I've been trying to force it in a few ways. I wanna keep it as bare as possible so I'm not connecting it to the internet or installing any programs yet. But it's on a single RAM stick at the moment, the one I mentioned seemed to BSOD more frequently.

Theeere we go, finally I managed to...I guess crash it? I've no idea what crashes on Linux are even supposed to look like but everything froze completely and I had to manually shutdown the PC. I was trying to open a million things at once in a short amount of time and it finally failed after Mint being on for the whole day seemingly with no problems. I can keep trying to run it and test it but the next thing is...I guess I'll do the Kingston SSD Manager? 🤷‍♂️ It feels like we're getting somewhere, but then some random shit pops up to completely baffle me again. I've no idea what's going on anymore. 🤦‍♂️

 

[ubuysa]

If Linux crashed as well as Safe Mode then your problem is definitely hardware. Unplugging all external devices and removing anything internally that you can do without to give you the most basic system you can is the way to go. You could even remove all drives and test it with just that Linux USB - because we know that's a pristine OS. Eventually, and unfortunately, it will come down to swapping components, and it's not impossible that the motherboard may be the problem.

 

[Sierrus]

But there's no way of figuring out what exactly it is without just replacing everything and hoping it works? Like I said before, every part is still under warranty so I can return it, but I can't do it for the whole setup, only individual parts. Based on all the information so far, it's still pointing towards a RAM issue? ...But then it also could be CPU or MB, I guess? If there's any more tests or stuff I could try let me know if there's any way to narrow it down further. A thing I COULD try is get a new RAM set that's actually on the QVL and the CPU is ok with (so I guess I'd better not go above 3200), but making sure that's actually available for me to find will be a pain in the ass... From my understanding, I thought Corsair is the most reliable option, who's better than them for RAM?

What about any BIOS settings I could try messing with? I was thinking I could try manually modifying the RAM settings (like instead of either default 2100 or XMP 3600, set it to around 3200?), but is there anything in BIOS that could potentially alleviate issues like these?

 

[ubuysa]

Replacing the RAM with QVL supported RAM would be a good place to start. All the RAM vendors on the QVL are good.

You might be able to sell the RAM you have to someone else?

 

[JayBuild00]

As an added bonus, i can't wake the system if it goes to sleep. The mouse and keyboard don't work unless I did a hard restart which yields more BSOD errors until windows starts. Cannot update windows. They won't install. When I type in the search bar, it randomly disappears after a couple seconds so I have to type very fast and click on a result before it drops out. I can't run installers for the keyboard or mouse drivers. When I open edge, I get random "page cannot be displayed" I refresh and it's fine. If I play a game, BSOD. Remember, I replaced EVERYTHING! I even tried another clean install of windows from my own usb and it wouldn't install. This was after a complete format and deleting the partitions. Looks like I'll be replacing everything again.

 

[Sierrus]

...Why does no one ever tell you when you run the Memory Diagnostics to pick the EXTENDED option? I was just running it on default settings before and it always passed, but now I found a discussion where it was specifically stated to press F1 once the diagnostics start and pick the Extended option, and if the test freezes on 21% for more than 2 hours, the memory is the issue. Lo and behold I ran this and it's been frozen on pass 1 of 2 at exactly 21% for like 5 hours now. Does this FINALLY determine the RAM is the issue? If so, I'm ordering a new set immediately and replacing it.

As an added bonus, i can't wake the system if it goes to sleep. The mouse and keyboard don't work unless I did a hard restart which yields more BSOD errors until windows starts. Cannot update windows. They won't install. When I type in the search bar, it randomly disappears after a couple seconds so I have to type very fast and click on a result before it drops out. I can't run installers for the keyboard or mouse drivers. When I open edge, I get random "page cannot be displayed" I refresh and it's fine. If I play a game, BSOD. Remember, I replaced EVERYTHING! I even tried another clean install of windows from my own usb and it wouldn't install. This was after a complete format and deleting the partitions. Looks like I'll be replacing everything again.

Your issue sounds different from mine, because I can pretty much do everything, but when the PC feels like hitting me with a BSOD, it just does. I can install Windows, I can run programs, I can boot into BIOS and past BIOS, but it just sporadically hits me with a BSOD whenever it wants. I'd suggest opening a new thread so you can get specific assistance and suggestions? You'd need to provide more details as well.

 

[JayBuild00]

...Why does no one ever tell you when you run the Memory Diagnostics to pick the EXTENDED option? I was just running it on default settings before and it always passed, but now I found a discussion where it was specifically stated to press F1 once the diagnostics start and pick the Extended option, and if the test freezes on 21% for more than 2 hours, the memory is the issue. Lo and behold I ran this and it's been frozen on pass 1 of 2 at exactly 21% for like 5 hours now. Does this FINALLY determine the RAM is the issue? If so, I'm ordering a new set immediately and replacing it.

Your issue sounds different from mine, because I can pretty much do everything, but when the PC feels like hitting me with a BSOD, it just does. I can install Windows, I can run programs, I can boot into BIOS and past BIOS, but it just sporadically hits me with a BSOD whenever it wants. I'd suggest opening a new thread so you can get specific assistance and suggestions? You'd need to provide more details as well.

Thanks. Your issues were the only thing similar to mine that I have found. They started like yours and they persisted as I started replacing hardware. Now EVERYTHING is new and the same issues are even more abundant. I really have no idea what to do as I can't even diagnose anything without a freeze up and constant BSOD errors. This was a perfectly working machine until a few weeks ago. Now I have 2 rigs both with the same issues, the oldest rig less than 1 year old and the newest is brand new. I tried EVERY fix suggested. Nothing is working.