- Nov 9, 2023
- 6
- 5
- 15
Hello everyone,
I used to be a lurker, relying on other people's helpful tips, but over the last months I have had a BSOD issue on my custom gaming PC that has me at my wit's end. I thought I'd share in case someone more experienced than me sees something I do not.
For context, before all this started, the PC had no issues since December 2022 (a newly released game had corrupted the graphics drivers then, a driver reinstall solved that). At some random point in June, Windows Update tried to install a newer graphics card driver (I was having no issues so was staying on a stable version) and I noticed it way too late. It wasn't even the newest one at the time. 1 second after the update finished, the system had its first BSOD with that specific parameter.
Oddly, windows update claimed there was nothing wrong with the installation, and on rebooting everything "looked" fine. I tried rolling back the drivers to my stable version, then hid that update with the show/hide update troubleshooter. Exactly a week later (from weekend to weekend), the same BSOD happened again. The same story continued after I properly updated my card drivers to the latest version, using DDU.
At that point I was frustrated so I did a repair install of Windows, not a complete system wipe, then installed the latest graphics drivers yet again. Everything was ok for a full month, until in August, the same BSOD happened again, with almost all the parameters the same. I tried to look more into it, and found the code stood for:
I tried reseting the pagefile by disabling it, restarting, re-enabling it and re-starting again, but 7-8 days later like a clock, it happened again. I checked my disk with CrystalDisk info but it showed as Good health status at 91% (has been like that as long as I can remember). I ran the chkdsk commands as well to make sure, but again, 7-8 days later the same BSOD re-occured.
At that point I tested RAM, both with memtest overnight and the windows memory diagnostic and found no errors. I also tested my VRAM with OCCT which ran for an hour and did not show any errors either. As a last ditch effort I reinstalled my graphics drivers but using the clean install option and that seemed to actually fix it. I thought I was silly for not having done that at the very start and moved on...
Went full September and October with no issues. But as you may have guessed, it happened again during the first week of November. This is where for me it gets completely irrational. I decided to do another graphics driver clean install to make sure in case it is the exact same issue caused againt by some software as one of the secondary parameters was a bit different. I did that and went about a week with no events until today.
As I sat down and read some messages in the afternoon (the PC was fine all morning on idle/minimal activity), my screen froze for a second then the display switched off, then switched on back again. Basically the desktop window manager had crashed and restarted with the following prompt:
The Desktop Window Manager process has exited. (Process exit code: 0xc0000005, Restart count: 1, Primary display device ID: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070)
I quickly went to read up on that to see any advice, and ran into a group of users with the same type of graphics card as myself having that happen when their card was coming loose off the motherboard. While I was reading up on that, the same thing happened againd with my display going off and on.
So I opened my PC, made sure my graphics card was properly seated in the motherboard (it wasn't loose as far as I could tell), and I also cleaned everything since it had been almost a year since I had done that and thought it would help. I also reseated the RAM sticks gently, thinking about the persistent BSOD.
As soon as I turned on the PC, after the initial loading with the motherboard logo, instead of going into the Sign In page, it went immediately into the same old BSOD I have been so used to by now. I was not even mad as I thought I had finally reproduced the issue and can deal with it for sure. But upon restarting, without doing anything else, everything loads up fine. All the time I have been typing this I haven't had my display crash or anything else.
I want to say at this point that between BSODs, there are no issues on the system like performance drops, weird temperatures, spinning fans or the like (I don't even know if the DWM crashing was related to the root cause of all this). I have also not done anything like overclocking etc, I do not know how to do those. The BSODs have happened while idle, watching videos and/or playing games (and now on boot as well).
I am just completely at a loss as to what I should do next. I am imagining a clean install but I am not sure at this point so I wanted to share.
Sorry for the wall of text but I had to get it out there as I've never had such a long-standing problem coming back every time I forget about it. I am also posting my system information and the crash dumps since the repair install, the most recent one being the one that happened while booting after the cleaning.
Google Drive Link for the dump files: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-S54cYEvIa7m24V3R18H7HZJl_n47TgI/view?usp=sharing
Google Drive Link for System Information: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oZavzV4LdCFVK_g2sa8SMUip_FfHFoAX/view?usp=sharing
I should also mention I've done the whole DISM & SFC dance after each of the BSODs, and they have not helped.
Again it's my first time posting here so please let me know if I messed something up, and if you can think of anything I can do besides getting a new PC at this point.
I used to be a lurker, relying on other people's helpful tips, but over the last months I have had a BSOD issue on my custom gaming PC that has me at my wit's end. I thought I'd share in case someone more experienced than me sees something I do not.
For context, before all this started, the PC had no issues since December 2022 (a newly released game had corrupted the graphics drivers then, a driver reinstall solved that). At some random point in June, Windows Update tried to install a newer graphics card driver (I was having no issues so was staying on a stable version) and I noticed it way too late. It wasn't even the newest one at the time. 1 second after the update finished, the system had its first BSOD with that specific parameter.
Oddly, windows update claimed there was nothing wrong with the installation, and on rebooting everything "looked" fine. I tried rolling back the drivers to my stable version, then hid that update with the show/hide update troubleshooter. Exactly a week later (from weekend to weekend), the same BSOD happened again. The same story continued after I properly updated my card drivers to the latest version, using DDU.
At that point I was frustrated so I did a repair install of Windows, not a complete system wipe, then installed the latest graphics drivers yet again. Everything was ok for a full month, until in August, the same BSOD happened again, with almost all the parameters the same. I tried to look more into it, and found the code stood for:
| 0x61941 | The paging hierarchy is corrupted. Parameter 2 is a pointer to the virtual address that caused the fault. |
I tried reseting the pagefile by disabling it, restarting, re-enabling it and re-starting again, but 7-8 days later like a clock, it happened again. I checked my disk with CrystalDisk info but it showed as Good health status at 91% (has been like that as long as I can remember). I ran the chkdsk commands as well to make sure, but again, 7-8 days later the same BSOD re-occured.
At that point I tested RAM, both with memtest overnight and the windows memory diagnostic and found no errors. I also tested my VRAM with OCCT which ran for an hour and did not show any errors either. As a last ditch effort I reinstalled my graphics drivers but using the clean install option and that seemed to actually fix it. I thought I was silly for not having done that at the very start and moved on...
Went full September and October with no issues. But as you may have guessed, it happened again during the first week of November. This is where for me it gets completely irrational. I decided to do another graphics driver clean install to make sure in case it is the exact same issue caused againt by some software as one of the secondary parameters was a bit different. I did that and went about a week with no events until today.
As I sat down and read some messages in the afternoon (the PC was fine all morning on idle/minimal activity), my screen froze for a second then the display switched off, then switched on back again. Basically the desktop window manager had crashed and restarted with the following prompt:
The Desktop Window Manager process has exited. (Process exit code: 0xc0000005, Restart count: 1, Primary display device ID: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070)
I quickly went to read up on that to see any advice, and ran into a group of users with the same type of graphics card as myself having that happen when their card was coming loose off the motherboard. While I was reading up on that, the same thing happened againd with my display going off and on.
So I opened my PC, made sure my graphics card was properly seated in the motherboard (it wasn't loose as far as I could tell), and I also cleaned everything since it had been almost a year since I had done that and thought it would help. I also reseated the RAM sticks gently, thinking about the persistent BSOD.
As soon as I turned on the PC, after the initial loading with the motherboard logo, instead of going into the Sign In page, it went immediately into the same old BSOD I have been so used to by now. I was not even mad as I thought I had finally reproduced the issue and can deal with it for sure. But upon restarting, without doing anything else, everything loads up fine. All the time I have been typing this I haven't had my display crash or anything else.
I want to say at this point that between BSODs, there are no issues on the system like performance drops, weird temperatures, spinning fans or the like (I don't even know if the DWM crashing was related to the root cause of all this). I have also not done anything like overclocking etc, I do not know how to do those. The BSODs have happened while idle, watching videos and/or playing games (and now on boot as well).
I am just completely at a loss as to what I should do next. I am imagining a clean install but I am not sure at this point so I wanted to share.
Sorry for the wall of text but I had to get it out there as I've never had such a long-standing problem coming back every time I forget about it. I am also posting my system information and the crash dumps since the repair install, the most recent one being the one that happened while booting after the cleaning.
Google Drive Link for the dump files: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-S54cYEvIa7m24V3R18H7HZJl_n47TgI/view?usp=sharing
Google Drive Link for System Information: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oZavzV4LdCFVK_g2sa8SMUip_FfHFoAX/view?usp=sharing
I should also mention I've done the whole DISM & SFC dance after each of the BSODs, and they have not helped.
Again it's my first time posting here so please let me know if I messed something up, and if you can think of anything I can do besides getting a new PC at this point.
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