Question Will performing a clean windows install get rid of software-related bluescreens?

[LucaBTB]

For the past few months, i've been getting more and more blue bluescreens at very random times, sometimes when im just browsing files, or the internet, or playing a game, with many different stopcodes (SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION, IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL, SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED, QUOTA_UNDERFLOW, PFN_LIST_CORRUPT and others) which in bluescreenview all were caused by ntoskrnl.exe. From the many, many forum posts i read they can be caused by both software and hardware issues. If i back up all my important data on a separate usb/computer and do a 100% clean windows install with the latest version, will it remove the possibility of it being caused by faulty drivers/registry/software? Because then it will be much easier for me to find the cause. (I was also thinking of switching to windows 11 or tiny11)
I ran all the usual tests, like sfc /scannow, chkdsk, memtest86, windows memory diagnostic and all returned 0 errors.
Thanks!

My specs:
CPU AMD FX-8320
GPU AMD Radeon RX 580
MOBO Gigabyte 970A-UD3P
RAM kingston 8GB single channel ddr3
1 Kingston ssd 120gb, 1 Seagate hdd 2tb
I dont exactly remember what PSU i have, i think its 650W but idk brand/model
(Aside from the gpu and hard disk, all of my components are about 10 years old by now, which is why i think one or more of them could be the problem)

Edit: forgot to mention sometimes, right after i bluescreen, when the pc restarts, i get another bluescreen in low resolution, (usually with the message SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED) taking me to windows recovery, from where i just restart

 

[USAFRet]

A full wipe and reinstall, from a known good source, WILL result in a pristine OS install.
Any 'software' issues will no longer exist.

How To - Windows 10 clean install tutorial

If you are looking for the Windows 11 Clean install tutorial, you can find that here: Windows 11 Clean install tutorial (Click here) Otherwise, welcome to the Windows 10 Clean install tutorial This tutorial is intended to help you, step by step, to perform a clean install of Windows...

forums.tomshardware.com

If problems persist, it is either some other software you downloaded and ran, or a hardware issue.

 

[johnbl]

windows 11 will not run on the older CPUs
I generally you would want to update the BIOS to the most current version, then update any device drivers that you can get.

then run cmd.exe as an admin
and run
dism.exe /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth
this will repair any modified windows file on disk

Then turn off virtual memory and reboot and turn it back on. This will delete the pagefile.sys and create a new version. The new pagefile will have reloaded all of the drivers from the files on disk (that have been repaired by the dism command)

since this is a older machine I would be looking at the SSD, Run crystaldiskinfo.exe and read the smart data from the drive. Also look at the SSD firmware version and google to see if there is a update. These older drives will shrink in size due to the low write endurance.
Make sure there is about 20% free disk space.

These old ssd often get behind on the trim commands. you might consider booting into BIOS and leaving the system powered for a few hours to let the drive firmware to do its internal cleanup.
drive firmware starts running 5 minutes after the drive goes idle. (sleep functions in windows can cause the drive to fall behind on internal repairs)

generally, putting the memory minidump file on a server, share them for public access and posting a link provides more direct evidence to what the problem might be.

Note: just as a side note: your machine is pretty old, the last bios update was in 2016, the cpu came out in 2012. old machines can have capacitors that dry out and change to various voltages in the PSU and on the motherboard. These changes can lead to various problems that can cause bugchecks in windows.

 

[USAFRet]

CPU AMD FX-8320

(I was also thinking of switching to windows 11 or tiny11)

Don't.
Completely unsupported, and no magical reason for Win 11 on that box.

 

[Colif]

Quota underflow isn't a typical BSOD you get, or should I say, its pretty uncommon. although I see it can be drivers... and based on age of system, that is likely. You might still get them on a new install since hardware isn't exactly new, age of the drivers can be enough to cause them again.

clean installs can fix BSOD provided the cause is actually just software.

tiny 11 more for PC with low ram amounts, not necessarily for older PC.

 

[LucaBTB]

Hi. Firstly, thank you all for the replies, i tried everything you guys told me, and after i reinstalled windows, it still bluescreens, but now sometimes it also freezes for 10-20 seconds (the active window freezes first, then windows explorer and then the mouse cursor too) and then turns back to normal with no bsod.

Since the clean install, i only downloaded lol, discord, opera, and whocrashed, and i didnt install any drivers. (not even razer or amd)

this is a link to my recent minidumps: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1M5VYPfDl_oKT-CYsxWSoYpjyegsON1Wy?usp=share_link

and this is what whocrashed says about a MEMORY.DMP crash (didnt want to share it, i read it can contain sensitive info)

Crash dump file:	C:\Windows\MEMORY.DMP (Kernel memory dump)
Bugcheck code:	0x50(0xFFFFDA8F19DC9018, 0x2, 0xFFFFF8017523474E, 0x2)
Bugcheck name:	PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA
Bug check description:	This indicates that invalid system memory has been referenced. This can be caused by a faulty driver. Antivirus software can also trigger this error, as can a corrupted NTFS volume. It can also be caused by faulty hardware, (in particular faulty or overheated RAM or video RAM) or an overheated system component.
Analysis:	This is likely a software problem which means that it was probably caused by a bug in a driver. There is a possibility that this is caused by memory corruption. Memory corruption can be caused by a faulty driver, faulty RAM, overheating and more. Read this article on memory corruption. Read this article on thermal issues

could this mean its my ram?

 

[johnbl]

the memory dump shows that there is a 1 bit corruption in the nt kernel
this is considered a memory error but it could be the ram but it could also be due to virtual memory. Basically the image of the kernel in the pagefile.sys is wrong. Here is the problem: the file is copied from the disk original location, then thru the storage, the storage driver, into RAM, with the help of the cpu, later windows compresses the data in ram and writes it back to disk.
the corruption can happen anywhere in that process. you don't know if the cpu caused the corruption because of some setting in bios, or the RAM sticks because of a bad bios setting. Also, I have seen sleep functions that would corrupt pagefile.sys directly over sleep/wake cycles (at least on intel based cpu, this was fixed in the intel chipset drivers)

generally, a 1 bit corruption is assumed to be a hardware issue/setting
rather than malware. I would delete the pagefile .sys by turning off the virtual memory and turning it back on. I also run the dism.exe command to fix the files on the disk to account for the case of a bad file on the disk.
Sometimes if you reinstalled windows using a usb thumb drive, the USB system can cause corruptions and these are not detected since USB transfers do not verify the transfers by default. often people make usb install media but never do a full format of the drive since it takes so long.
this can lead to corruptions that are not detected until later if at all.
most people do a quick format and then image the drive.

note: in the most current bugcheck I could not read the bios interface.

 

[johnbl]

second bugcheck was in the network function. basically looks like a jumbo packet then later a cancel on a timer that led to a bugchceck.
best hope for this would be to update this microsoft provided driver:
rt640x64.sys may 24 2019

Note: I could read the bios info in this dump:
bios f1 from 2013
gigabyte motherboard 970a-ud30

very old machine with very old bios, try to update it to the most current version.
note: this bugcheck happened on the 15th
and the kernel image is not corrupted in this dump.

normally you will find strange problems on old machines like this, you have to update the machine with the latest bios and the chipset drivers that come with the motherboard. This is due to the bios setting up the hardware and the motherboard using older versions of chips on the motherboard (usb chips)
the specifications for these devices have changed over time and may not work with the microsoft generic drivers.