[SOLVED] BSOD upon Win10 Home v1909 Feature Update to v20H2

[cinnamon]

I've run the BSOD Collection Application and attached a .zip of the resulting folder. The BSOD happened over a week ago, but there's not been a reboot since then.

Each time that Windows tries doing the Feature update, I'm greeted with a BSOD. This seems to happen for 2 update attempts each month. I've let the first one happen this month. The second attempt for this month is pending, waiting for me to accept the Windows Update requested reboot.

This is an older PC that I built many years ago with an OEM Win7 (64 bit) and spinning discs. It's now updated to Win10 and two SSDs. I've had an issue updating Windows in the past (in 2018), but was resolved with the great help here at Sysnative.

After doing some reading here, I started Driver Verifier running. It's been running for over 9 days solid. Output from "verifier /query" is attached. I've run a variety of malware scans too.

Speccy output: http://speccy.piriform.com/results/0awi4tcjxCxc7ATZQFBTuoV

Please note: this post is essentially a duplicate (but with different info) of another thread on the same issue that I started here on April 4 this year:
W10 Home v1909 Feature update to 20H2 fails

 

[x BlueRobot]

Unfortunately, it appears that the crash must have occurred early in the boot process, since no dump file was saved. From the latest dump file, which is from April:

SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION (3b)
An exception happened while executing a system service routine.
Arguments:
Arg1: 00000000c0000006, Exception code that caused the bugcheck
Arg2: fffff800672a4e12, Address of the instruction which caused the bugcheck
Arg3: fffffd0155c284f0, Address of the context record for the exception that caused the bugcheck
Arg4: 0000000000000000, zero.

It appears that a registry key value was not able to retrived from paged pool because of some corrupted pointer. DV most likely won't be able to test for an error such as this unfortunately and since this is an older machine, I suspect the issue may lie with hardware.

6: kd> !error c0000006
Error code: (NTSTATUS) 0xc0000006 (3221225478) - The instruction at 0x%p referenced memory at 0x%p. The required data was not placed into memory because of an I/O error status of 0x%x.

6: kd> .cxr 0xfffffd0155c284f0
rax=0000000000000000 rbx=fffffd0155c28f40 rcx=0000000000000007
rdx=0000000005cd7ab8 rsi=0000000000000380 rdi=ffffe28cc7138000
rip=fffff800672a4e12 rsp=fffffd0155c28ee8 rbp=ffffe28cc7138000
 r8=000000000000001c  r9=ffff830546d14080 r10=000001ec71768ab8
r11=0000000000000ab8 r12=00000000ce4cf905 r13=fffffd0155c291a0
r14=0000000000000380 r15=000001ec7167f024
iopl=0         nv up ei pl nz na po nc
cs=0010  ss=0018  ds=002b  es=002b  fs=0053  gs=002b             efl=00010206
nt!HvpGetCellPaged+0xa2:
fffff800`672a4e12 418b02          mov     eax,dword ptr [r10] ds:002b:000001ec`71768ab8=????????

While not strictly related to your issue, I would strongly suggest removing any ASUS bloatware including AI Suite II since it has caused problems in the past. I would recommend running MemTest86 for at least four passes - Test RAM with PassMark MemTest86

 

[cinnamon]

Hi x BlueRobot and thank you for replying.

The dump from April would most likely have been from Windows Update as well. When Windows Update fails, it says it's collecting some error info and then will restart. After the progress reaches 100%, it seems to stop doing anything and never restarts. I've left it at 100% for at least 15 minutes and it still never restarted. Here's a sample of what I see as it is collecting its data: https://www.sysnative.com/forums/attachments/1620252976569-png.67196/

Looking into Add/Remove Programs (oh, it's called Programs and Features now), I don't see that anything from the ASUS bloatware suite is still installed.

I too was suspecting hardware in the back of my mind. My first candidate would have been a corrupted file on my boot SSD, and RAM second. Either way, I did as directed and created a bootable thumb drive of MemTest86 and let it do its default thing while I slept. It found 0 errors in 4 passes. I didn't initially realize that it would stop after 4 passes by default.

 

[x BlueRobot]

Here's a sample of what I see as it is collecting its data: https://www.sysnative.com/forums/attachments/1620252976569-png.67196/

Is that screenshot from your machine? If so, it seems that Aladdin Knowledge/Security software is causing problems. I would strongly suggest removing it for troubleshooting purposes - Driver Reference Table (DRT) | aksfridge.sys

I don't see that anything from the ASUS bloatware suite is still installed.

I would check with Revo Uninstaller, it should hopefully list it for you. There used to be a free trial option.

 

[cinnamon]

Is that screenshot from your machine? If so, it seems that Aladdin Knowledge/Security software is causing problems. I would strongly suggest removing it for troubleshooting purposes - Driver Reference Table (DRT) | aksfridge.sys

Yes that screenshot is from my machine. Aladdin seems like a vaguely familiar name, but no clue which software I installed that included the Aladdin stuff. Googled for a bit and discovered that the command "haspdinst" is used to uninstall the Sentinel HASP driver. Searched for that file on my computer and found that it came with Hauptwerk Virtual Pipe Organ software. Using "haspdinst /info", I'm able to confirm that it has about a dozen files/drivers installed, and that aksfridge.sys is one of them. (At this point I'm almost giddy.) I then used "haspdinst /r /kp /purge" to remove the driver package and was greeted with a nice "Operation successfully completed" message.

I would check with Revo Uninstaller, it should hopefully list it for you. There used to be a free trial option.

Yes there is a free version. Using it, I still cannot find any vestige of ASUS software.

Okay. At this point I've made what I believe to be a substantial change by uninstalling the driver package which included aksfridge.sys. I'm ready to let Windows Update try its thing once again. If this BSODs again, it'll start pestering me again on June 3rd I believe, unless we do something to urge it on. Wish me luck!

 

[cinnamon]

I'm back! And happy, kind of. Guess this is a new version of Windows. Yep; confirmed I'm now using version 20H2. They took away some of my desktop icons, and rearranged others. Yay?

I'll worry about any impact the removal of the HASP driver will cause later. (No hardware is installed as I'm using testing the free version of the organ software.) Guess I still have AI Suite II to figure out, and may still do some testing on my SSDs. But for now, I think the BSOD upon Windows Update has been resolved.

Thank you ever so much for pointing me in to looking for information on Aladdin instead of aksfridge.

 

[x BlueRobot]

I'm back! And happy, kind of. Guess this is a new version of Windows. Yep; confirmed I'm now using version 20H2. They took away some of my desktop icons, and rearranged others. Yay?

I believe that's quite normal with Feature Updates, I've had my user preferences swiped when updating on an earlier Feature Update.

I'm glad you're Windows Update problem has been resolved. It's odd that ASUS isn't being listed? It should be on your Start Menu.

I'll worry about any impact the removal of the HASP driver will cause later. (No hardware is installed as I'm using testing the free version of the organ software.)

It'll likely be fine, if it's a software driver for that particular application, then you shouldn't have any issues.

I've marked this thread as solved for now.