Persistent BSODs for several months

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knotimpressed

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Joined
Aug 25, 2020
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13
Hey guys, I'm posting here after a post on Tom's Hardware forums directed me to come here for help after they didn't have any answers. Link: Question - Persistent BSODs for several months

System details:
OS: Windows 10, 64 bit
Originally installed OS on the current boot drive is Windows 10.
OS is OEM I believe, as the key came from a replacement motherboard for my older PC
Age of system: Complicated, CPU is around 4 years old as is one HDD, another HDD is 2 months old, the boot SSD drive is 8 months old. Ram and mobo are around a year old, and the graphics card was RMA'd and replaced by EVGA 3 or 4 months ago.
Age of OS Installation: Windows was installed on the boot drive when i got it, 8 months ago

CPU: i7-6700, no overclock
RAM: 16 GB (2x8GB) 2133MHz clock, no xmp, DDR4, corsair, SKU CMK16GX4M2Z2400C16
SSD: Kingston SA400S37480G
HDD: ST2000DM008-2FR102, ST2000DM001-1ER164, WDC WD7501AAES-60Z2A0
GPU: EVGA GeForce GTX 1660 XC, RMA'd once
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-H110-D3A, latest BIOS
PSU: Seasonic 620 Watts

In case you think I managed to fit all of that into a laptop, I'll let you know my system is a Desktop lol

I have Norton for antivirus, here is all tests/troubleshooting done:
Temperatures checked with OCCT, all good
memtest86, 12 passes, and windows memory diagnostic, no issues found
Checked drive health with CrystalDiskInfo, removed one drive possibly close to failure
Refreshed all Windows system files, and ran SFC
Prime95 cpu testing for 3 hours, max temps of 80c, no issues
Updated Lan drivers and BIOS
RepairImage showed a healthy image

The BSOD data collection file is attached, thank you for any and all help.
 

Attachments

Hello knotimpressed and welcome to Sysnative. I see you are posting in several forums at once - this is not a good idea and you could get conflicting advice which makes it difficult to progress systematically and logically with the troubleshooting. You have also used the TenForums BSOD app and not the Sysnative one in your post above.
 
The crash dumps are all pointing to failures in the data input and output most likely with the system disk or its connections with the motherboard. Check and replace cables, however, it is more likely to be something with the drive or motherboard. Also be sure to copy and backup as much of your data as possible in case you start to get more crashes.

Very occasional a driver can be causing this - the only driver that I can see which has a history of BSOD failures is WinRing0x64.sys. This shows up in the C:\Program Files (x86)\EVGA\WinRing0\ directory and may be associated with the EVGA Precision X1 software - a check on google shows that others have made the connection between file corruption and EVGA P X1. Try removing the software as a troubleshooting test.
 
Phil, my apologies. In the past it had taken a long time to get responses on some forums, so I just wanted to increase my odds. Thankfully in this case, both forums have said roughly the same thing. I'm doing drive scans, I have already backed up my info, and I'll try removing that software as I no longer need it. I'll continue with Tenforums until I exhaust them of help, just so I don't create extra work for anyone.

I'm very grateful for your help, and I'll let you know if that driver ends up being the culprit.
 
OK, you are welcome. We are here if you need further help.
 
Hey there, back again with a couple questions. I have more experience with low level Linux operations than windows, so I don't know if I can trust my intuition on these.

Other than issues with drivers, could I swap my boot drive into another machine and see if the crashes persist?
Could I install windows on a new drive/partition in my current setup, remove all other drives, and see if the crashes persist?
 
knotimpressed said:
Hey there, back again with a couple questions. I have more experience with low level Linux operations than windows, so I don't know if I can trust my intuition on these.

Other than issues with drivers, could I swap my boot drive into another machine and see if the crashes persist?
Could I install windows on a new drive/partition in my current setup, remove all other drives, and see if the crashes persist?
Click to expand...

Taking your boot drive and expecting it to work in another machine is not going to work. Even if the hardware was identical the motherboard will be seen as a different physical board and the OS would not activate.

Using a new drive in your current system with a clean installation of W10 will work and is quite a good test to see if the rest of the hardware is OK. If you are at all worried about your current drive using a different partition is not a good test since the drive may still play up and cause crashes.
 
philc43 said:
Taking your boot drive and expecting it to work in another machine is not going to work. Even if the hardware was identical the motherboard will be seen as a different physical board and the OS would not activate.

Using a new drive in your current system with a clean installation of W10 will work and is quite a good test to see if the rest of the hardware is OK. If you are at all worried about your current drive using a different partition is not a good test since the drive may still play up and cause crashes.
Click to expand...

Right, I know windows will be inactivated but does that pose an issue? I thought that was just the watermark, and given how there are crashes every single day I would be fine sacrificing a single day of productivity.

In terms of a new partition, that's a very good point, and I only mentioned it because I have a brand new drive in my system with free space on it, which is what I would use.

However with the new drive that also wouldn't be permanent, would not activating windows skew the results?
 
knotimpressed said:
Right, I know windows will be inactivated but does that pose an issue? I thought that was just the watermark, and given how there are crashes every single day I would be fine sacrificing a single day of productivity.

In terms of a new partition, that's a very good point, and I only mentioned it because I have a brand new drive in my system with free space on it, which is what I would use.

However with the new drive that also wouldn't be permanent, would not activating windows skew the results?
Click to expand...

I think you will get crashes whether or not Windows is activated. I simply mentioned it so that you realised the OS can't be reactivated if all the hardware changes. The impact of the different hardware on the drivers needed is more the issue which prevents the current W10 installation from booting in a new system. After a few attempts it might sort itself out but it could be a real time waster.

Note: A new drive change will not prevent reactivation of windows.
 
Ah I see, thank you for the heads up! I had forgot to consider the fact it might not boot at all if drivers don't work out, I'll definitely do the fresh install first.

Wish me luck!
 
Okay, fresh install on the partition of the known good drive was up for 18 hours, which is over 2 standard deviations (95th percentile) from the mean time between crashes of 10.5 hours over the past week. I'd say that's long enough to show its probably not a hardware issue, but id be interested to hear your opinion.

I'm going to run chkdskin about an hour with the /b and /v flags on my ssd. Do those flags seem good to you? Should I make a backup of my info before scanning, or run it from safe mode?
 
Please use the Sysnative log collector to provide us with the baseline files after the clean installation. I agree it is encouraging but did you crash after the 18hours or is that just the length of time you have been running without yet having a crash?

Do a full system image backup of the drive so that you have something you can quickly recreate if you have any future problems.
There is no need to run CHKDSK in safemode. Why are you even wanting to run it?
 
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I can run the log collector, but there's nothing on this install, its a blank partition, unless that could show hardware issues I guess?

It went 18 hours without any crashes, I then plugged in the SSD and restarted and about 2 hours later there was a soft crash (pc looked off, but on power on and after logging in all windows were still up, no dump file but reliability monitor says the shutdown was unexpected).

I meant a backup of the SSD I was about to scan, I'm confused as to what you mean by "the drive". This install was made with a bootable usb from the windows media creation tool so if you mean a backup of the current boot partition I can just reinstall if I need it.

I'm hoping to find something wrong with the SSD, and it's the only tool I know of to rigorously test it. Would you have another recommendation to help rule out a hardware issue with the SSD? The crash after plugging it in seems pretty suspicious to me.
 
I guess I misunderstood. I thought you had clean installed w10 onto a new drive (I assumed another SSD) which you intended to keep as a new system drive for your PC to replace your faulty SSD. Hence why I thought it would be useful to have a backup of your fresh start and a record of the status of the system for future reference.

Also, I had not immediately realised it was your old faulty SSD that you wanted to run the CHKDSK on and have a backup of. In my view if that SSD is faulty there is no point trying to keep it. Is there a lot of data on it that you need to recover? Certainly everything you are telling me suggests there is a problem with it.
 
Ah my apologies, I'll be more careful with wording going forwards.

To be honest, I'm on a broke student budget right now, and this drive is only 8 months old. I'll make a backup of whatever important things I have on there (not much, its mainly used as a boot drive) as I can still access them, and then run chkdsk, and then go from there. I also switched out the no name cable I was using for an ASUS one.

Thank you so much for your help, I'll see what kingston's RMA policy is depending how things go.
 
knotimpressed said:
Ah my apologies, I'll be more careful with wording going forwards.

To be honest, I'm on a broke student budget right now, and this drive is only 8 months old. I'll make a backup of whatever important things I have on there (not much, its mainly used as a boot drive) as I can still access them, and then run chkdsk, and then go from there. I also switched out the no name cable I was using for an ASUS one.

Thank you so much for your help, I'll see what kingston's RMA policy is depending how things go.
Click to expand...
No problem, it is very easy to miscommunicate and I am still learning how to make myself clear to others from different backgrounds and cultures.

When you reconnected the old SSD were you still booting off the USB drive?
 
philc43 said:
No problem, it is very easy to miscommunicate and I am still learning how to make myself clear to others from different backgrounds and cultures.

When you reconnected the old SSD were you still booting off the USB drive?
Click to expand...

It's actually a new internal HDD I was booting off of, and when I said:
knotimpressed said:
It went 18 hours without any crashes, I then plugged in the SSD and restarted and about 2 hours later there was a soft crash (pc looked off, but on power on and after logging in all windows were still up, no dump file but reliability monitor says the shutdown was unexpected).
Click to expand...

I was still booted off of the new HDD with the new partition and installation. I am now back to the SSD though, and I just ran chkdsk last night.

Unfortunately reliability monitor shows a crash just after midnight, which may have happened during the scan. I'll see if I can find the log in event viewer, and go from there.

Some people have been saying to put my computer into safe mode each night and see if it still crashes as if it does that shows that it is more likely to be a hardware or low level software issue. Not sure how useful that information is given it didn't crash on the new partition and install, but if you think its a good idea I can try it out.

I just logged in not 5 minutes ago, so I'll see if i can find that chkdsk log or results and then edit this.
 
If the system works reliably in safe mode when using the SSD it will point towards a software issue. If it doesn't it is more confirmation of SSD hardware failure.

Did you ever remove the EVGA Precision XI as I suggested at the beginning?
 
Or not, looks like I can't edit after 15 minutes is up.

Chkdsk found no issues, the log ends with(well slightly above the end)
"Windows has scanned the file system and found no problems.
No further action is required."

I can send the rest of the log if you want, but I don't see the point right now.

On linux its super easy to make an image of only one partition(as a backup), but on windows it seems like a bit of a pain. I looked at the backup image maker, but the drive I want to add the backup too(G) is marked as a system drive now because I have a system partition on it(thats where I was booting from). However I only want to make an image of the C drive, and save it to the G drive. Is there any way to do that in windows? I'm also good to just boot from an ubuntu live USB and use Gparted which should let me do it.


philc43 said:
If the system works reliably in safe mode when using the SSD it will point towards a software issue. If it doesn't it is more confirmation of SSD hardware failure.
Click to expand...

Okay cool, I'll do that tonight then.


philc43 said:
Did you ever remove the EVGA Precision XI as I suggested at the beginning?
Click to expand...

Yeah, and also removed the winring0 file or whatever it was called, by booting into safe mode so it wasn't locked. I removed it with the "add or remove programs" in settings.
 

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