Need help with Blue Screen of Death

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Dren_Dern

PCHF Member
Mar 17, 2021
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Hello,

Recently I've been experiencing recurring Blue Screens of Death with my laptop computer which is less than 2 years old. I get Blue Screened at any time - using the computer, starting up the computer, while the computer is sitting idle, or even shutting down the computer. I thought I had a previous state to restore the computer to, but after looking I found I did not have one before the problems began. I've had various error codes on the Blue Screen, which are:

"System Service Exception"
"Critical Process Died"
"Kernel Data inpage error"
"Bad System Config Info"
"0xc000021a"
"Unexpected Store Exception"

I've tried several things to fix the problem, which haven't resulted in a solution. What I've done so far:

Updated Drivers
Resetting BIOS
Windows Memory Diagnostic - No errors found
CHKDSK on C & D drives - No errors found
Full Virus Scan - No viruses found
SFScan - Results said errors had been found and repaired, but no effect on continual Blue Screen.


At this point I am expecting the computer to spontaneously burst into flames.

Please advise on what would I should do to solve the issue - or recommend your favorite brand of Marshmellows to roast over flaming hardware. Thank you for your time.
 
Thanks, have followed those steps, only have logs from the past few days. Will post more as they become available.
 

Attachments

Dmps more than two days old are of no use and being that your last crash dmp is empty only the one is of any use, memory compression is flagged up so it looks like it could be a hardware issue, this includes not having enough RAM, we need to wait on any new crash dmps for now, can you provide the below while we wait;

If the computer is a desktop can you post the brand and model name or number of the power supply (PSU).

Download then run Speccy (free) and post the resultant url for us, details here, this will provide us with information about your computer hardware + any software that you have installed that may explain the present issue/s.

To publish a Speccy profile to the Web:

In Speccy, click File, and then click Publish Snapshot.

In the Publish Snapshot dialog box, click Yes to enable Speccy to proceed.

Speccy publishes the profile and displays a second Publish Snapshot. You can open the URL in your default browser, copy it to the clipboard, or close the dialog box.
 
No drivers or hardware issues are flagged in your latest dmps only generic nt codes which tell us nothing other than Windows has issues.

Looking at Speccy we can see a couple of things but keeping the above in mind I will mention Windows first, you are well out of date and have a couple of major updates that have failed to install.

First suggestion is to see if you are able to get Windows more current by installing version 20H2 which you can download from here

You only having the one stick of RAM means that it will struggle when the notebook is under load, 59% is shown to be being used when the computer is idle

RAM
Memory slots
Total memory slots: 4
Used memory slots: 1
Free memory slots: 3
Memory
Type: Unknown
Size: 8192 MBytes
Channels #: Single
DRAM Frequency: 1330.8 MHz
CAS# Latency (CL): 19 clocks
RAS# to CAS# Delay (tRCD): 19 clocks
RAS# Precharge (tRP): 19 clocks
Cycle Time (tRAS): 43 clocks
Command Rate (CR): 2T
Physical Memory
Memory Usage: 59 %
Total Physical: 7.85 GB
Available Physical: 3.17 GB
Total Virtual: 15 GB
Available Virtual: 9.65 GB
SPD
 
Thanks, will update windows and see if that helps anything. Anything I can do to lessen the memory usage?
 
Dren_Dern said:
Anything I can do to lessen the memory usage?
Click to expand...

As a starting point you should get rid of Avast.

Avast is no longer widely recommended by any forum as it has become a monster, it foists all sorts of stuff on folk without them knowing and causes various problems by installing browser plug ins that cause conflicts etc, it can also be a nightmare to uninstall as it leaves traces here there and everywhere if you are not careful, you don`t need any third party AV or Firewall as Windows own Defender and Firewall are more than up to the task of protecting your computer.

You can uninstall Avast in the Control Panel but should you have any problems see Avast clean removal info here Please create a new system restore point first.
 
Downloaded the Windows update a couple days ago. Had been crashing several times a day, now had a few days no crashes since the update. Hopefully that solves the matter, I'll be monitoring it for any other issues. Thanks for the help.
 
Sounds promising, we will give it a couple more days and if we don`t hear back from you we will mark your thread.

You are welcome :)
 
Seems I jinxed myself.

There've been a couple crashes that didn't create a minidump (the progress bar at blue screen stayed 0% until it crashed again).
 

Attachments

Neither crash was driver related, the first did flag memory compression again, the second flagged Services.exe which is either related to Windows when it is legit or malware infection when not.

Tip, if you need to post regarding any new crash it would be most helpful if you could tell us both what the computer was being used for at the time of the crash and what actually happened, in addition to this info can we also have a new Speccy url.
 
Typically the crashes are either on startup or just browsing the internet. The first crash I posted on Tuesday was on startup, the next was literally right after I finished posting that. Then it proceeded to crash for an hour, all on startup (dumps attached), at one point preventing internet connection, saying it was making changes to windows, and having all manner of problems.
 

Attachments

It sounds like it's likely Windows related. Since updating didn't fix it, is restoring Windows my best option, either a restore point or a factory reset?

(unfortunately I don't have a good restore point)
 
phillpower2 said:
in addition to this info can we also have a new Speccy ur
Click to expand...

Just a fyi, been waiting for the Speccy url before getting back to you, not always the case but not providing what has been requested suggests that people are either being selective with the info that they want to provide or that they are not reading the helpers feedback properly, it`s got me that way that I don`t normally post back only to be repeating myself :(
 
Dren_Dern said:
Didn't seem like the best time to uninstall an anti-virus)
Click to expand...

As per my reply #9 + Windows own Defender and Firewall are better than Avast and neither will cause you the well documented problems that Avast is now known to cause.

phillpower2 said:
Avast is no longer widely recommended by any forum as it has become a monster, it foists all sorts of stuff on folk without them knowing and causes various problems by installing browser plug ins that cause conflicts etc, it can also be a nightmare to uninstall as it leaves traces here there and everywhere if you are not careful, you don`t need any third party AV or Firewall as Windows own Defender and Firewall are more than up to the task of protecting your computer.

You can uninstall Avast in the Control Panel but should you have any problems see Avast clean removal info here Please create a new system restore point first.
Click to expand...

Your crash dmps btw are flagging up Windows corruption, has someone been tinkering with the registry.
 
phillpower2 said:
Your crash dmps btw are flagging up Windows corruption, has someone been tinkering with the registry.
Click to expand...

I certainly haven't; I don't know how or even really what that means. Could a program have done that? I don't recall installing anything suspect. I don't live alone - while I'd say it's very unlikely someone messed with my computer settings, or even accessed it, it's not impossible. Is there a way to track registry changes? Revert them? I've run SFScan three times now: the first two said it had fixed problems but the most recent run said there were no longer any errors (though that was right after a bluescreen crash). After a couple of those crashes windows said it was uninstalling some updates, I don't know if that might've been related.

So at this point is it safe to say my Windows is corrupted? Are there steps to take to fix the corruption or do I need to reinstall? I'm not sure what I should be doing next.

(I've got new crashes though at this point I'm not sure if posting them would provide any new information)
 
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