- May 19, 2011
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Spec:
AMD 4300G
8GB Kingston Fury DDR4-3200 RAM
Samsung 980 PRO 1TB (latest firmware)
Corsair CX500 PSU
DVD drive
MSI B550M-PRO-VDH (latest BIOS)
It's a spec I've used a number of times before without issue, but this time I'm getting BSODs I think almost exclusively when the computer is idle. I've memtest86'd it twice and used the Windows memory diagnostic once, Prime95'd it for half an hour, Furmark'd it for half an hour, it handled the upgrade from 23H2 to 24H2 fine, sfc and dism fine, I've tried writing about 15GB of data to it without issue, there's nothing useful in the logs, the BSODs aren't recorded in the logs (the only record is that a crash dump failed to be written). I ran a full test on the SSD with Samsung Magician. One really curious thing is how I would run a test like Prime95 which it handled fine, then a minute or two after stopping the test, then it crashed. Another time I installed the display driver from USB (a known reliable driver but I've also tried a more recent one), rebooted even though it didn't ask for it, then shortly after the reboot it BSOD'd. Latest AMD chipset drivers FWIW, not that I've ever had any problems with them.
I've had CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED twice, KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED once, UNEXPECTED_STORE_EXCEPTION once (never seen that one before!), and that may be all the BSODs in the last 24 hours. The theory I'm working on is that it's related to the graphics hardware, because I've noticed a curious symptom about three times when the driver is installed in that I would say right-click on an object and I would get a drop shadow in the top-left corner of the screen as if there's a menu there but it's basically the desktop with an orphan drop shadow. I'm running the computer without an Internet connection or display driver for the moment. I have a sneaking suspicion that the crashes started shortly after I installed the graphics driver for the first time, but that's a change I would make pretty early on during a clean Windows install.
Despite my cardinal rule not to do a clean install when I'm troubleshooting stability issues, I've experienced two previous occasions purely with Win11 where an update screwed up the works and a clean install did the trick, but a second clean install of 23H2 has not helped (first install started on 23H2 then WU offered the upgrade).
If it crashes again then I guess I'll disconnect all the not-strictly-unnecessaries like extra USB ports, the DVD drive, that sort of thing, but it's all a bit weird.
AMD 4300G
8GB Kingston Fury DDR4-3200 RAM
Samsung 980 PRO 1TB (latest firmware)
Corsair CX500 PSU
DVD drive
MSI B550M-PRO-VDH (latest BIOS)
It's a spec I've used a number of times before without issue, but this time I'm getting BSODs I think almost exclusively when the computer is idle. I've memtest86'd it twice and used the Windows memory diagnostic once, Prime95'd it for half an hour, Furmark'd it for half an hour, it handled the upgrade from 23H2 to 24H2 fine, sfc and dism fine, I've tried writing about 15GB of data to it without issue, there's nothing useful in the logs, the BSODs aren't recorded in the logs (the only record is that a crash dump failed to be written). I ran a full test on the SSD with Samsung Magician. One really curious thing is how I would run a test like Prime95 which it handled fine, then a minute or two after stopping the test, then it crashed. Another time I installed the display driver from USB (a known reliable driver but I've also tried a more recent one), rebooted even though it didn't ask for it, then shortly after the reboot it BSOD'd. Latest AMD chipset drivers FWIW, not that I've ever had any problems with them.
I've had CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED twice, KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED once, UNEXPECTED_STORE_EXCEPTION once (never seen that one before!), and that may be all the BSODs in the last 24 hours. The theory I'm working on is that it's related to the graphics hardware, because I've noticed a curious symptom about three times when the driver is installed in that I would say right-click on an object and I would get a drop shadow in the top-left corner of the screen as if there's a menu there but it's basically the desktop with an orphan drop shadow. I'm running the computer without an Internet connection or display driver for the moment. I have a sneaking suspicion that the crashes started shortly after I installed the graphics driver for the first time, but that's a change I would make pretty early on during a clean Windows install.
Despite my cardinal rule not to do a clean install when I'm troubleshooting stability issues, I've experienced two previous occasions purely with Win11 where an update screwed up the works and a clean install did the trick, but a second clean install of 23H2 has not helped (first install started on 23H2 then WU offered the upgrade).
If it crashes again then I guess I'll disconnect all the not-strictly-unnecessaries like extra USB ports, the DVD drive, that sort of thing, but it's all a bit weird.
I've more or less come to the conclusion that it's got to be the board at this point, but for the sake of being as thorough as possible (I don't want to experience egg on my face by swapping out the board and having the same problem again), I've done a clean install on to a spare SSD. Admittedly the idea of a stability issue that has given the appearance of being graphics related turning out to be the SSD is something I would have difficulty wrapping my head around, but one thing that nags at me are the two symptoms being random BSOD codes and that the crash dump is *never* being written, Windows has no record that a BSOD even happened, just an improper shutdown. Both symptoms scream "improper handling of data" which logically puts the ball in the RAM or SSD's court, but beyond that...
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