TyagoDani

As just released a few hours ago on the Portuguese tech focussed web publication, Exame Informática, João Pina, an investigator in this field, has publicly announced on Twitter his findings when probing at the government's own websites. He has found out that the government authentication system (autenticacao.gov.pt) is sharing the personal information of whoever accesses the page with private company Facebook. Such findings have in the mean time been confirmed to the OP by another specialist that has prefered to stay anonymous. The website in cause has an embedded Facebook SDK into it. It has been so far confirmed that at least the user's IP address and browser version are being shared with the private company. This then allows Facebook to cross and match user identifiable data. Even if the user isn't logged in to Facebook, it can still keep track of the IP and browser version. João Pina also defends that the AMA (in english AAM or Agency for the Administrative Modernization), the institution responsible for the website in question, is also logging the user's email used to log in to Facebook, as found in the webpage's code. Presented with the facts, the AMA has forwarded any technical clarifications to the information available on the government's website. In a tab dedicated to social networks, it is stated that "no data is sent to social networks, according to the best practices". (comment: whatever that means...) Apart from this, it was also found that this platforms also have Google's data analysis platform, Analytics, embedded. As a Portuguese citizen myself I can only say that this is a complete and disgusting abuse on citizen privacy and that I really hope this doesn't go without severe punishment, not only for AMA but also for the government for not keeping tabs on who they should or being compliant and obviously for Mr. Zuck's childish 15 year old teenager. Source: Expert reveals that nation's authentication website is sharing data with Facebook - Perito revela que site de autenticação do Estado está a partilhar dados com o Facebook

I could be wrong but I looked it up and couldn't find what are you talking about. Did you mean a self tester?

That's sounding like it could be a PSU issue to me... Try to unplug all the power cables and jump the PSU and check if its fan spins. If you have any case fans you can plug into the PSU directly do so to put a little load on it. Here's a link in case you don't know how to do it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ea1dcJ0QyAE

Is that behaviour repeatable everytime?

Yes indeed. Regarding that Intel has released some new micro code this Friday to address those issues and board vendors should start to push them in the coming days/couple of weeks and now that I know what the problem was I think I'm willing to give it a shot. Also, having a system image of your configured OS with all your programs installed is like the best thing ever. It takes me just under 15 minutes to go from a completely messed up install to bang on and ready to rock ?

Oh man and did I bite, chew and swallow it like a champ. GG

Also, I would like to thanks both Intel and Asus for their amazing work on the latest BIOS and CPU microcode update to the Maximus VIII Hero (version 3703).

IT. FINALLY. WORKS. So, what was it you may ask? Sorry for the swearing, but I had to. It just hit me it could be that because on the latest BIOS update (version 3703) there was new microcode to address the Spectre and Meltdown issues so I rolled back to version 3201, the previous one I was using, but that didn't work (that version didn't have any microcode patches). So I went to the previous I had (2202) which did indeed bring a microcode update and bingo. Everything now seems to be absolutely rock solid again. And it kinda makes sense now that I think about it. All those errors related to memory and spectre/meltdown being vulnerabilities that, in short, leverage memory leaks. But before I could fix it I got yet another symptom: It reads: "The instruction at 0x00007FFA79F61506 referenced the memory at 0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF. The memory couldn't be read. Press Ok to terminate the program. Press Cancel to debug the program." So, and with that, do be very careful when updating your BIOS with a CPU microcode update/patch embedded. Stuff can go really bad really quick and make you lose some good hair and sleep and get you some grays instead. Anyway, I would like to thank you both @ElSeniorTaco and @stateofpsychosis for the help and tips. Here, please have a virtual cookie ___ /^ \ |^ ^| \___/

I can try a new install. As for the rest, the only thing really left to try is to clear CMOS the bios. Will update in a couple of hours.

Update time. Man, did I forget how slow hard drives were, jeez. That took waaayyyy longer than expected. So, I cloned the OS from the SSD to another drive I have and ran sfc /scannow and DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth to make sure everything was right with the install. AIDA ran perfectly. Tried the stopping and starting trick a few times and nothing happened so I moved on to Basemark Web. It all was going fine. It got to the draw call test and was running just fine for quite a bit now and I was starting to get excited because I thought I had finally gotten it sorted. But then... That. The big blue monster. The system rebooted and it happened again while turning on. Then, on the second time it just froze and shut itself off, turning back on again after a couple of seconds. This time I went straight into the BIOS and it froze indefinitely there. I gave up. It's almost 4 after midnight and I don't have any more brains for this bs today so I'm signing of and going to bed. If anyone reads this in the meantime please leave a post with any suggestions you may think of, even if they are mostly stupid. Maybe by trying to play it's own game we'll get somewhere. Thanks for the help in advance. Ty

I didn't enable the page file just to see how it would react and it didn't do any better. I did though do a BIOS flashback as one of the steps of diagnosis and it didn't help at all.

EDIT: This is probably gonna take me a few hours because of how slow the drive is (my install is just under 70GB) and I'm going out to the gym now. Also Windows just gave me a warning saying it needs to restart the computer to fix errors in the system drive. Pretty sure we have found the little %$!#@ @ElSeniorTaco.

I know it's on the software side of things, but it made something go a-wire. I disabled the page file and rebooted and the system was taking a long time to load everything after logging in (couldn't even open up the task manager), so I rebooted it through the prompt line and took the opportunity to hop onto the BIOS to check something (more specifically if the PCI-e power management feature was turned off). I exited the BIOS without changing anything and this popped up: Uppon pressing Ok the screen went dark and the computer froze. Had to hard restart it but after that everything was fine until I got to the desktop. There things were really really slow and the other weird thing is the Windows Photo viewer doesn't have none of the close, maximize or minimize buttons anymore. They are just gone. While I was writting this post a new BSOD and a new stop code showed up. I tried to take a photo of it but didn't have time but it was something along the lines of mcc... .sys I'm now gonna the other drive in place of the SSD and see the result. I just hope a direct clone works because I'm not sure how it will turn up because I have the OS installed in UEFI mode. *prays to the PC Lords*

Please check the above post

Quick update on the situation. After some initial testing to the SSD like suggested by @ElSeniorTaco I decided to see if I could get the system to BSOD by having a stress test running for a few minutes, stopping it and starting it up back again like what I've been doing to this point and this happened: I was watching task manager when this happened and it coincided with the moment the memory was being loaded for the test. Before I go and try another drive I'm gonna try to rebuild the page file like @stateofpsychosis said.