New system - blue screen instantly during Windows 10 Install

[Stigly]

Hello,

 

This has been a long, ongoing saga with this build, and I'm at my wits end. Apologies for the long post up front, but I want to be as thorough as possible.

 

System specs:

9900k

Asus Maximus XI Formula - have run BIOS versions 1506, 1602, 1703

32GB Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro, 3200 16CL

EVGA 2080Ti XC Ultra Gaming

1TB Samsung 970 Pro m.2 NVME

1TB Samsung 860 Evo m.2 SATA

Corsair HX1200i PSU

Corsair Commander Pro LED/Fan controller

Lian-li PCI-E extension cable for the video card

Phanteks Evolv X

Hard line watercooling setup

 

I am unable to install Windows on this machine. As soon as it starts to boot from the install USB (created with the Windows Media Creation Tool, tried with both the 1803 build and 1809 build) I get a blue screen. Windows logo, spinny circle, immediate blue screen. I get a multitude of different errors. Here's a list of as many as I've recorded/can remember.

• Unexpected kernel mode trap
• IRQL not less or equal
• kmode exception not handled
• driver overran stack buffer
• system thread exception not handled
• kernel security check failure

I do not have the minidump files, it doesn't appear that they are written back to the install media.

 

When I first got all the parts for the build in, I did a test boot/windows install outside of the case without the watercooling installed. Everything (seemed) to be fine. Windows installed, booted, was able to install a few other things. At that point I took it apart, rebuilt in the case, installed the watercooling loop, and booted it up again. At first, things were OK again. Then I decided it was time to overclock. I pushed to 5Ghz with no issue, then tried for 5.1. Couldn't get it stable. It was late at night, so I decided to dial it back to 5Ghz for the night and leave it there. Wouldn't stay stable at 5Ghz. It was unstable still at 4.8, and the blue screens were starting to hit just on the desktop, not even when trying to run Cinebench. Everything back at stock settings, and I was still getting blue screens on the desktop. I left it for the night, and decided after looking at the documentation on the blue screens I was seeing it was either a driver issue, or maybe something had gone wrong with my Windows install. So I decided to wipe the drives and try again with a fresh Windows install. Used the Secure Erase feature of the Asus board on both drives, then tried to install Windows again. That's when I started getting the blue screens during Windows install.

 

So I drained my loop, disassembled everything, and tried rebuliding it on the bench with the bare minimum of everything - single stick of ram, using the onboard graphics, air cooler. Still, same problem. Rolled back the bios, switched to the backup bios, all the same results. Then I went on Newegg and bought the cheapest z390 board they had to test on. It arrived, I moved things over to that board, and booted up. Everything was fine. Installed windows with  no issue. I ran the system for 48 hours without restarting it to be sure. I put on a 48 hour long youtube video to run in the background so I could verify when I got up each morning that it hadn't rebooted/crashed overnight. I even ran the Intel Processor Diagnostic Tool, and it passed everything. All seemed just fine, so I assumed that my Formula board was bad. Returned the test board to Newegg.

 

Setup an RMA with Asus, sent the board in. Waited a week, got notice that they had diagnosed a "pin has skew" issue (bent pin in the socket, I'm assuming), for which they said they don't repair and instead send out a new board. Great. It arrives, has the anti-scratch plastic on all the panels (which I'd removed from mine), no bent pins in the socket that I can see, so I'm assuming it's a new board. At this point I do the dumb thing I knew even at the time I shouldn't. Instead of doing the test build out of the case, I just rebuild it all. Reassmble my hard line loop, refill it, leak test it for a day, then try to boot it up again. Exactly the same issue. 

 

Things I have already tried to do:

• Tested memory 1 stick at a time, and testing a stick from my current PC that is known good
• Run memtest86 on the 4 sticks together, all passed
• Updating the bios to 1602 and 1703
• Rolling back the bios to 1506 (first available version)
• Removing the video card via unplugging the PCI-E extension cable and using only onboard graphics
• disconnecting all USB devices from the motherboard - unplugged the commander pro, front USB panel, USB connection from PSU
• Memory training is turned off via the switch on the motherboard
• Tested using each m.2 drive by themselves (not easy to remove with the hard line in place, let me tell you!)

That pretty much brings us to today. I can't think of anything else to try. I ASSUME that I didn't just get the same motherboard back from Asus. So that stumps me. Is this a CPU issue? Seems unlikely, given that everything worked when I tested in the other z390 board (an ASRock z390 Pro 4), but then again, I thought that the replacement motherboard was going to solve me. Any ideas? What have I not thought of? What am I missing?

 

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

can you try booting up Linux and seeing if that does anything? Linux often gives better and more specific error messages than Windows does. 

 

IMPORTANT: use Ubuntu 18.10. ubuntu 18.04 has an old kernel that will likely have issues on such new hardware. 

[Stigly]

I'll give that a try. If anyone has any other ideas in the meantime, I'm all ears!

[NinJake]

Yeah... I guess I would try booting linux via usb first and see if it runs... I have my doubts.

It may be that something happened to your chip when you attempted the overclock.

[Stigly]

So, I think I have resolved this. Someone suggested I explicitly disable Asus Multicore Enhancement in bios. After doing that, and making sure XMP was enabled (thus giving me sufficient vDIMM voltage), I tried installing again, and it worked. No issues thus far. I haven't yet gone back to try and manually OC, but waiting on that for now, have to rework up the courage.