BSOD :( When Using WIFI

Ryujin2003 · September 10, 2016

Hi everyone.

I'm working on a friend's ASUS G20, it's a manufactured tower, all stock. Nothing is after market. His PC is about a year old. He recently started having BSOD issues related to "Kernel Security Check Failure". Getting on a network using LAN is totally fine, no issues. He can connect to an unsecured network all day, no issues. When trying to connect wireless lyrics to any WPA or WEP secured network, his PC BSOD's when it attempts to authenticate. It happens everytime. He doesn't have a data backup so I haven't completely wiped the machine. I have done the factory reset while keeping user data though.

I'm thinking it could be a software issue related to drivers. I have gone to the manufacturer website and have updated all drivers from GPU and chipset to LAN and Bluetooth. My thought is that this PC originally came with Windows 8. He did the free upgrade during the "limited time" offer.

My thoughts are that since it's Windows 10 installed over 8, this could be the problem. One of our other friends thinks it's hardware related since the factory reset while keeping user data should have technically wiped any driver issues.

The only other issue is that he never updated his BIOS firmware, and this could also be the culprit. The first update HAS to be done with Windows 8. ASUS's update was designed to get the MB ready for 10. There is a second BIOS update for when you have 10, but have to have installed the previous OS.

So I think I might have back up his data, reinstall to Windows 8. Update the BIOS, then put a new fresh copy of 10 on afterwards.

I would love to have a 2nd, 3rd, or 52nd opinion on this. Has anyone had this issue? Am I over analyzing the problem? Is there a simpler fix? Any suggestions and comments would be greatly appreciated.

Ryujin2003 · September 11, 2016

So the WiFi driver is for Realtek 8821ae wireless lan 802.11ac. I found an older driver from Lenovo which worked great... except I couldn't shut down the PC due to Driver Detection Verification Failure... the driver won't pass because it's too old... The new one doesn't seem to work well with Windows 10 and ASUS hardware.

In the off chance that it was a corrupt download, I forced the driver update. I can shut down now. No BSOD... however, since I had the PC set to auto connect to the WPA network, it crashes when it tries to log into Windows with ther Kernel Failure again....

Does anyone have any idea?