BSOD after BSOD after BSOD - Getting green over a sea of blue pixels

[TyagoDani]

What up guys? Hope you having a good Sunday.

 

Of with the maners and into the matters...

 

So, for last few days I've been dealing with a butt load of BSOD's on my desktop. It all starded Monday or Tuesday when I was starting to play The Talos Principle. A couple of minutes into it the game crashes and I get a message box saying "File signature verification failed (Content/Talos/All_02.gro).". I proceed to press OK and boom, the saga begins. BSOD, stop code: MEMORY MANAGEMENT.

 

*Computer restarts*

*BSOD's while logging in*

This time I wasn't able to catch the stop code but it just self restart again and I let it do it's thing.

 

Fine. Sh*t happens... Let's just reboot and proceed with life.

 

Computer turns back on like usuall, I hop onto the game and 5 minutes latter the game crashes again and the same message pops up. This time though some particle of the universe must have hit me and I decide to record the thing in case it does it again:

BSOD after game crash

 

Alrighty then... Probably just a bad game install and some corrupted files. I've been wanting to format the sucker for a while now due to the OS install being 2 years old and Windows being Windows (stuff like the start menu not opening and stuff being really slow to respond. The explorer would sometimes take over 10 seconds to open from the mouse click. This was totally random and happened in some OS boots and not in others. I checked the drive performance at this time and it was pretty good.).

 

But before I wipped out everything I decided to grab BlueScreenView and have a look at the dump files. The culprit was pointed out as being ntoskrnl.exe (the system kernel). I was about to look it up on the webz when it blue screened again when opening Chrome with the same code (wow, such hard, much demand).

 

Decided then to do some stress testing. Left AIDA64 to run with the CPU, FPU, Cache and memory boxes ticked for about an hour and all was good until I stopped the test and 10 to 15 seconds latter it crashed again. Same thing.

I repeated the stress test for 5 minutes and stopped it trying to replicate the issue. Nothing happened this time arround until I opened Chrome back again and started typing away.

 

Fast foward to the next day I go about formating the machine. All goes fine except for me wanting to do a secure erase on my SSD and ended up giving up because Samsung's tool refused to recognize I had a compatible drive (maybe it wasn't after all). Thanks anyway uncle Sammy.

I get the OS and all the most up to date drivers rolling. All is going nice and smooth up until this point. But midway through installing my programs I start to get random BSOD's again. No significant load was being applied or anything. Stuff just went down completely out of the blue. (pun intended)

It go to the point where it would BSOD many times while rebooting and the BSOD's themselves looked like they wanted to blue screen too!

Here the stop codes started to get more diverse. A few examples are:

• MEMORY MANAGEMENT;
• PAGE FAULT IN NONPAGED AREA;
• QUOTA UNDERFLOW;
• BAD POOL HEADER.

 

Because at the time and still up to this day I couldn't really link any programs that could have been causing this (I didn't install any anitvirus nor hardware tweaking software that ran at startup or anything like that aside from AI Suite 3, but that was done long before the issues started to occur) I decided to keep installing and just punch through it so I could create a system image with everything configured before dealing with the issue.

 

That done I finally began with the serious troubleshooting. Ran the AIDA64 stress test with the CPU, FPU, Cache and memory loads selected all at the same time and individually, the cache and memory benchmark and even Cinebench. I could not get it to crash while under load. Now the interesting part is it would crash seconds after I stopped the memory load on AIDA stopped the test, let the RAM usage come back down and start it again, navigate on the web or the OS or almost every single time I ran Basemark Web 3.0 and it got to the draw call test.

 

This is the only pattern I have been able to find so far.

 

That said, I decided to scrap my overclock and test at bone stock settings. Same thing.

Next, I bumped up the IMC and RAM voltages a tad with everything else untouched to see if it could really be a fault related to that since the stop codes have been indicating so.

 

Surprise surprise...

 

No changes. Still BSOD'ing.

 

Booted up again now with the OC applied back again and the voltage adjustments to the IMC and RAM applied to test (the added voltage weren't necessary to the day. the system was rock stable at those OC settings). Still no changes.

 

Next up on the list: different RAM configs.

Tried every. single. thing. Swapping the sticks arround, using only one at the time, cleaning them with alcohol and blowing the dust off the slots. Nothing helped a single bit.

 

Onto taking the OS out of the equation. Enter MemTest86.

Ran it for hours with both sticks. Flawless.

 

At least I think I saffely assume my hardware is in good working order. Me and the wallet are relieved.

 

The other thing it popped into mind was the meltdown and spectre patches that have been known for not being the nicest pieces of software of the moment in regards to leaving your computer running well. They are kinda resemblant of chemotherapy in the way they bring many side effects.

 

With the InSpectre tool I disabled both protections but it didn't help.

I'm not able to uninstall the updates themselves because they seem to be embeded into the current Windows 10 image already and don't show up on the Windows Update history so that's the best I can do reagrding that.

 

I also uninstalled the Nvidia drivers I had (the most recent ones at the time of writting, 390.77) and swapped them for the 388.13 but it was worthless.

 

The last thing I've done was to go on msconfig and switch the startup mode to diagnsotics but that didn't help either.

 

 

*Phew... Done. That was a lot of text*

 

 

System Specs:

• Windows 10 Pro 64 bits;
• Intel Core i7 6700K;
• Kingston HyperX Fury 16GB (2x 8GB 2133MHz CL14);
• Asus ROG Maximus VIII Hero;
• Asus Strix GTX 1080;
• Samsung 950 Pro 512GB;
• Western Digital Red 2TB;
• Corsair RM650;
• Corsair H110i GT;
• Original build date: over 2 years ago (HDD added 6 months latter and GPU 1 year latter)

All drivers and BIOS were up to date at the same time at some point during the diagnostics process.

 

Link to the public Google Drive folder containing the available dump files (a bunch didn't end up being available god knows why), a SysPerf report and a few pictures I took of some of the BSOD's: BSOD Troubleshooting Files

 

 

And that is all for now from me for now guys. I'm counting on you little geniuses to help out this desperating chap that wants to play something before the next semester begins .

 

Not that I help much if anything arround here... I don't 

 

 

P.S.: Sorry for the long and over detailed explanation but I felt like detailing as much as possible. This crap has been driving me nuts. I've lost a few hours of sleep already trying to figure out what the heck is wrong.

 

P.S.2.: The system has now been runing fine for just over 2 and a half hours while I've been looking arround and writing this post. Let's hope I don't jinx myself...

 

 

EDIT:

Recap of what I've done so far:

• Shuffling the RAM arround, using only 1 stick and cleaning it;
• Running at bone stock settings and messed with the IMC and RAM voltages to try to improve stability;
• AIDA64 stress test comes out clean if I don't do the above mentioned;
• Cinebench comes clean after multiple runs;
• Basemark Web 3.0 makes it BSOD almost everytime during the draw call test;
• MemTest86 comes out clean;
• Disabled Meltdown and Spectre patches;
• Tried older Nvidia drivers;
• Diagnostics mode through msconfig;
• Running Chkdsk on the OS drive says everything is fine and the same for SMART data.

One thing I forgot to mention is that the system also crashed while running Unigine Superposition (BSOD).

[ElSeniorTaco]

well,

First thing is first

Love the detail in the post, its long but has alot of coverage and great formatting, PERFECT lol

I just have one problem with it, I totally had to stop netflix and actually read this, how dare you interrupt my tv time like this!, jk

 

You reinstalled windows and still have issues, Im gonna say that this is very possibly a hardware issue , despite all the tests you've done.

In this situation, I am thinking the ssd might be the culprit.

 

Because ssd's are like big flash drives, they can fail in odd ways, making life just that much more complicated..

When they fail its not going to be like your mechanical hard drive failures where you can easily diagnose with certain tools or symptoms.

It might work great one second then flip out the next.

I have run into some weird issues that have turned out to be a failed ssd.

 

Got an old drive laying around you can test this theory with?

I would give it a shot

[TyagoDani]

10 hours ago, ElSeniorTaco said:

well,

First thing is first

Love the detail in the post, its long but has alot of coverage and great formatting, PERFECT lol

I just have one problem with it, I totally had to stop netflix and actually read this, how dare you interrupt my tv time like this!, jk

 

You reinstalled windows and still have issues, Im gonna say that this is very possibly a hardware issue , despite all the tests you've done.

In this situation, I am thinking the ssd might be the culprit.

 

Because ssd's are like big flash drives, they can fail in odd ways, making life just that much more complicated..

When they fail its not going to be like your mechanical hard drive failures where you can easily diagnose with certain tools or symptoms.

It might work great one second then flip out the next.

I have run into some weird issues that have turned out to be a failed ssd.

 

Got an old drive laying around you can test this theory with?

I would give it a shot

Whoops... Sorry mate .

That said, I caught your attention to the point you had to interrupt your Netflix session to turn all your processing power arround to my issue so... Not sorry! Totally on purpose! 

 

I've had that in the back of my mind as well for a while but really don't think it can be the culprit. But let's test it anyway... But through alternative methods first since the only available drives I have are an external USB 2.0 one and an old, old 5400 rpm one and that will make the process soooo slow. Like, over a decade old. Maybe even 15 or 16 years.

 

Will report back ASAP. Thanks bruh.

[Ace McPlane]

15 hours ago, TyagoDani said:

What up guys? Hope you having a good Sunday.

 

Of with the maners and into the matters...

 

So, for last few days I've been dealing with a butt load of BSOD's on my desktop. It all starded Monday or Tuesday when I was starting to play The Talos Principle. A couple of minutes into it the game crashes and I get a message box saying "File signature verification failed (Content/Talos/All_02.gro).". I proceed to press OK and boom, the saga begins. BSOD, stop code: MEMORY MANAGEMENT.

 

*Computer restarts*

*BSOD's while logging in*

This time I wasn't able to catch the stop code but it just self restart again and I let it do it's thing.

 

Fine. Sh*t happens... Let's just reboot and proceed with life.

 

Computer turns back on like usuall, I hop onto the game and 5 minutes latter the game crashes again and the same message pops up. This time though some particle of the universe must have hit me and I decide to record the thing in case it does it again:

BSOD after game crash

 

Alrighty then... Probably just a bad game install and some corrupted files. I've been wanting to format the sucker for a while now due to the OS install being 2 years old and Windows being Windows (stuff like the start menu not opening and stuff being really slow to respond. The explorer would sometimes take over 10 seconds to open from the mouse click. This was totally random and happened in some OS boots and not in others. I checked the drive performance at this time and it was pretty good.).

 

But before I wipped out everything I decided to grab BlueScreenView and have a look at the dump files. The culprit was pointed out as being ntoskrnl.exe (the system kernel). I was about to look it up on the webz when it blue screened again when opening Chrome with the same code (wow, such hard, much demand).

 

Decided then to do some stress testing. Left AIDA64 to run with the CPU, FPU, Cache and memory boxes ticked for about an hour and all was good until I stopped the test and 10 to 15 seconds latter it crashed again. Same thing.

I repeated the stress test for 5 minutes and stopped it trying to replicate the issue. Nothing happened this time arround until I opened Chrome back again and started typing away.

 

Fast foward to the next day I go about formating the machine. All goes fine except for me wanting to do a secure erase on my SSD and ended up giving up because Samsung's tool refused to recognize I had a compatible drive (maybe it wasn't after all). Thanks anyway uncle Sammy.

I get the OS and all the most up to date drivers rolling. All is going nice and smooth up until this point. But midway through installing my programs I start to get random BSOD's again. No significant load was being applied or anything. Stuff just went down completely out of the blue. (pun intended)

It go to the point where it would BSOD many times while rebooting and the BSOD's themselves looked like they wanted to blue screen too!

Here the stop codes started to get more diverse. A few examples are:

• MEMORY MANAGEMENT;
• PAGE FAULT IN NONPAGED AREA;
• QUOTA UNDERFLOW;
• BAD POOL HEADER.

 

Because at the time and still up to this day I couldn't really link any programs that could have been causing this (I didn't install any anitvirus nor hardware tweaking software that ran at startup or anything like that aside from AI Suite 3, but that was done long before the issues started to occur) I decided to keep installing and just punch through it so I could create a system image with everything configured before dealing with the issue.

 

That done I finally began with the serious troubleshooting. Ran the AIDA64 stress test with the CPU, FPU, Cache and memory loads selected all at the same time and individually, the cache and memory benchmark and even Cinebench. I could not get it to crash while under load. Now the interesting part is it would crash seconds after I stopped the memory load on AIDA stopped the test, let the RAM usage come back down and start it again, navigate on the web or the OS or almost every single time I ran Basemark Web 3.0 and it got to the draw call test.

 

This is the only pattern I have been able to find so far.

 

That said, I decided to scrap my overclock and test at bone stock settings. Same thing.

Next, I bumped up the IMC and RAM voltages a tad with everything else untouched to see if it could really be a fault related to that since the stop codes have been indicating so.

 

Surprise surprise...

 

No changes. Still BSOD'ing.

 

Booted up again now with the OC applied back again and the voltage adjustments to the IMC and RAM applied to test (the added voltage weren't necessary to the day. the system was rock stable at those OC settings). Still no changes.

 

Next up on the list: different RAM configs.

Tried every. single. thing. Swapping the sticks arround, using only one at the time, cleaning them with alcohol and blowing the dust off the slots. Nothing helped a single bit.

 

Onto taking the OS out of the equation. Enter MemTest86.

Ran it for hours with both sticks. Flawless.

 

At least I think I saffely assume my hardware is in good working order. Me and the wallet are relieved.

 

The other thing it popped into mind was the meltdown and spectre patches that have been known for not being the nicest pieces of software of the moment in regards to leaving your computer running well. They are kinda resemblant of chemotherapy in the way they bring many side effects.

 

With the InSpectre tool I disabled both protections but it didn't help.

I'm not able to uninstall the updates themselves because they seem to be embeded into the current Windows 10 image already and don't show up on the Windows Update history so that's the best I can do reagrding that.

 

I also uninstalled the Nvidia drivers I had (the most recent ones at the time of writting, 390.77) and swapped them for the 388.13 but it was worthless.

 

The last thing I've done was to go on msconfig and switch the startup mode to diagnsotics but that didn't help either.

 

 

*Phew... Done. That was a lot of text*

 

 

System Specs:

• Windows 10 Pro 64 bits;
• Intel Core i7 6700K;
• Kingston HyperX Fury 16GB (2x 8GB 2133MHz CL14);
• Asus ROG Maximus VIII Hero;
• Asus Strix GTX 1080;
• Samsung 950 Pro 512GB;
• Western Digital Red 2TB;
• Corsair RM650;
• Corsair H110i GT;
• Original build date: over 2 years ago (HDD added 6 months latter and GPU 1 year latter)

All drivers and BIOS were up to date at the same time at some point during the diagnostics process.

 

Link to the public Google Drive folder containing the available dump files (a bunch didn't end up being available god knows why), a SysPerf report and a few pictures I took of some of the BSOD's: BSOD Troubleshooting Files

 

 

And that is all for now from me for now guys. I'm counting on you little geniuses to help out this desperating chap that wants to play something before the next semester begins .

 

Not that I help much if anything arround here... I don't 

 

 

P.S.: Sorry for the long and over detailed explanation but I felt like detailing as much as possible. This crap has been driving me nuts. I've lost a few hours of sleep already trying to figure out what the heck is wrong.

 

P.S.2.: The system has now been runing fine for just over 2 and a half hours while I've been looking arround and writing this post. Let's hope I don't jinx myself...

 

 

EDIT:

Recap of what I've done so far:

• Shuffling the RAM arround, using only 1 stick and cleaning it;
• Running at bone stock settings and messed with the IMC and RAM voltages to try to improve stability;
• AIDA64 stress test comes out clean if I don't do the above mentioned;
• Cinebench comes clean after multiple runs;
• Basemark Web 3.0 makes it BSOD almost everytime during the draw call test;
• MemTest86 comes out clean;
• Disabled Meltdown and Spectre patches;
• Tried older Nvidia drivers;
• Diagnostics mode through msconfig;
• Running Chkdsk on the OS drive says everything is fine and the same for SMART data.

One thing I forgot to mention is that the system also crashed while running Unigine Superposition (BSOD).

Have you tried recreating your page file?

 

I don't think the process has changed any for windows 10.

Read below on how to do this:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-performance/how-to-rebuild-pagefilesys/6d455eb6-30ca-47a1-a441-06ec38ef5bb6?auth=1

[TyagoDani]

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.

[TyagoDani]

1 hour ago, stateofpsychosis said:

Have you tried recreating your page file?

 

I don't think the process has changed any for windows 10.

Read below on how to do this:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-performance/how-to-rebuild-pagefilesys/6d455eb6-30ca-47a1-a441-06ec38ef5bb6?auth=1

Please check the above post

[Ace McPlane]

17 minutes ago, TyagoDani said:

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.

I don't think it'll help you now that you're saying you're having a hardware failure. The paging file is a software side thing.

Geez, I don't know what's wrong here if you already tried taking the ram sticks out and trying one at a time.

We'll have to wait and see if someone else comments and figures it out.

[TyagoDani]

26 minutes ago, stateofpsychosis said:

I don't think it'll help you now that you're saying you're having a hardware failure. The paging file is a software side thing.

Geez, I don't know what's wrong here if you already tried taking the ram sticks out and trying one at a time.

We'll have to wait and see if someone else comments and figures it out.

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*

 

 

[TyagoDani]

4 minutes ago, TyagoDani said:

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*

 

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.

[Ace McPlane]

4 minutes ago, TyagoDani said:

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*

 

 

make sure you go in and enable the paging file again after deleting it. You gotta recreate it. Though, from that message I gather that it would be a good idea to do a bios flashback or update ASAP even if you've done one already. That includes reformating and recreating the bios update on the flash drive.. or better yet, using another one. Every time I do a bios update, I buy a new flash drive for it. Just a cheap USB 2.0 drive for like 10 bucks.

[TyagoDani]

4 hours ago, stateofpsychosis said:

make sure you go in and enable the paging file again after deleting it. You gotta recreate it. Though, from that message I gather that it would be a good idea to do a bios flashback or update ASAP even if you've done one already. That includes reformating and recreating the bios update on the flash drive.. or better yet, using another one. Every time I do a bios update, I buy a new flash drive for it. Just a cheap USB 2.0 drive for like 10 bucks.

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.

[TyagoDani]

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

[ElSeniorTaco]

For reference,

I would of tried a fresh windows install tbh,

You are attempting to diagnose a failed storage device but in the process you are cloning core system files,drivers, applications, that could have any type of issue

if your ssd has failed, you could always end up bringing corrupted data onto the replacement drive

 

As for it being stuck in frozen in bios, I believe you are now officially diagnosing a hardware related problem/issue

I would start by pulling everything unnecessary from the motherboard (all extra ram, harddrives, cd drives, any usb device except the keyboard, etc.)

Remove anything that can be a point of failure

then try booting, see if there is a difference,

If not start moving the one stick of ram to other slots, and after start trying a different stick

if none of this works, reset the bios

see if you can get into bios setup as well

let us know what you figure out

[TyagoDani]

8 hours ago, ElSeniorTaco said:

For reference,

I would of tried a fresh windows install tbh,

You are attempting to diagnose a failed storage device but in the process you are cloning core system files,drivers, applications, that could have any type of issue

if your ssd has failed, you could always end up bringing corrupted data onto the replacement drive

 

As for it being stuck in frozen in bios, I believe you are now officially diagnosing a hardware related problem/issue

I would start by pulling everything unnecessary from the motherboard (all extra ram, harddrives, cd drives, any usb device except the keyboard, etc.)

Remove anything that can be a point of failure

then try booting, see if there is a difference,

If not start moving the one stick of ram to other slots, and after start trying a different stick

if none of this works, reset the bios

see if you can get into bios setup as well

let us know what you figure out

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.

[TyagoDani]

IT. FINALLY. WORKS.

So, what was it you may ask?

Spoiler

The

Spoiler

fucking

Spoiler

CPU

Spoiler

microcode.

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 

     ___
    /^  \
    |^ ^|
    \___/

[ElSeniorTaco]

Lol Dam patches have been hell for everyone,

Intel's theme song should be "Another one bites the dust"

 

[TyagoDani]

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).

 

[TyagoDani]

5 minutes ago, ElSeniorTaco said:

Lol Dam patches have been hell for everyone,

Intel's theme song should be "Another one bites the dust"

Or just that voice from the end of the chapelle show

GOTCHA BI***!

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

[ElSeniorTaco]

[Ace McPlane]

I guess I should be glad that I'm on a haswell platform that's probably not getting a bios update then

[TyagoDani]

On 2/7/2018 at 5:46 PM, stateofpsychosis said:

I guess I should be glad that I'm on a haswell platform that's probably not getting a bios update then

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 ?