BSOD, possibly bad RAM

[Frugl1]

@svage Do try the prime95 blend test. It'll tell you if there are any bad math going on in the CPU. As long as you have a decent VRM on your mobo and you're not pushing an insane VCore no harm will come from it. Also, do you have any OC applied?

[DOODMANO]

@Frugl1

 

My guess is it's a bad sector on my SSD. I tried moving my files over with Ubuntu and it was really fast up to 260k files out of 330k, before slowing down to 1 every 20 seconds. I canceled the transfer and tried shutting it down, which resulted in an infinite loop of "task blocked" errors, and then my computer took an extremely long time to complete POST and everything was extra slow until I restarted after disconnecting my drives, before reconnecting them afterward. I no longer think that it's a driver, but more that my drive is failing.

[Frugl1]

You still have avast filter drivers. Did you uninstall it?

[Frugl1]

You can always check SMART for drive stats.

[DOODMANO]

@Frugl1 I uninstalled Avast, and I had no BSOD for 60 hours. After that happened, I went back to an old restore point which was 3 - 4 days prior to any BSODs, which reinstalled Avast. It was good for 110~ hours. I moved my parts to a new computer I got. I got a BSOD after 5 hours of using it, and another one during safe mode when moving my files over to an external drive.

 

Edit: SMART lists both my HDD and SSD as "good" and my SSD at 100%...

[svage]

5 hours ago, Frugl1 said:

@svage Do try the prime95 blend test. It'll tell you if there are any bad math going on in the CPU. As long as you have a decent VRM on your mobo and you're not pushing an insane VCore no harm will come from it. Also, do you have any OC applied?

@Frugl1 I just ran prime95 for over 3 hours without any issues. CPU temp was 67c. I disabled every overclocking once I started having BSODs. I also tried disabling the sata contoller in the bios but still got a BSOD 

[DOODMANO]

BSOD during Windows reinstall for NTFS_FILE_SYSTEM.

Removed external HD, internal HD and reinstalled fine. My internal HD just are files though... Apparently they can still cause BSODs just by being connected, according to a top rated Quora answer (but with only 3 upvotes at this time): https://www.quora.com/Can-a-secondary-hard-drive-cause-blue-screen-errors-upon-a-fresh-Windows-10-installation

 

I'll run a CHKDSK on it; it has around 25,000 hours. Might be time to get a replacement

[DOODMANO]

Both CHKDSK resulted in no errors for any of my drives.

"ATTEMPTED_WRITE_TO_READONLY_MEMORY" occurred while downloading something.

Man, everything just points to everything. Now I know it's 99% hardware related. Will run prime95 or similar test in the coming days; will rerun memtest86+ first.

[svage]

@DOODMANO I think i just found my issue, it was a bad ram stick from the beginning, even though memtest didn't return any errors the first time i ran it. In my case, BSODs only started appearing after a couple hours of use, until my PC was getting BSODs every few minutes and became unusable. I had to turn it off for at least an hour to be able to boot again without BSODs (heat related issue?). First time I ran memtest, it was in the morning on a fresh boot. Now i just ran memtest again just after being stuck in an infinite BSOD loop and memtest found over 15 000 errors until it had to stop because there was too much errors. I removed the faulty stick and I'm able to boot, and also finally able copy files from a drive to another without crash.

TLDR: Try running memtest after you start getting BSODs

[Frugl1]

@DOODMANOYou can try running multiple instances of HCI memory test aswell. That will stress your memory system more than an offline memtest85, but wont hit addresses already in use by the OS.

[DOODMANO]

@Frugl1

@svage

Sorry for not checking in for a while, had a lot of work and homework.

Ran 16 or so passes of memtest86, no error. I will consider what you said though, svage. I recall running memtest somewhat shortly after bsods, but I don't think I ever ran one right after, usually waiting at least 30 min before doing it, and I think I've also always let the computer boot into Windows first.

Also am currently running Prime95. So far there's no problem after over 1 hour, but I'll keep it going for a while.

I'll also do an HCI memtest soon. I've bought a new SSD, Motherboard, Power Supply and Set of RAM from Best Buy and Amazon, so I'll take the weekend to troubleshoot the hardware 

[DOODMANO]

No crash after 1 hour + another 12 hours of blend test.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/t/633198/external-hard-drive-bsod-fixed-but-want-explanation/

The post mentioned here is also curious; I've only gotten bsods while my externals were plugged in (which is, like, basically the entire time except when I unplugged them before I reinstalled them, and plugged them back in again 2 days or so later. But... I did run Linux with them plugged in also)

 

Edit: HCI Memtest passed.

 

Chkdsk for external hard drive came with a few trillion errors, so I've moved the files to a new external (which I didn't think I'd need) and unplugged it.

I will replace the motherboard at this time as well.

[DOODMANO]

@svage

@Frugl1

BSOD has been fixed for almost a week; while there's still a possibility, I've used it so much and did a lot of things that would otherwise cause a failure (reinstalled Malwarebytes and Avast for example), so I think they've been eliminated.

 

From moving files and playing games and installing all my usual updates and drivers, I'm 85% sure the problem was fixed from swapping out the external hard drive. When I did chkdsk, I only did it on the internal drives so that's why I crossed it off; in addition, a lot of the problems reported due to the external were due to moving several and/or large files over to it (which I wasn't doing... until I wanted to back up my stuff for a fresh windows install) or occurred as soon as they were plugged in. For me, my bsods occurred even without touching it, and up to several days later at times, which seemed off, but after that chkdsk, it seems extremely likely to be the culprit.

 

Motherboard was also swapped out at the same time since I didn't want to spend so much time diagnosing the problem, and it could have been a faulty port or something on the inside (I ordered it prior to thinking about it being the external). It's a little better than my previous one, and I'll keep it for now since I don't really want to deal with the issue again (but also don't want to re-assemble my computer and clean install everything); I'm fine with the extra cost.

 

Thanks for your help! If I encounter any more issues, I'll be sure to report back.