Fault Finding a BSOD

Gundog48 · 30 Mar 2015 at 12:57

I built a computer for some friends of the family and have had nothing but trouble. I'm running Win7 and I've never had this kind of trouble. I built it, tested it for a while, no problems. Gave it to them, and I've had a string of reports of problems and BSODs. Bear in mind that my first callout was to 'fix' it when it was simply on standby, so you can imagine how vague this all is.

With the frequency of problems they were having, I said I'd reinstall Windows as there's clearly something wrong, but before I do, I want to be able to reproduce the error so I can tell if I fixed it or not.

I've had the machine here two days running constantly, I've tried Prime95, benchmarking, general browsing, opening all sorts of files, accessing USB drives, and I haven't had a single crash. They told me that it they had trouble during general operation, even saying that when trying to back up some files they were completely unable to do so as it crashed so fast.

WhoCrashed show's they're not lying, racking up around 5 BSODs a day, usually in rapid succession. But for the life of me, I can't reproduce any faults!

Here's the WhoCrashed reports, MemTest also shows up clear:

On Tue 24/03/2015 18:02:31 GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\Windows\Minidump\032415-8439-01.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: ntoskrnl.exe (nt+0x74EC0)
Bugcheck code: 0x1A (0x3452, 0x4749000, 0xFFFFF70001089AB0, 0xAAC00001A5569C66)
Error: MEMORY_MANAGEMENT
file path: C:\Windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
company: Microsoft Corporation
description: NT Kernel & System
Bug check description: This indicates that a severe memory management error occurred.
This might be a case of memory corruption. More often memory corruption happens because of software errors in buggy drivers, not because of faulty RAM modules.
The crash took place in the Windows kernel. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver that cannot be identified at this time.

On Tue 24/03/2015 18:02:31 GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\Windows\memory.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: ntkrnlmp.exe (nt!KeBugCheckEx+0x0)
Bugcheck code: 0x1A (0x3452, 0x4749000, 0xFFFFF70001089AB0, 0xAAC00001A5569C66)
Error: MEMORY_MANAGEMENT
Bug check description: This indicates that a severe memory management error occurred.
This might be a case of memory corruption. More often memory corruption happens because of software errors in buggy drivers, not because of faulty RAM modules.
The crash took place in the Windows kernel. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver that cannot be identified at this time.

On Tue 24/03/2015 17:46:26 GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\Windows\Minidump\032415-9531-02.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: ntoskrnl.exe (nt+0x74EC0)
Bugcheck code: 0x1A (0x41790, 0xFFFFFA80038FD990, 0xFFFF, 0x0)
Error: MEMORY_MANAGEMENT
file path: C:\Windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
company: Microsoft Corporation
description: NT Kernel & System
Bug check description: This indicates that a severe memory management error occurred.
This might be a case of memory corruption. More often memory corruption happens because of software errors in buggy drivers, not because of faulty RAM modules.
The crash took place in the Windows kernel. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver that cannot be identified at this time.

On Tue 24/03/2015 17:41:13 GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\Windows\Minidump\032415-9531-01.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: ntoskrnl.exe (nt+0x74EC0)
Bugcheck code: 0x1E (0xFFFFFFFFC0000005, 0xFFFFF800030B30E0, 0x0, 0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF)
Error: KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED
file path: C:\Windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
company: Microsoft Corporation
description: NT Kernel & System
Bug check description: This indicates that a kernel-mode program generated an exception which the error handler did not catch.
This appears to be a typical software driver bug and is not likely to be caused by a hardware problem.
The crash took place in the Windows kernel. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver that cannot be identified at this time.

On Sun 22/03/2015 20:02:47 GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\Windows\Minidump\032215-8626-01.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: ntfs.sys (Ntfs+0x4211)
Bugcheck code: 0x24 (0x1904FB, 0xFFFFF88002940928, 0xFFFFF88002940180, 0xFFFFF880012F56F5)
Error: NTFS_FILE_SYSTEM
file path: C:\Windows\system32\drivers\ntfs.sys
product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
company: Microsoft Corporation
description: NT File System Driver
Bug check description: This indicates a problem occurred in the NTFS file system.
The crash took place in a standard Microsoft module. Your system configuration may be incorrect. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver on your system that cannot be identified at this time.

On Fri 20/03/2015 07:05:48 GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\Windows\Minidump\032015-9001-01.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: ntoskrnl.exe (nt+0x74EC0)
Bugcheck code: 0x1A (0x41790, 0xFFFFFA8003631C20, 0xFFFF, 0x0)
Error: MEMORY_MANAGEMENT
file path: C:\Windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
company: Microsoft Corporation
description: NT Kernel & System
Bug check description: This indicates that a severe memory management error occurred.
This might be a case of memory corruption. More often memory corruption happens because of software errors in buggy drivers, not because of faulty RAM modules.
The crash took place in the Windows kernel. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver that cannot be identified at this time.

On Fri 20/03/2015 07:01:57 GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\Windows\Minidump\032015-8626-01.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: ntoskrnl.exe (nt+0x74EC0)
Bugcheck code: 0x1A (0x5100, 0xFFFFF6FC50050A98, 0x1, 0x80000001D39DA121)
Error: MEMORY_MANAGEMENT
file path: C:\Windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
company: Microsoft Corporation
description: NT Kernel & System
Bug check description: This indicates that a severe memory management error occurred.
This might be a case of memory corruption. More often memory corruption happens because of software errors in buggy drivers, not because of faulty RAM modules.
The crash took place in the Windows kernel. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver that cannot be identified at this time.

On Fri 20/03/2015 06:54:40 GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\Windows\Minidump\032015-8704-01.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: ntoskrnl.exe (nt+0x74EC0)
Bugcheck code: 0xA (0xFFFFFA801D2CDDD0, 0x2, 0x1, 0xFFFFF8000309F16D)
Error: IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
file path: C:\Windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
company: Microsoft Corporation
description: NT Kernel & System
Bug check description: This indicates that Microsoft Windows or a kernel-mode driver accessed paged memory at DISPATCH_LEVEL or above.
This appears to be a typical software driver bug and is not likely to be caused by a hardware problem.
The crash took place in the Windows kernel. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver that cannot be identified at this time.

On Fri 20/03/2015 06:21:22 GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\Windows\Minidump\032015-9063-01.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: ntoskrnl.exe (nt+0x74EC0)
Bugcheck code: 0x1A (0x41790, 0xFFFFFA8003B9A1E0, 0xFFFF, 0x0)
Error: MEMORY_MANAGEMENT
file path: C:\Windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
company: Microsoft Corporation
description: NT Kernel & System
Bug check description: This indicates that a severe memory management error occurred.
This might be a case of memory corruption. More often memory corruption happens because of software errors in buggy drivers, not because of faulty RAM modules.
The crash took place in the Windows kernel. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver that cannot be identified at this time.

On Fri 20/03/2015 06:17:28 GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\Windows\Minidump\032015-9282-01.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: ntoskrnl.exe (nt+0x74EC0)
Bugcheck code: 0x1A (0x41201, 0xFFFFF683FF6F6680, 0xFCC0000134AD1025, 0xFFFFFA800706F270)
Error: MEMORY_MANAGEMENT
file path: C:\Windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
company: Microsoft Corporation
description: NT Kernel & System
Bug check description: This indicates that a severe memory management error occurred.
This might be a case of memory corruption. More often memory corruption happens because of software errors in buggy drivers, not because of faulty RAM modules.
The crash took place in the Windows kernel. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver that cannot be identified at this time.

ED209 · 30 Mar 2015 at 13:01

have you tried running memtest on the ram and seeing if that reports back any errors?

maybe a faulty stick that's causing the issue or maybe make sure that the memory is running at the correct voltage in the bios

Gundog48 · 30 Mar 2015 at 13:06

Memtest shows up fine but I'll give it another run to be sure. Good call on the voltage, I'll take a look when I've finished backing up. Seems strange that it would run so reliably here though.

I'm thinking it might be some peripherals plugged in on their end, perhaps a dodgey driver for a device or such? It's really frustrating because it's like we're using different machines, I've never had a problem!

bledd · 30 Mar 2015 at 13:16

List the hardware

Likely to be bad ram given the error messages.

Gundog48 · 30 Mar 2015 at 13:26

Athlon x2 370K
Gigabyte F2A88XM-DS2
GeIL Black Dragon 2x4GB 1333MHz
ATI 6950
Corsair 430W PSU
Sandisk 120GB SSD+ WD 500GB HDD

hamesy · 30 Mar 2015 at 13:54

How many passes did you do with memtest? In my experience, one isn't enough, I usually do 3-4 passes.

anything I don't mind · 30 Mar 2015 at 14:17

Basic question: are you putting the ram in the correct slots? are you setting up the ram correctly in the bios. I don't think its a windows problem, probably a bios/hardware issue. Is the SSD in AHCI mode, the ram at the correct voltage?

Tends to be the way problems come about, ie there is never a problem until there is a problem.

Gundog48 · 30 Mar 2015 at 15:46

These are all things I'd like to try to address, but first I need to know I can make it crash, otherwise there's no way of telling if I fixed it at all. If it were the RAM being incorrectly configured, what's the best way of triggering a BSOD in Windows?

ED209 · 30 Mar 2015 at 16:16

Gundog48 said:
These are all things I'd like to try to address, but first I need to know I can make it crash, otherwise there's no way of telling if I fixed it at all. If it were the RAM being incorrectly configured, what's the best way of triggering a BSOD in Windows?

did they say what they where doing at the time of the crash? is there anything in common each time the PC has BSOD?

hard to replicate, maybe change over the memory from your PC to theirs and see if you start getting BSOD if you are a gamer as if its a memory issue it should follow the ram?

Gundog48 · 2 Apr 2015 at 11:50

They finally got back to me, seems it'll go off regardless of what they do, word processing, Internet, whatever. Memtest turned up fine after 5 passes. It's got to be a dodgey driver I think, but literally the only things they have plugged in that I don't are a bluetooth adapter and a wireless mouse!