How do I diagnose BSODs?

Disco_P

Disco_P

Disco_P

Soldato
Joined
30 Dec 2013
Posts
6,405
Location
GPS signal not found. (11)
Getting a few WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE Errors, bluescreenview saying they are causeed by PSHED.dll and it's also highlighting storport.sys for some reason.

5900x
Gigabyte B550 Vision DP
4x8GB 3200Mhz DDR4
RTX 3080
WD Black SN850 1TB

Ran OCCT stress test without issue for 8 hours, tried sfc scannow and dism.

Any ideas?
 
Not really specific to your problem but generally I'd start troubleshooting a BSOD by researching the error message and what the DLL's are and who they're published by.

You can use MS documents to look up the error message...
learn.microsoft.com

Bug Check Code Reference - Windows drivers

This section contains descriptions of the common bug checks, including the parameters passed to the blue screen.
learn.microsoft.com
For example a WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE bug check is...
learn.microsoft.com

Bug Check 0x124 WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR - Windows drivers

Learn about the bug check 0x124 WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR, which indicates that a fatal hardware error has occurred.
learn.microsoft.com
You maybe able to get more details depending on the other details (parameter) that accompany the bug check (0x0, 0x1, 0x2, etc, etc)

Looking up what the DLL's do and who they're published by is as simple as searching for those files on your PC and right clicking them to bring up the properties for the files and going to the details tab. If they're published by MS you can be fairly confident that it's not software related (buggy drivers), if they're published by third parties then either updating or removing the driver may help.

The description of the DLL can sometime point you in the right direction. E.g in this case PSHED.dll is the platform specific hardware error driver and storport.sys is the MS storage port driver (aka driver for accessing fixed storage like HDD/SSD). Given all that you can be fairly confident the BSOD are being caused by hardware rather than software (drivers) and (without knowing the bug check parameter) it seems to point towards a problem with either the drives (HDD/SSD) or the RAM.

To test that theory I'd start by using the disk manufactures own tools to test/benchmark the drive, run a chkdsk, if those go without issue then you may want to look into third-party software to test the drive like HD Tune.
 
More often than not, BSOD's have been memory related in my experience. As mentioned above either disable xmp or drop down to two sticks of memory.

Id also leave memtest86 running overnight and see whether your system passes or fails.
 
Tetras said:
Is the CPU or the memory new?
Click to expand...
Nope, had them both for years.
russ9898 said:
More often than not, BSOD's have been memory related in my experience. As mentioned above either disable xmp or drop down to two sticks of memory.

Id also leave memtest86 running overnight and see whether your system passes or fails.
Click to expand...
Will try memtest86 overnight with 4 sticks and drop to 2 afterwards - 16GB is gonna be painful after being used to 32GB

@Murphy Thank you for that info. I have the WD SSD software installed and it seems to be happy, CrystalDiskInfo seems happy as well.

I think my bug check parameter is 10 which points to a device driver. This, to me, makes me think it might be the drive.
 
a quick search also showed :
- BSODs - whea uncorrectable error pshed.dll
pointing to clock speed of the ram modules as being a possible issie.

what are peoples thoughts on memtest, its been a long while since i sued it and the last time i did it wasnt working well for ddr4 (early days) and was passing modules it probably shouldnt have been.
 
Last edited:
LostCorpse said:
what are peoples thoughts on memtest, its been a long while since i sued it and the last time i did it wasnt working well for ddr4 (early days) and was passing modules it probably shouldnt have been.
Click to expand...
It is effective at identifying if you have faulty modules "out of the box", but it can be less effective at showing hardware problems if there is an issue with the memory controller, e.g. insufficient voltage.

It goes the same way with BSODs, they can sometimes point to the issue (like a faulty driver, or a hardware problem), but if you have general instability they're not great because the BSOD can occur anywhere.
 
5900x, how old is it and was it running fine before some sort of change? There was a batch of faulty CPUs from when they were released which would cause WHEA BSOD's, AMD were pretty good about swapping them out but they di make you jump through a few hoops but I don't remember if the 5900x was affected, the 5800x certainly was.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom