Trouble shooting a blue screen after win10 update

[gizmo1990]

After updating this morning, my pc has been continuously blue screening with the following,
Stop code: KMODE EXCEPTION NOT HANDLED

There's no mention of what kind of driver issue might be involved and I've just spent the best part of 2 hours discovering how much MS has completely changed (for the worse imo!) the way to get into safe mode, since win7 days!

I've restored to a point which was supposedly last night but checking windows update and it's still listing the 3 updates it did today. It then blue screened again with the following error,
BAD SYSTEM CONFIG INFO

I'm now stuck in a loop where I can't get back into the desktop. I've tried enabling safe mode but it immediately returns to the blue screen. Automatic repair does nothing. Startup Repair just returns that it couldn't repair either.

Does anyone have any idea how to proceed? I'd rather not do some sort of nuclear option, yet I've never come across any issue like this?

A little more into. I thought I'd try system restore again and got the following screen.



Does anyone know what this is telling me? I don't understand why it's saying e: is the system? It should be c: as it was the previous time I restored.. Basically I only have a c and d drive anyway.

Any help much appreciated.

 

[ED209]

After updating this morning, my pc has been continuously blue screening with the following,
Stop code: KMODE EXCEPTION NOT HANDLED

There's no mention of what kind of driver issue might be involved and I've just spent the best part of 2 hours discovering how much MS has completely changed (for the worse imo!) the way to get into safe mode, since win7 days!

I've restored to a point which was supposedly last night but checking windows update and it's still listing the 3 updates it did today. It then blue screened again with the following error,
BAD SYSTEM CONFIG INFO

I'm now stuck in a loop where I can't get back into the desktop. I've tried enabling safe mode but it immediately returns to the blue screen. Automatic repair does nothing. Startup Repair just returns that it couldn't repair either.

Does anyone have any idea how to proceed? I'd rather not do some sort of nuclear option, yet I've never come across any issue like this?

A little more into. I thought I'd try system restore again and got the following screen.

Does anyone know what this is telling me? I don't understand why it's saying e: is the system? It should be c: as it was the previous time I restored.. Basically I only have a c and d drive anyway.

Any help much appreciated.

Head over to this site and follow step two

https://windowsreport.com/bad_system_config_info-windows-10/

Hopefully this will fix the BAD SYSTEM CONFIG INFO error.

 

[gizmo1990]

Head over to this site and follow step two

https://windowsreport.com/bad_system_config_info-windows-10/

Hopefully this will fix the BAD SYSTEM CONFIG INFO error.

Thanks for the replay @ED209 I've tried running those 2 command lines but all I get is

An error occurred while attempting to delete the specified data element

I presume this is because the command line I'm taken to is X:\windows\system32\ instead of C:\ drive. I have no idea why C has been changed to X?? This is getting a bit worrying! I've run DISKPART/LIST VOL and also run chkdsk with the following results.





I'm a bit at a loss how to proceed. Does anyone know a way out of this? I've found a thread here which details a very similar issue and they seem to have got no where!

Any further help greatly appreciated.

 

[darael]

Probably not what you want to hear, but I'd probably image that drive as it stands right now, using Macrium Reflect, and reinstall Windows. At least that way you can pick any files you need to restore from the backup,

 

[ED209]

Do you have any external HDDs connected at all or internal drives that are not part of the OS?

Might be worth trying to disconnect all drives and DVD drives and only having the OS drive connected then try again.

there does seem to be a few errors when running check disk as well.

Have you tried the repair option at all?

If there is just OS stuff on the drive and nothing you need then it maybe quicker to just format and re install W10. (If you do this make sure only the OS Drive is connected as stops Windows installing stuff on to other drives)

 

[gizmo1990]

Thanks again for the replies guys.

@darael Urgh, yeah you're right I really don't want to hear that! I take it you mean removing my SSD boot drive, putting it in a portable enclosure, sticking that in another pc running Macrium and taking an image from that?

@ED209 Yes I have an internal sata 1tb drive as my D drive and a DVD burner. I'll try unplugging them tomorrow. I did try the repair option too I think, but again I double check it tomorrow.

Any other advice would be really appreciated. I really could do without a windows install (who can?) and I'd like to exhaust everything before that option rears it's head. I can't believe a windows update has caused this.

 

[darael]

Thanks again for the replies guys.

@darael Urgh, yeah you're right I really don't want to hear that! I take it you mean removing my SSD boot drive, putting it in a portable enclosure, sticking that in another pc running Macrium and taking an image from that?

@ED209 Yes I have an internal sata 1tb drive as my D drive and a DVD burner. I'll try unplugging them tomorrow. I did try the repair option too I think, but again I double check it tomorrow.

Any other advice would be really appreciated. I really could do without a windows install (who can?) and I'd like to exhaust everything before that option rears it's head. I can't believe a windows update has caused this.

Personally I'd use another computer to create a bootable Macrium Reflect USB stick - it should take less than 5 minutes to make and another 15 minutes if you backup to a fast source, like an external hard drive.

I know what you mean about avoiding installing Windows - I've been putting 2004 since it came out, but more out of precaution than anything. But I know that I can have Windows reinstalled and mostly setup how I want it in about an 30 minutes. Another hour for installing my big programs, customising, restoring settings - then I spend the rest of the week discovering what I'd forgotten.

But seriously, you're spending more time trying to fix this problem and it still might not be 100% even if you do manage to get back into Windows. You could have probably had things setup close to how you had them by now.

Just bite the bullet and spend your bank holiday Monday reinstalling Windows.

 

[gizmo1990]

Thanks @darael you're likely right tbh. I'm preparing for that eventuality! I've only used Macrium to clone a drive via a working system in the past. Just so I'm clear on what you're suggesting, do you mean I can create a macrium boot usb (via another pc) which I can use to boot into macrium's interface on my main pc? I'd then plug in another external backup drive, which Macrium will allow me to copy an image of my ssd onto?

 

[darael]

Thanks @darael you're likely right tbh. I'm preparing for that eventuality! I've only used Macrium to clone a drive via a working system in the past. Just so I'm clear on what you're suggesting, do you mean I can create a macrium boot usb (via another pc) which I can use to boot into macrium's interface on my main pc? I'd then plug in another external backup drive, which Macrium will allow me to copy an image of my ssd onto?

Yes that's right and what I would do. At least then, with an image of the system as it is, you know you can restore the files you need to.

Or if you just have a few things, create a live Linux USB stick and copy what you need to to an external drive.

 

[gizmo1990]

I thought I'd prepare to make a copy and I've booted into Macrium Reflect. @darael I wonder if I could just run the process past you and the forum to sanity check the process?

After selecting Backup I can see all my attached drives. My Disk 1 system ssd is correctly identified as C: and my sata one as D: No bizarre X drive designations! There are 2 partitions on my Disk 1 with one being the system reserved space. That's designated as G: which I presume is normal? Below this section are 'Clone this disk' and 'Image this disk' buttons. I presume I select one of these and it will then ask where I can to place the image/clone.

The issue now is, should I Clone or Image? Wouldn't a Clone be better in this instance, since it will not require any other software to read the Clone? Where as an Image will be compressed and require Macrium to unpack and view?

Again, thanks for all the help everyone.

 

[darael]

I thought I'd prepare to make a copy and I've booted into Macrium Reflect. @darael I wonder if I could just run the process past you and the forum to sanity check the process?

After selecting Backup I can see all my attached drives. My Disk 1 system ssd is correctly identified as C: and my sata one as D: No bizarre X drive designations! There are 2 partitions on my Disk 1 with one being the system reserved space. That's designated as G: which I presume is normal? Below this section are 'Clone this disk' and 'Image this disk' buttons. I presume I select one of these and it will then ask where I can to place the image/clone.

The issue now is, should I Clone or Image? Wouldn't a Clone be better in this instance, since it will not require any other software to read the Clone? Where as an Image will be compressed and require Macrium to unpack and view?

Again, thanks for all the help everyone.

Cloning the disk is for cloning the drive directly to another drive. Imaging the drive will create an image file of the drive on whatever source you want.

Untick all the drives apart from the ones OS drive - on my laptop's NVME M.2 drive I have:
1 - No Name (None) - 100.0 MB
2 - (None) - 16.0 MB
3 - (C:) - 237.83 GB
4 - (None) - 542.0 MB

Just tick all these and image the drive.

On the Restore tab, you could try the Fix Windows boot problems, but I've never tried it so can't say how to use it or how successful it might be. But you could try it after making your image and you know you have nothing to lose.

 

[gizmo1990]

Thanks for that @darael I've created the image, everything went smoothly. I'm now psyching myself to reinstall win10. I checked the Fix Boot Problems you mentioned, my windows install didn't even show up unfortunately. I think I'm looking at a reinstall now tbh.

As an aside and this may be slightly OT. Does anyone know if you should install win10 with separate video cards hooked up OR install it using onboard video initially? I ask because Ive had issues ini the past with my monitors not picking up a signal for some reason during the install process. It took me ages to work out that I had to plug a monitor into the onboard video to complete the installation. Then swap over to the the card later.

 

[darael]

Thanks for that @darael I've created the image, everything went smoothly. I'm now psyching myself to reinstall win10. I checked the Fix Boot Problems you mentioned, my windows install didn't even show up unfortunately. I think I'm looking at a reinstall now tbh.

As an aside and this may be slightly OT. Does anyone know if you should install win10 with separate video cards hooked up OR install it using onboard video initially? I ask because Ive had issues ini the past with my monitors not picking up a signal for some reason during the install process. It took me ages to work out that I had to plug a monitor into the onboard video to complete the installation. Then swap over to the the card later.

Disable your onboard graphics in the BIOS if you don't use the onboard graphics at all - that's how I do it and ever had a problem like you described yet.

 

[gizmo1990]

Thanks once again @darael I've installed Win10 but got a hell of a shock when I got the same blue screen error again!

This has me quite worried now as a system re install is always the fix all. But seeing it keep getting this KMODE EXCEPTION NOT HANDLED error is damn worrying.

I've tried disabling fast startup, which hasn't stopped it happening. I've also just run windows memory diagnostics which passed fine with no errors. I'm not seeing any driver errors appear in device manager either. There seems to be no logic to when the blue screen is happening. It can be 1 min after starting or 20 mins.

Can anyone think of anyway I could narrow this down or troubleshoot it? Here's a quick run down of my, old I know!, machine.
Intel motherboard Dh67cf
Corei5 2500k 3.30Ghz
8GB
250gb Samsung EVO 850 ssd
Nvidia GTX 1060 3GB

Any help really appreciated. I'm sweating here!

 

[darael]

Thanks once again @darael I've installed Win10 but got a hell of a shock when I got the same blue screen error again!

This has me quite worried now as a system re install is always the fix all. But seeing it keep getting this KMODE EXCEPTION NOT HANDLED error is damn worrying.

I've tried disabling fast startup, which hasn't stopped it happening. I've also just run windows memory diagnostics which passed fine with no errors. I'm not seeing any driver errors appear in device manager either. There seems to be no logic to when the blue screen is happening. It can be 1 min after starting or 20 mins.

Can anyone think of anyway I could narrow this down or troubleshoot it? Here's a quick run down of my, old I know!, machine.
Intel motherboard Dh67cf
Corei5 2500k 3.30Ghz
8GB
250gb Samsung EVO 850 ssd
Nvidia GTX 1060 3GB

Any help really appreciated. I'm sweating here!

Did you clear all partitions from the SSD using the Windows installer, before it started to copy the files? If not, that's where I would start.

 

[gizmo1990]

@darael Yep, that's a interesting story in itself. It was quite tricky to do initially. Window's install process wouldn't resolve the 2 partitions down to one. So I had to go into troubleshoot command line and run diskpart. By using the clean command I managed to get one partition. AFAIK, partition wise it should be fine now. Is there anyway to check?

Checking around the net, people with the same error keep getting pointed to driver issues by MS. However, since the error doesn't mention any specific driver problem I'm not seeing how I can diagnose it? Device manager reports everything is fine. I'm running the system via onboard video too currently so I don't think its my 1060.

Diving into the partition stuff again, I'm considering reinstalling just to make sure. Are there any guaranteed ways to prepare a SSD for installing windows? ie how to erase EVERYTHING. What partition style to use MBR or GPT?

 

[darael]

@darael Yep, that's a interesting story in itself. It was quite tricky to do initially. Window's install process wouldn't resolve the 2 partitions down to one. So I had to go into troubleshoot command line and run diskpart. By using the clean command I managed to get one partition. AFAIK, partition wise it should be fine now. Is there anyway to check?

Checking around the net, people with the same error keep getting pointed to driver issues by MS. However, since the error doesn't mention any specific driver problem I'm not seeing how I can diagnose it? Device manager reports everything is fine. I'm running the system via onboard video too currently so I don't think its my 1060.

Diving into the partition stuff again, I'm considering reinstalling just to make sure. Are there any guaranteed ways to prepare a SSD for installing windows? ie how to erase EVERYTHING. What partition style to use MBR or GPT?

Just delete all the partitions for the same drive. If you want to be sure, at the partition screen press Shift + F10 to get a command prompt window.

1. Type in DISKPART.
2. Type in LIST DISK.
3. Identify your SSD drive, which is probably Disk 0.
4. Type in SELECT DISK 0 - change 0 to the number of your disk if you need to.
5. Type in CLEAN.
6. Type in EXIT to leave DiskPart and EXIT again to close the command prompt.

Now when you refresh the partitions screen, Disk 0 should show as Unallocated Space.

There are probably better and more efficient ways of erasing your SSD drive for installation of Windows, but the above has yet to fail me.

 

[gizmo1990]

@darael thanks, yep that's exactly what I did. I'll give it another go though, see if it makes any difference.

Before I do, one oddity I've noticed is that going into the command prompt via troubleshoot I'm presented with,
X:\windows\system32>

Is that normal? Should it be C:\windows\system32 ??

Edit, some more info. I thought I'd run chkdsk again. At stage 3 I'm getting a line which says,

Errors detected in the uppercase

Then below that,

Windows has checked the file system and found problems

It suggests running chkdsk with the /f switch. However when I do I get the following,

Cannot lock current drive
Windows cannot run disk checking on this volume because it is write protected

Is this normal? Perhaps the disk is locked because it can't chkdsk the system disk?

 

[darael]

@darael thanks, yep that's exactly what I did. I'll give it another go though, see if it makes any difference.

Before I do, one oddity I've noticed is that going into the command prompt via troubleshoot I'm presented with,
X:\windows\system32>

Is that normal? Should it be C:\windows\system32 ??

Edit, some more info. I thought I'd run chkdsk again. At stage 3 I'm getting a line which says,

Then below that,

It suggests running chkdsk with the /f switch. However when I do I get the following,


Is this normal? Perhaps the disk is locked because it can't chkdsk the system disk?

To be honest I'm not sure about that. But I'm wondering if maybe the drive or cable is suspect?

 

[gizmo1990]

Thanks again @darael I've managed to get a reply from Microsoft's community forum. Apparently they suspect it might be related to the version I upgraded to which (apparently) is the dreaded v2004. It's the first I've heard about it, but a quick google reveals an INSANE amount of problems with the update.

Does anyone know how I can rollback to a previous win10 version? The media create on Microsoft's site includes the 2004 update, hence why I might still be getting this BSOD.