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Hello
I have a PC here with a very strange but reproducible issue:
So my assumption is that Windows will download some kind of faulty driver from the internet and by doing so permanently break itself.
I can reinstall Windows from the stick again and I will always see exactly the same. Machine runs 100% stable as long as you never connect it to the net. As soon as it's connected, Windows "self destructs".
What I tried:
I already disabled "Automatic Download of manufacturer's Apps..." which doesn't help.
I also disabled automatic driver install via Windows Update in the registry (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\DriverSearching) which indeed seems to prevent Windows from destructing itself after 30 - 90 seconds.
However as soon as you manually search for Windows updates, it will still download drivers & self destruct. So that's not really a solution.
Now how to further troubleshoot & solve such a ridiculous issue?
I'd like to find out which driver/device causes the problem but of course as soon as it starts downloading drivers from Windows Update it's like 10 drivers that get downloaded & installed at the same time so I can't really say which causes the problem. (Also after the initial crash it can't even boot into safe mode anymore.)
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What does the device manager look like before you check windows update?
It shows four devices without driver:
I have tried deactivating all of them before connecting the computer to the internet but unfortunately this doesn't help. (I had a similar case two years ago where deactivating those driverless devices would prevent Windows from destroying itself after connecting... but no luck this time)
Because the deactivation of this devices doesn't help in this case an assumption would be that in this case it's maybe a driver update for another device that already has a driver installed.
That’s true. What type of computer is it?
It's a custom build with an ASUS Strix Z390-E Gaming motherboard, 9th Generation Intel i9 CPU and RTX4070.
Tried to go to the device manufacturer sites, downloading their driver packages and installing them before running windows update?
I've considered it. Problem is that the ASUS website tends to give you a wild selection of drivers that might or might not be fitting for the board you selected... for example they provide the insane amount of 15 (!) different WiFi, 13 bluetooth and also 15 chipset drivers for that exact motheboard... among a ton of other drivers.
Also the most recent drivers that ASUS lists for that board's devices are typically from 2021, so I assume that Windows Update might overwrite them with newer versions anyway.
So I was hoping to find a possibility to narrow down which device is affected.
So it might look like there are 15 different drivers, but there are really mostly different versions of the same drivers. The newest version is at the top of the list. So grab one of each type of driver from the top of the list for your windows version and try it out ;)
Yeah, I'm trying that now. Just that the "newest version" provided there typically is two years old.
yeah, I see they are form 2021. The alternative is to see if there are direct intel drivers for the chipset. Without error codes this is the approach I would use to try to figure out the problem.
I would possibly also try to use something like pswindowsupdate (https://www.powershellgallery.com/packages/PSWindowsUpdate/2.2.0.3) to run one update at a time and thereby figuring out which update breaks windows.
Ok, now it's getting interesting. I now tried manually installing all relevant drivers and got the Bluescreen (with crippled Windows afterwards) during the installation of the latest nVidia driver from the nVidia website.
I didn't really consider the graphics card to be a probable culprit because the graphics card has already been replaced last week. (When the issues with the PC started, first assessment pointed to a possible issue with the graphics card. That's why we replaced it with a brand new card and therefore didn't consider it 'relevant' anymore.)
Now I'll probably do another re-install (probably number 10...) and put in yet another card to see if that changes anything.
If you’ve tried several graphic cards, it’s theoretically possible that it’s the pci-e port.
you could move it to another one if you have one available.
Yep, I'll try and report back. Given the "history" of the case I still think that it could be the motherboard in some way. Be it a defective PCI-E port, be it some incompatibility with the new card. (iirc the issue with the computer has been partially different before the card was replaced - but thing is I wasn't the only one working on that machine/gathering information so I might not have a 100% accurate picture of the history of that case.)
Sounds like an interesting challenge then. Please update, now I’m invested in this :D
Hehe, well, for me it starts getting more annoying then interesting.
Guess what: I put the card into the 2nd PCI-E slot and installed the nVidia driver. No crash this time.
Wow, we got it... I thought.
Afterwards I run Windows Update.
During the installation of the latest "2023-08 cummulative Windows 10 update" -> Crash -> BSOD Loop -> Windows self-destrcuted again.
Simply nothing in the diagnosis of this machine adds up.
So either the first time I installed the nVidia driver Windows has installed that other update in the background without me noticing it and the crash was just coincidentally at the same time as the driver install... or this is just a cursed pile full of multiple issues that come and go.
Then my suggestion is to use a way to install patches 1 by 1.
to figure out which patch it is that breaks things.
Ok, new development...
After the machine was bricked in an eternal BSOD-Loop again yesterday after the events depicted in my latest comment I went to bed.
Today I started the PC again and wanted to do another Windows reinstall.
Because I missed to hit the key for booting from the Windows install USB drive it went to booting Windows where it normally would BSOD again.
But it didn't.
Machine is now running without anymore updates available, 3 reboots, ~4 hours. No BSOD, no crash.
Problem is: when that machine first came to us it also ran perfectly for a whole day despite the owner saying it would not boot properly.. When we gave it back to him because no error could be found he called again the next day, saying that it did run fine for like two hours and then started making problems again. (iirc he said at first it would bluescreen every 5 to 30 minutes and eventually it wouldn't boot anymore at all). When it came back it also was in the state where it would already freeze/crash during boot.
So I'm 90% sure that if we return the machine to him the issues that have disappeared today will be back tomorrow.
Regarding to your last comment: well, at the try where it would survive the graphics driver install and later crash during update install there was only one update visible that was being installed when it crashed again. The one that I mentioned (2023-08 cummulative Windows 10 update thingy)... but today that update installed fine. It's just not consistent at all.
Starting to sound like either a memory issue or possibly the SSD. Like if something is trying to read a partially corrupted part of the drive, where writes are reported as ok.
Memory was one of my first suspects but the installed memory survives hours of memtest86 without throwing errors.
SSD shows no problems in self-diagnosis (checked S.M.A.R.T values & did a short S.M.A.R.T. test a couple of days ago) but of course self-diagnosis of SSDs is quite unreliable so an SSD problem could still be the case. I'll run a "long" test with smartmontools now.
Anyway, I think it would be extraordinary if I can install Windows like 10 times in a row without any error on that SSD and then as soon as it starts to update afterwards it would bluescreen in like 9 out of 10 cases... I'd expect a defective SSD to also cause issues in different circumstances.
The long SSD test also showed no errors, by the way.
Hmm, well by process of elimination, the only components left are the motherboard, the cpu and the psu. You could reseat and clean everything. But all of these are difficult to diagnose. Only way I know is to replace one of the components and check if everything else plays well together. I’ve had a similar problem turn out to be the psu once back in 2005. But I had to go buy a new motherboard to find out.
You could kill bluetooth and other things that doesn’t automatically have drivers in bios… just to see if the problem shows up on activation of hardware
The PSU has already been replaced. Was also one of the earlier ideas when the crashes would occur more "randomly" compared to later where they would occur more "consistently".
And we can't justify the cost of replacing motherboard and CPU without a consistent diagnosis. (If we replace Board & CPU we'd basically have replace 90% of the money value of the PC after graphics card and PSU already have been replaced.)
Anyway, the PC has now been running for almost two days without any more Bluescreens (we just don't know why), so it goes back to the owner because we can't diagnose further if the error isn't reproduceable anymore.
However I have the feeling that we'll see that thing again... ;-)
That's an annoying conclusion so far, but hopefully it stays stable now. Considering all the things you tested, my gut feeling says there's something with the motherboard, since you said it was more stable after moving the graphics card to a new slot, even though it wasn't fully stable afterwards.
Best of luck with it :D
So my feeling unfortunately was right.
I just have been told that the owner called this afternoon and is starting to see bluescreens again.
Haven't had the time to call back and get the details. Will report back.
So, here's the news.
The owner worked at the PC, installed a bit of software, suddenly PC bluescreened & rebooted.
It was then caught in the same "boot - crash - reboot - loop" that I have described above.
One or two days later he turned it on again. I booted normally into Windows. No crash. He uses it for a couple of minutes and turned it off.
Today it also boots normally into Windows.
Now the tells me that he had a similar kind of "symptoms" before: once the PC starts to go crazy, you wouldn't be able to use it. But as soon as you leave it turned off for an hour or so it "recovers".
Normally this would scream "overheating problem" to me. But in this case, given the whole story as described above, I'm rather skeptical. I also let him run CoreTemp which showed that the water cooling keeps the CPU steady at ~30°C in idle and it barely going up when putting a slight load on it. So I don't expect "surprises" under more heave load, even if this hasn't been tested yet.
If you can, have a look at the capacitors. If any are bulging.
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Hello
Safe mode starts Windows in a basic state, using a limited set of files and drivers. If a problem doesn't happen in safe mode, this means that default settings and basic device drivers aren't causing the issue. Observing Windows in safe mode enables you to narrow down the source of a problem, and can help you troubleshoot problems on your PC.
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Try performing Clean Boot and then connect to internet and see if the problem persists?
Have a look at:
If not , enable services one by one to see which one causing this problem.
