Persistent BSOD Errors

Question

I have had a recurring problem with a variety of BSOD errors going back about 18 months. They seem to come and go in frequency, sometimes being weeks apart and sometimes back to back, 3 or 4 in a day. This is on a personal desktop machine, so I've just put up with it. Every few months I get fed up enough to dig into it, but nothing I've tried seems to make any difference . . . no better and no worse. For a while I thought NordVPN was the culprit, since almost every time I tried to connect to a server I got a crash. However I've uninstalled NordVPN completely at this point, and the BSOD continues.

Things I've done to date include:

Clean install of Windows 10

Update to current BIOS

Update to current display drivers

Run Memcheck86 (8 passes, no errors)

I have uploaded all of the minidump files collected over that past couple months here:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/3nww9udz7sn08fczcbnos/h?rlkey=iypvj1jgaj8esx1m5uprkntv4&dl=0

Any suggestions would be welcome.

Answer 1

For anyone running across this in the future, the issue here turned out to be a bad CPU. It continued to get progressively worse until it wouldn't even complete booting Windows before it blue screened. It was trial and error to narrow it down to the CPU, though now that I know that was the problem there may have been some utilities that could have helped verify that sooner. By the time I considered the CPU as a problem, the performance was too bad to run any diagnostics.

Answer 2

Hello, David N_227

It's good to hear your thoughts on this issue. Since you suspect it might be a hardware problem and the memory check results came back fine, there are still some other diagnostics we could try to narrow down the source of the recurring BSOD errors related to memory. The Event Viewer can provide more detailed information about the system errors and logs that might give us clues about the root cause of the issue. You can access the Event Viewer by typing "Event Viewer" in the Windows search bar.

How to use Event Viewer | Microsoft Learn

And sometimes, outdated or corrupted chipset drivers can cause memory-related issues. Check if there are any updates available for your motherboard's chipset drivers on the manufacturer's official website and install them.

If your system has multiple RAM sticks, you can try removing one stick at a time and see if the BSOD errors persist. This can help identify if any specific RAM stick is causing the problem.

Also, overheating can also lead to system instability and BSOD errors. Ensure that your system is adequately cooled and the fans are functioning properly.

If you have any more information or updates after trying these steps, feel free to share them, and we can continue to troubleshoot the issue together.

Yuhao Li

Microsoft Community Technical Support

Answer 3

Yuhao Li,

Thank you for looking into this. You've confirmed what I thought I was seeing with WinDBG, which is that these don't seem to be related to one another, at least not in an obvious way. I don't have any security packages beyond what comes with Windows. I don't recall specifically if I kept files when I reinstalled Windows, but I assume that I would not have since I was trying to start over completely. I'm more and more convinced this is a hardware issue, and with so many of the errors being memory related the RAM seems the obvious place to start but the Memcheck came back fine. I'm at a loss for what other diagnostics to use to try to find the source of this.

Answer 4

Hello, David N_227

Welcome to Microsoft Community.

Based on the minidump files you provided, the processes causing the blue screen are varied, including NDivert.sys (a component of NordVPN), ntkrnlmp.exe (a Windows kernel file), luafv.sys (a Windows system component related to virtualization technology), amdkmdag.sys (a component of AMD graphics card driver), NETIO.SYS (a Windows network adapter component), partmgr.sys (a Windows component managing disk partitions), Wdfilter.sys (related to Windows Defender), win32kbase.sys (a system component), and hardware_ram (a component related to memory). It's uncertain what software is installed on your computer that would result in such unrelated blue screens. The most common scenario could involve security software, such as antivirus programs, as security software typically has extensive access to various parts of the computer. Do you have any security programs installed on your computer?

Additionally, you mentioned that you have reinstalled the system. Did you choose to keep your files during the reinstall, or did you start fresh without keeping any files? Reinstalling the system without keeping any files should not lead to frequent blue screens unless additional programs were installed afterward. However, if you kept your files during the reinstallation, the original files could potentially continue to trigger the blue screens.

Yuhao Li

Microsoft Community Technical Support