PC crashes completely randomly, PLEASE HELP

Question

This has been happening for about 2 weeks. It usually crashes every few hours.
I tried Pop!_OS (Linux) for 2 days and it didn't crash at all, but I didn't really like it and some programs weren't available there, so I formatted my SSD and switched back to windows 10, and now it crashes again. But who knows, maybe it's a hardware issue and I just got lucky in the first 2 days on linux.

There are 3 types of crashes that I experience:

1. BSOD: it's usually KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED or IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
2. completely random restart: my screen instantly goes black and starts booting into windows again.
3. complete freeze: absolutely nothing works, the screen is frozen, mouse cursor doesn't move, ctrl alt delete doesn't do anything, ctrl shift win B doesn't do anything, IIRC if there is audio playing while crashing it just audio loops. Hard restart is the only solution for this.

When 2 and 3 happen there is absolutely nothing in the event viewer, except for the regular unexpected shutdown (error event 6008) and reboot (critical event 41).
The reliability monitor usually says "windows stopped working" and "shut down unexpectedly"

All of the crashes described above happen completely randomly, no matter if I'm playing a game, watching a youtube video, or just not doing anything at all.

Things I've tried:

• disabling CPU overclock, GPU overclock, and XMP
• updating windows
• reinstalling windows
• updating BIOS
• ran driver verifier
• ran windows memory diagnostics
• ran CHKDSK
• ran SFC /SCANNOW

Things I haven't tried but I might try later:

• memtest
• reseating RAM/booting with only 1 stick
• installing windows 11 instead of windows 10 (I don't want to do this one)

I only have 2 minidumps since I reinstalled windows. I think I'm allowed to post a google drive link to the DMP files that I have, if I get any more I'll just upload them here:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/18vUZ5dqlDFIdd3q5ts3QrouBY_BSBWjY?usp=sharing

It's definitely not the cooling, because my CPU is ALWAYS below 67 Celsius, and my GPU is ALWAYS below 75 Celsius, even during benchmarks/stress tests.
I don't think it's my Corsair CV650 PSU, because I've only had it for 2.5 years and it's pretty overkill for my PC anyways (I think my PC uses less than 500 W even when overclocked).
If it is a hardware issue, I hope the broken component isn't very expensive to replace. I would hate to have to buy a new CPU, GPU or motherboard. Overall I think it's either a driver issue or my RAM going bad.

PC Specs:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 2600
GPU: Gigabyte GTX 1660 Super OC
Motherboard: MSI B450-A PRO MAX
RAM: Kingston HyperX 16GB DDR4 2400MHz
Storage 1: Kingston 500GB NVMe M.2
Storage 2: WD blue 1TB HDD
PSU: Corsair CV650

Answer 1

I think I might have figured out the source of the crashes. Right after I made my last reply, I thought I should unplug all of my peripherals except for the keyboard and plug them back in one by one with some time in between each one. The only USB device that I haven't plugged back in is the USB 2.0 bluetooth dongle, and so far my computer has not crashed even once in over 3 days.

Could it be the bluetooth dongle? or the bluetooth driver? USB 2.0 devices sometimes don't work well in USB 3.0 ports, maybe I had it plugged into a USB 3.0 port by accident? idk.

I hope the computer continues to run without crashing.

Answer 2

Okay, I will be waiting for te update.

Thanks.

Answer 3

Hi, thank you for the reply. Unfortunately, those are the only minidumps I have, because I reinstalled windows last night. As soon as my PC crashes again I will reply with a link to the new dump file.

Answer 4

Hi aliwalyd3,

I'm Paul and I'm here to help you with your concern.

The minidump files only indicated a system kernel driver "ntkrnlmp.exe". Since it's a system file it means something else drove it into a fault. It could be hardware, software, or driver.

We need further analysis.

Can you share other minidump files you have so that I analyze them also?

Thanks.