WHEA Logger - A fatal hardware error has occurred

Question

Hi there,

I've been trying to debug a WHEA error that I've gotten randomly since I've built my new PC running Windows 11.

Below are the details of the error from Event Viewer:

• <Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
• <System>
  <Provider Name="Microsoft-Windows-WHEA-Logger" Guid="{c26c4f3c-3f66-4e99-8f8a-39405cfed220}" />
  <EventID>1</EventID>
  <Version>0</Version>
  <Level>2</Level>
  <Task>0</Task>
  <Opcode>0</Opcode>
  <Keywords>0x8000000000000002</Keywords>
  <TimeCreated SystemTime="2022-07-21T16:33:41.8738293Z" />
  <EventRecordID>4913584</EventRecordID>
  <Correlation ActivityID="{d8f33aaf-c0ff-465a-a247-53210197c300}" />
  <Execution ProcessID="6356" ThreadID="7584" />
  <Channel>System</Channel>
  <Computer>Hidden</Computer>
  <Security UserID="S-1-5-19" />
  </System>
• <EventData>
  <Data Name="Length">272</Data>
  <Data Name="RawData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ata>
  </EventData>
  </Event>

This specific occurrence happened when turning my PC off, and no minidump was captured for me to analyse, however sometimes when I've been playing a game, my PC will hard crash with no BSOD, and I usually try read the dump when it boots back up.

Sometimes, a couple of my USB devices will randomly stop responding (some, not all) and I'll need to replug them in and I continue using it.

I've tried almost everything short of reinstalling Windows or swapping hardware, but if I recall I had a clean installation to start with.

• DISM & SFC report clean
• memtest86 running for a couple hours passes
• I've installed all missing drivers for exclamation devices in Device Manager

Any ideas would be appreciated

Answer 1

TLDR; Try formatting your hard drive and reinstalling Windows.

What I ended up doing as a last resort before RMA'ing some of my hardware was a complete format + reinstall of Windows on my primary SSD which did the trick. Looking back, I moved my SSD over from my old computer which may have had some conflicting drivers with my new setup - something I would have assumed would resolve itself.

Since I tried this, I've had a crash-free system. Apologies for the delay in posting an answer here, actually completely forgot I posted this question.

Answer 2

Have you solved this issue yet? What is the problem? May I know how to fix it? Sorry if I can't understand I'm not good at English.

Answer 3

Hello,
WHEA errors are hardware generated events that the OS Captures and displays in event viewer.
When your machine hard crashes, check the system event log for a Kernel Power Event 41 log entry.
Post the details of the that log event to this thread.

Answer 4

Hi there,

These crashes are related to memory corruption and are probably caused by a driver. You can follow these below articles to find the driver and memory leak which is causing you this BSOD.

Driver verifier is a utility built into the OS that will often find the driver/drivers that are the underlying cause of BSOD/Crashes.

Driver Verifier-- tracking down a mis-behaving driver.
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/driver-verifier-tracking-down-a-mis-behaving/f5cb4faf-556b-4b6d-95b3-c48669e4c983

Memtest is easy to use and is an accurate test of your computer memory. It can tell you if your memory is bad, a motherboard slot is bad, etc.

Memory problems.
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/memory-problems/21c3f63f-f570-4522-b2ef-ecc7b7ff6461

Once you find the faulty drivers you can then update or reinstall the specific driver to rectify this issue.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--If the reply is helpful, please Upvote and Accept it as an answer–

Answer 5

Hey all,

Just some updates from my side.

Additional things I tried over the weekend:

1. Swapping my two RAM sticks between their slots which produced unusual results. One RAM stick seemed to run the system fine, gaming produced no issues, the other seemed to have more issues.

This caused me to assume that the RAM is faulty, so I ran what I thought was a faulty stick through Windows Memory Diagnostic and Memtest86 for a while, all with passing tests. I put both sticks back in and ran both WMD and Memtest86 tests for a total of 14 hours, all tests passing.

2. My BIOS was definitely updated, and I then reset it to the optimized defaults. Without checking system stability, I then did a completely clean installation of Windows 11 (choosing the download + install option). I have only installed NVidea GeForce Experience and my display drivers, without installing ANYTHING else (other than my games). No audio drivers, chipset drivers, etc. All devices in my Device Manager seem to be picked up correctly.

My system has been stable for the last couple evenings, I haven't had a single peripheral disconnect, or a crash as I mentioned.

@Darrell Gorter - I did save all the logs and memory dumps I could before I did my reset, I filtered for that Event 41, here's the details:

- <Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">  
- <System>  
  <Provider Name="Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Power" Guid="{331c3b3a-2005-44c2-ac5e-77220c37d6b4}" />   
  <EventID>41</EventID>   
  <Version>8</Version>   
  <Level>1</Level>   
  <Task>63</Task>   
  <Opcode>0</Opcode>   
  <Keywords>0x8000400000000002</Keywords>   
  <TimeCreated SystemTime="2022-07-19T17:24:37.8107391Z" />   
  <EventRecordID>4912763</EventRecordID>   
  <Correlation />   
  <Execution ProcessID="4" ThreadID="8" />   
  <Channel>System</Channel>   
  <Computer>Redacted</Computer>   
  <Security UserID="S-1-5-18" />   
  </System>  
- <EventData>  
  <Data Name="BugcheckCode">230</Data>   
  <Data Name="BugcheckParameter1">0x26</Data>   
  <Data Name="BugcheckParameter2">0x0</Data>   
  <Data Name="BugcheckParameter3">0x401974eb</Data>   
  <Data Name="BugcheckParameter4">0x4</Data>   
  <Data Name="SleepInProgress">0</Data>   
  <Data Name="PowerButtonTimestamp">0</Data>   
  <Data Name="BootAppStatus">0</Data>   
  <Data Name="Checkpoint">0</Data>   
  <Data Name="ConnectedStandbyInProgress">false</Data>   
  <Data Name="SystemSleepTransitionsToOn">0</Data>   
  <Data Name="CsEntryScenarioInstanceId">7</Data>   
  <Data Name="BugcheckInfoFromEFI">false</Data>   
  <Data Name="CheckpointStatus">0</Data>   
  <Data Name="CsEntryScenarioInstanceIdV2">7</Data>   
  <Data Name="LongPowerButtonPressDetected">false</Data>   
  </EventData>  
  </Event>  

@Limitless Technology - Thanks for these suggestions, I'm going to bookmark these incase I have these issues again.