What is causing my computer to BSOD at random times?

Anonymous
2024-12-06T20:22:37+00:00

I have a custom built gaming PC that has recently been blue screening randomly and it seems completely unprompted. It happens when I'm in the middle of a game, or when I'm working on a Word document with Spotify playing, or when I'm browsing google chrome with nothing else open. I don't know what could be causing it.

The error I get is always "KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED"

I recently had an issue where my computer would BSOD with the same error every time I woke it up from sleep mode. I got a warranty replacement for my RAM and that fixed that issue. These BSODs seem to be caused by something else. This also means that I find it highly unlikely that there's something wrong with my RAM.

Here is a link to the dump files I've gathered so far. I will add more as my computer continues to crash. It happens once every few hours, it seems.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1_QM2imGRMNnQtNsdU8W98a16JUMTyj0d?usp=sharing

Does anybody know what could be causing this issue? Do the dump files point to anything specifically that could be causing the crashes?

Thank you

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Performance and system failures

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  1. Anonymous
    2025-01-06T09:20:00+00:00

    This only disables the usermode CET. The bit will be left "on" if Core Isolation is enabled, because Win10 is able to use the kernel shadow stack security feature ... and will do it... therefore Core Isolation with Intel CET hardware should result in CR4.CET bit set to 1 for system thread.

    You could switch off Core Isolation and then do the advise above. Although the watchdog BSOD is unrelated!

    Or, perhaps it's just time to move on to Win11 24H2 (you know you can upgrade for free and Win10 is dying on October 2025, in a few month, anyway?). ;-)

    ==========

    The watchdog bsod is unrelated. It happened on Processor 3, and it seems to be related to the network driver. There is a pending DPC for tcpip. More information isn't available in the minidump.

    Is there any network filter driver installed? (keyword "filter"?). Alternatively, is there a killer network driver? (Killer Gigabit network driver is a popular gaming network driver, albeit known to cause trouble on modern Windows OS. Perhaps the latest version resolve the issue but you can disable the "killer" driver, because it is not the real networking bus driver, it is an optional high level driver.)

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-12-25T21:01:37+00:00

    Hello Alex,

    If you are still incurring frequent crashes of the type that we have been investigating, then you could try issuing the following command:

    bcdedit /set xsaveremovefeature 0x800

    The setting will only take effect after a reboot. It should disable setting of the CR4.CET bit, which seems to cause PatchGuard problems.

    I am still investigating the issue; the setting above is my current "best guess". I don't think that the setting will cause any problems, but I am not certain. Just try it if you need to do something to tackle an acute problem.

    Gary

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-12-23T10:06:59+00:00

    Hello Alex,

    The DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION crash seems to be unrelated.

    I still have lots of work to do to understand the low-level, hardware-specific features/details of the Windows kernel. The problem is now looking more like a Microsoft Windows bug to me, but one needs to acquire a very good understanding of the problem along with verifiable evidence if one is to have any hope of getting the problem resolved.

    Gary

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  4. Anonymous
    2024-12-22T20:10:00+00:00

    Hello Gary and vivs_lunchtime,

    I have an update. After almost a week of no BSoDs, my computer just now crashed while I was downloading a game. The error code this time was DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION. Maybe it was completely unrelated, but if it does pertain to the CET issue maybe the dump will offer some insight.

    I uploaded the minidump file to the google drive.

    Best,

    Alex J

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  5. Anonymous
    2024-12-19T16:43:39+00:00

    Hi Gary and vivs_lunchtime,

    I just uploaded a zip file with all of the drivers you asked for. In addition I'll give you guys an update. Since turning on Core Isolation on Monday I have not had any BSoDs, and I've used my computer pretty extensively during this time. I'll give an update if anything changes.

    Thank you again very much for your help. It seems like we're very close to understanding the root cause of the issue!

    Best,

    Alex J

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