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
    2024-12-15T05:19:27+00:00

    Hi Gary,

    I've enabled secure boot. It was already on in my bios but Windows didn't register that it was on. I had to switch the secure boot mode to custom and back to standard for it turn on correctly. My computer booted up without any issues. I will keep you updated if I run into any problems. I imagine the secure boot may prevent the malware from loading?

    Thank you

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-12-14T09:20:03+00:00

    Hello Alex,

    Your MeasuredBoot log file shows that "Secure Boot" is not turned on. It is enabled on my system and gives me some peace of mind:

    You can read about it here: Secure boot | Microsoft Learn

    Since reinstalling operating systems is quite a labour intensive task, it would be good to identify the source of the problem before embarking on such steps. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that we will be able to identify the source. Enabling and testing Secure Boot would hopefully eliminate a class of malware types.

    Gary

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-12-13T19:52:25+00:00

    Hi Gary and vivs_lunchtime,

    I only noticed one file from my most recent boot, which I uploaded to the folder. There was no json or other logs aside from the one I uploaded. Also thank you vivs_lunchtime for the heads up about the full dump file, I didn't realize it could contain sensitive data. I deleted it from my google drive right after reading that.

    In terms of the crashes, worst case scenario I can turn on core isolation if we can't figure out what's wrong with my system. There are still a couple of things I would still like to try, however. I just ran the driver verifier for a bit to see if it would cause a crash. A few weeks ago when I had bad RAM, turning on driver verifier caused my PC to BSoD around 30 seconds after booting, repeatedly. This behavior evidently has gone away since replacing my RAM.

    When I reinstalled windows I used an external hard drive to restore some folders that had data in them. I used Windows back-up service and then I restored those files using File History. I don't know if that may have allowed the malware (or potentially poorly written software) to carry over into my fresh installation of Windows. I intend to refresh Windows one more time and hold off on restoring those files to see if it will still BSoD. My other thoughts are that if its malware rooted in the motherboard software, could I flash my BIOS to get rid of it?

    Thank you both for all your help,

    Alex J

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  4. Anonymous
    2024-12-13T12:22:00+00:00

    Hello Alex,

    There is another set of data that you could perhaps provide - some logs of the boot process.

    The logs are in a "hidden" (system) folder. One way of zipping the logs is as follows:

    Enable the "Show hidden files, folders and drives" option in Explorer and then view the folder \Windows\Logs\MeasuredBoot.

    My last boot was the 555 (yours will be different). Select all of those files for your last boot and send them to a compressed file ("Compress to..." context menu option); finally, share that compressed file.

    This Microsoft article discusses this topic: Decode Measured Boot logs to track PCR changes - Windows Client | Microsoft Learn

    Gary

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  5. Anonymous
    2024-12-13T11:54:37+00:00

    Hello vivs_lunchtime,

    That number where you wrote "look here" (0ABCC77118461CEFDh, 0xABCC77118461CEFD) is probably not a random number - it appears in quite a few libraries. Here is an example: Fast power-of-10 division using multiply and shift magic constants in a look-up table instead of a costly division operation.

    Gary

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