Issue with BSOD causing loop—seek advice.
Issue with BSOD causing loop—seek advice.
I reached out to you all as someone in need of direction, seeking help with this problem.
Last night, while watching television, I observed my workspace suddenly lighting up, thinking a system update and restart were happening. After roughly twenty minutes, the intermittent illumination persisted. At that stage, I realized my machine was trapped in a BSOD loop. I powered it down and restarted…only to encounter the blue screen again. Windows 10 automatically launched “Automatic Repair,” which then triggered another BSOD. It appears that any Windows-related activity leads to a BSOD.
BSOD Codes Observed:
I encountered various codes such as MEMORY_DUMP, IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL, SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED, FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA, etc. Sometimes the BSOD display text becomes distorted or incomplete, with spelling errors.
Troubleshooting Steps Taken:
1. Removed the GPU, extra SSD, and other peripherals, then tried booting through integrated graphics. The BSOD continued.
2. Swapped in new RAM sticks; the problem persisted despite replacing them. I also tried a different brand RAM, but it didn’t fix the issue. All sticks were tested individually on the motherboard, still resulting in the same loop.
3. Replaced the power supply unit to isolate the problem. A jumper test with a multimeter showed voltage levels below acceptable limits, prompting the replacement. The BSOD remained unchanged.
4. Considered a possible corrupted Windows update or driver. I performed a clean install of the M.2 drive, but the process ended with another BSOD upon restart. I also tried a fresh installation on the secondary SSD, which failed to resolve the matter.
Additional Observations:
My Corsair liquid cooler RGB no longer lights up—only the fan LEDs glow white, and the CPU cooler housing remains dark. This change occurred after the BSOD loop, suggesting it might be connected or unrelated. I also updated my BIOS to the latest version via MSI’s website, but I’m unable to share mini-dump files due to access issues.
Hardware Details:
- CPU: Intel Core i7-9700K 3.6 GHz, 8-core
- Cooler: Corsair H115i RGB PLATINUM 97 CFM
- Motherboard: MSI Z390-A PRO ATX LGA1151
- RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws V 32GB (2 x 16GB), DDR4-3200 CL16
- Storage: Samsung 970 Evo 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 X4 NVME
- SSD: Samsung 870 Evo 2 TB 2.5”
- Graphics: Gigabyte WINDFORCE OC 3X GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER 8GB
- Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA 750 G3 750W (Gold Certified)
It’s worth mentioning this PC was assembled in 2019 and has operated smoothly until now.
I'm thinking this is either a CPU or motherboard issue.
This
person had some success with tweaking their CPU voltages. I think the fan LED being white may be related to a motherboard issue if it had always been working before all the time and it started happening before your BIOS update. You can try breadboarding the system and physically inspecting everything, though you've already checked pretty much every other component.
Also, if you can get into recovery, you should be able to copy the dump files to a flash drive assuming you have another computer to upload them to a cloud storage provider on. Though, I don't think they'd help us at this point as we're pretty confident it's a hardware issue and have ruled out the majority of components.
It looks like the motherboard might be the issue, since it could account for bad RAM slots (as seen in failed memtest with both old and new RAM) and the liquid cooler problems. I thought others felt the same and that I wasn’t overlooking anything. LOL
Yes! I tried changing the old RAM, installing the new RAM (same type/model), and other new RAM (different brand) in the slots to see if it would boot, but I kept getting a BSOD. Then I decided to run MemTest on the new sticks, which revealed errors across all four, similar to what happened with the ones I removed earlier. I also forgot to reset the CMOS, which I’ve been trying to remember to do after all this troubleshooting.
Funny, I was just typing up one last thing to get you to short JBAT1 to clear the CMOS memory. But yeah, it seems pretty clear to me at this point that it's the CPU or motherboard. Motherboards tend to fail more often to my knowledge and there's not a reliable way to test only the CPU aside from dropping it into another computer, so I'd try replacing the motherboard then the CPU if that doesn't work.
Just as a note (because we all dread finding no answers), I bought a new motherboard and CPU—upgrades, of course—which definitely fixed the problem.
I tried to get a replacement Z390-A PRO, but the one that arrived had faulty capacitors, which ended up costing me.
For anyone facing a comparable situation, I regret not being able to offer a simpler fix! Thanks
@CodeConnoisseur
for being a good listener!