Several issues and failures are partially reduced through increased load.
Several issues and failures are partially reduced through increased load.
Before diving into the feedback, I’ve got the newest drivers and have recently reinstalled Windows. If you still believe there’s a hidden driver I missed, feel free to share. Over the past couple of years, my computer has faced several recurring problems. Here’s what I’ve experienced in order:
1. STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION on YouTube, tab crashes (less frequent after initial months)
2. Blue screens (BSOD) – happening multiple times daily (see details below)
3. Random restarts (occurs weekly)
4. The PC switches to a slideshow, about 5 seconds per frame (extremely rare, intermittent)
5. Game or Chrome closes abruptly, only during idle with the game running in the background (rare, but growing)
6. Complete freeze – no input possible (very uncommon)
7. Windows File Explorer becomes unresponsive and loads slowly (daily occurrences)
What stands out is that I never get a blue screen while gaming. To test this, I kept a game open in the background, and it worked perfectly. Among all the games I’ve tried, Dota Underlords performs best on its own. Each time I start the PC, I rush to launch Dota Underlords before a crash appears. Notably, even when the game is active, I still need to engage with the system to prevent the blue screens. I can sit for hours watching YouTube or similar content without issues, but stepping away for just two minutes leads me back to a freshly restarted machine. Recently, this pattern has worsened – the problems keep getting worse, and Dota Underlords crashes on its own, showing a spike in GPU usage in Task Manager, which often results in a blue screen shortly after.
I’ve tried various fixes: running Civilization 6 alongside the game, cleaning the PC thoroughly, replacing SATA ports, swapping SSDs, and even installing a brand-new operating system (MX Linux). The results were disappointing – no improvement. While the system doesn’t crash during self-restart, browsers like Firefox and Chrome freeze or close instantly. It seems loading affects them differently than Windows.
My final thoughts lean toward a Windows-related issue or a disk problem. The recurring error codes suggest corruption or issues with security software. Recently, Windows Defender has been reporting scan results six times without finding anything. I cleaned the hardware physically, changed components, and even used a brand-new drive, but nothing changed. Now, even simple tasks like downloading or opening Discord cause consistent freezes. Browsing feels stable when idle, yet it’s impossible to interact with the system. Listening to LTG is my only remaining option.
Here’s a summary of the most frequent error messages I’ve gathered:
- System_service_exception (sometimes alone, sometimes with extra codes)
- irql_not_less_or_equal – Kernel lock during termination
- Memory management issues (PFN_list_corrupt)
- Mountmgr.sys failure or Ntfs.sys service exceptions
- Fltmgr.sys and Wdfilter.sys registry errors
- Kernel mode violations, stack buffer overflows
- Driver overrun and stack corruption warnings
While the PC remains stable when idle, I’m still unable to perform any actions.
A helpful user on r/techsupport analyzed the dump files and identified a faulty CPU core. Turning it off and adjusting settings in Ryzen Master resolved the problem. Fix achieved!