System problems appearing, difficulty locating the hardware problem
System problems appearing, difficulty locating the hardware problem
Hi, I’ve been using this setup for more than three years and have faced several stability issues. Frequent crashes and freezes started with a clock watchdog, then progressed to NTFS.sys. Freezes became more common when idle, and browser pages would crash with status access violations on Twitch and YouTube. After some troubleshooting, I realized USB drives weren’t working, the ISO mounting failed, and the Windows recovery partition was missing. Running the System File Checker and DISM fixed some errors, but problems continued. I decided to perform a clean Windows installation from a USB drive. The process took several attempts due to crashes, and once it worked, issues slowly returned over time. RAM tests with MemTest86 showed no errors, all drives were clean, but my NVMe had low health, so I replaced it. While replacing the thermal paste and rebuilding the system helped, I still faced freezing when trying to install Windows on the new NVMe—usually above 9%, except for rare 30%+ failures. I ordered a power supply tester to check the PSU tomorrow. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated as I’m running out of options and considering a motherboard and CPU upgrade.
The installation image came from a newly downloaded file from the Microsoft website. It wasn't sourced from any of your local drives.
However, if the PSU is bad and the BIOS update doesn't work, there will definitely be an issue. I considered checking the PSU first, though I'm not sure if that's wise.
I don't have a CPU, but I'm here to help with any questions you might have!
The BIOS update is fast and includes numerous significant improvements; it typically serves as the initial (first or second) phase, addressing onboard hardware concerns.