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BSOD on regular inteveral (1hr), not producing Minidump
Alright, so this has been a truly exhausting and daunting task trying to resolve my BSOD issue. So I will start from the top.
My computer started randomly BSODing earlier this week, giving me the error: "A process or thread crucial to system operation has unexpectedly exited or been terminated." with STOP: 0xF4 and first parameter 0x3. The subsequent reboot of the system then gave me a black screen that said Windows Failed to Start. I simply had to power it off and back on to get it working again. The first thing I did was run windows repair off of my CD. It said it found the error: "Boot manager failed to find OS loader." and fixed it.
I got more BSODs, and the black screen would still come after the restart and tell me that Windows failed to start, but this time it gave me a File: "\windows\system32\winload.exe" and told me that that file was either missing or corrupt. It also said the Status: "0xc000000e" So I tried to rebuild my BCD by using the command prompt in windows repair. I ran the following commands:
Bootrec /fixmbr
Bootrec /Fixboot
Bootrec /RebuildBcd
And Bootrec/RebuildBcd told me that it found 0 windows installations. This was a major red flag.
I got the same BSOD and subsequent Windows fail to start message with the same File and Status, so I then tried to export and delete the BCD and then rebuild it by using the following commands:
bcdedit /export C:\BCD_Backup
c:
cd boot
attrib bcd -s -h -r
ren c:\boot\bcd bcd.old
Bootrec /RebuildBcd
This time it said it had found 1 windows installation and and that it successfully executed. It then prompted me with a question that I wasn't sure of, I can't remember exactly what it sad, but it was a question about adding something to something, and the options were Yes, No, or All. I chose Yes. Then I restarted.
I got yet another BSOD, but this time there was no File specified, but the Status remained the same (0xc000000e). So I went back into startup repair and I was about to repeat the same process. I executed:
bcdedit /export C:\BCD_Backup
c:
cd boot
attrib bcd -s -h -r
ren c:\boot\bcd bcd.old
But when I got to the 'ren' instruction, it told me "A duplicate file name exists, or the file could not be found." So I figured I accidentally created a duplicate copy of my exported bcd backup. I tried running Bootrec /RebuildBcd and once again, it told me I had 0 windows installations. So to this day I haven't been able to work around that. I instead tried other approaches.
I gave a quick check to my Boot tab of MSConfig, and it does in fact list Windows 7 on my C drive as my OS.
I read that 0x3 is almost certainly an indicator of hardware failure, so I did some further investigation into my hardware. I ran memtest86+ overnight, and it had 9 passes with 0 errors. I tried to run SeaTools DOS, but it also couldn't recognize any drives. I then ran a chkdsk on all of my drives, even though 4 of them are partitions of my 500GB HDD. All drives came back fine.
Then I started getting KERNAL_DATA_INPAGE_ERRORs, with STOP: 0xF4 and again with first parameter 0x3. The subsequent restart again informed me that my Windows had failed to start. I checked my Event Viewer and it showed some errors with nvidia-related files. I noticed I no longer had my nvidia icon on my taskbar, and that if I accessed my Nvidia Control Panel and tried to run an update, it would crash. So I completely uninstalled my Nvidia drivers and software and reinstalled all of them. That particular event got fixed.
Then I got another KERNAL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR and checked my Event Viewer to find out that there was an issue regarding my Intel Smart Connect Technology. I read that this can actually be a root cause of these BSODs, and that I should update the driver for it. So I uninstalled my old ISCT driver and installed a newer one. It was a significant update, from version 2.0 of the software to version 3.0. I should note that I got the new (3.0) drivers from another motherboard's (MSI) support website, as mine (ASRock) still only had version 2.0 hosted. After installing the new driver, those errors stopped occurring.
I still kept getting BSODs though, sometimes they would be "A process or thread crucial..." and sometimes they would be KERNEL_DATA_INPUT_ERROR. Also, the stop messages would vary between 0xF4 and 0x7A, but still have 0x3 as the first parameter. Also, occasionally it would list a file. I've seen both ntsf.sys and volmgrx.sys, though there might have been others since I'm not always around for the BSOD itself, but rather come back to the subsequent black screen telling me Windows failed to boot. A VERY significant piece of information though is that from THIS point on, the crashes no longer got logged in my Event Viewer under Applications. There was a record of the fact that a crash occurred, along with a timestamp for it, in the System log, but nothing in the Application log.
I then tried updating my operating system SSD's firmware. It is a Crucial M4 64GB SSD, and it's about 2 and a half years old now. When I ran the .exe to perform the update, it restarted my sytem, and after POST I got that black screen again telling me Windows failed to start. It cited a File: "\grldr.mbr" and stated that it is either missing or corrupt. It also gave me a different status than before, "0xc000000f". So I gave up on that.
Next I tried clearing my CMOS to see if that might help. After successfully clearing CMOS, nothing has changed.
The most recent thing I tried was setting the page file to no page file, rebooting, then setting it back to automatic, and rebooting. I figured this might fix any bad blocks in the page file if I had any. I still get BSODs, unfortunately.
One thing that baffles me is that when I found these forums, got everything set up for your SF Diagnostic Tool, and that included establishing a mini dump folder. I had it previously set as a Kernel dump. I set it up and restarted, and the BSODs that have occurred since then haven't created a single mini-dump. It hasn't even created the Minidump folder where it should be.
My page file is set at a system-managed size of 8GB, which is how much RAM I have. Shouldn't it be considerably lower? Maybe it's a piece of software I have somewhere that came with my SSD or motherboard drivers. But my minidump folder is set to only 256K. Could that be my problem?
One final, very important detail about the behavior of my BSODs is their regularity. They occur roughly about an hour after restarting my machine, very consistently. This could be a big clue as to what's causing it.
So I'm still getting my BSODS, the last one I got was "A process or thread crucial..." with STOP: 0xF4. The exact parameters on this last one were (0x3, 0xFFFFFA8008B21B30, 0xFFFFFA8008B21E10, 0xFFFFF800033C9350)
I just have no idea what could be causing this. The 0x3 parameter is typically a hardware issue, but my hardware has passed all the tests. I don't get it. I mean I guess I didn't test my GPU but I highly doubt it would cause such behavior.
Notes:
- I have tried recalling everything with as much accuracy as possible because this is a very peculiar error, but this is a summary of ALL of my attempts to repair this spanning the past few days, and there's a chance I might have one or two of my events slightly out of order. In the grand scheme of things, I don't think it makes too much of a difference.
- I have not installed any new hardware since January.
- My full system specs are in my profile
I'm sorry I can't present a Minidump as my computer isn't logging them, but I've provided the rest of the files gathered by your diagnostic tool. I appreciate any and all help.