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Frequent BSODs, various types, can't set system to save Minidump
Hi,
I previously ran my computer with Windows 7 on a 240 GB Sandisk SSD Plus in SATA, with an Intel i7 6700K CPU, Asus Maximus Hero VIII and 4x4GB of RAM ; it worked generally fine, and I made extensive use of the hibernation function, usually not doing a full reboot for weeks or even months. Then I installed a Samsung 950 Pro NVMe / PCI-Express SSD (purchased used but it's perfectly operational according to HD Sentinel), and since then I've had several issues :
– Frequent system crashes / BSOD (after 2 to 5 days of hibernation / wake-up cycles) with no explanation, no error warning in Event viewer, no particular pattern, except that sometimes the display flickers briefly a few seconds before (and sometimes, if I put the system to sleep when I see this strange flickering, and then wake it up, there's no BSOD afterward, and then it can then stay stable for a few more days, or crash some hours later). I've had many types or error messages on the blue screen, the most common are : “SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION”, “PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA”, “PFN_LIST_CORRUPT”, “IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL”, “DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL”, “MEMORY_MANAGEMENT”, “BAD_POOL_HEADER”, “BAD_POOL_CALLER” ; sometimes there's also the name of a particular system file, most often win32k.sys, sometiles nfts.sys, and once recently fltmgr.sys.
– The delay of waking-up from hibernation is way longer than it used to be (I expected it to be blazingly fast with a NVMe SSD !), about 5 minutes on average, while the boot time seems about normal and the wake-up from sleep is almost instantaneous. When waking up from hibernation the Windows logo appears very slowly (~ 2 FPS), then remains displayed for 4-5 minutes while the storage device activity LED flickers continuously, then suddenly the password screen appears and I can access the desktop. It's puzzling because considering the read rate of this drive, at least 1500MB/s, it should take about 8 seconds to load the 12GB hiberfil.sys to memory, and 1 minute to parse the whole 100GB system partition (which has no reason to happen during start up as far as I know, even CHKDSK parses only key filesystem structures). Is there any way to know what is happening and why it's taking so long ? I found warnings regarding this slow wake-up time in the Event Viewer, under Diagnostics-Performance. On the other hand, when the system goes to hibernation the process if very quick, as it should (10-20s). As for storage devices, if it's any relevant, other than the SSD I usually have 4-6 HDDs (from 2TB to 8TB) connected simultaneously in SATA (two are always connected, the others can vary, none of them has SMART issues).
Other than that, I haven't noticed a spectacular performance improvement, it pretty much feels the same as before with regards to reactivity (only when I do something special like searching a keyword through the entire system partition with WinHex does it proceed much quicker, but even that is not a night-and-day difference) ; the only significant upside is that I now have an extra SATA port to plug an extra HDD... (Which is one of the reasons why I installed a PCI-E SSD in the first place, and also one of the reasons why I opted for that motherboard even though I'm not interested in current video games, as I tend to distrust external enclosures, which can make the drives run too hot, often have flimsy contacts and a poor quality power supply. But if that is the only improvement it's not worth the 80€ I paid for it.)
If I remember correctly, I originally cloned the Sandisk SATA SSD to the Samsung PCI-E SSD with GParted from a Lubuntu live system. I had to tinker with the UEFI settings quite a few times, don't remember exactly what I changed, only that it was a huge hassle. Since I didn't have the drive's documentation, I didn't even know that specific drivers were required ; I installed the most recent version and there is no warning in Device manager. Since I installed that drive at the end of the summer, I figured that maybe some of those issues could be caused by overheating (it reached a max. temperature of 64°C on August 9th 2019), but now it couldn't be a factor (according to HD Sentinel it hasn't reached more than 56°C this month and there's no correlation between the dates of highest temperatures and the dates of system failures).
So, what can I do to troubleshoot those issues, and fix them, short of going back to the SATA SSD ? (I'm not even sure if those issues are related to the NVMe SSD or if they somehow appeared around the same time I installed it.) Did I do something wrong, or something generally not advised ? In particular, is cloning a Windows system with GParted expected to work or are there known issues ? Are there specific known issues when cloning to a NVMe SSD ? Are there specific known issues with this particular model of SSD and this particular motherboard ? Could it be something else entirely ? On another forum there were suggestions about defective memory modules, or an insufficient / defective power supply, but both types of issues are unlikely to appear precisely when I installed the new drive. I've done a test of the memory modules with MemTest, but with all 4 sticks, and for one full cycle ; from what I've read, a test has to be much more thorough to be conclusive : testing each stick separately, each slot separately, for hours... Is this really necessary ?
Also, there are two major cumulative updates which failed to install, each time I tried :
2017-12 KB4054518
2020-01 KB4534310
Could this be related to any of those issues ?
Now, I'm aware that to analyze system failures you need a memory dump. But, for some reason, I can't set the system to save a “minidump”, if I try I get a warning message saying that the swap file is currently disabled or has a size inferior to 1MB, yet the swap file is managed by the system, and currently has a size of 1978MB, so I don't understand what the problem is. Is this a known problem ? How can I fix it ?
As an alternative, I've made pictures of almost every blue screen for months. Could it help with the diagnosis ? Below are the dates of each blue screen / system failure since the beginning of 2020, with the main error message, if any, and/or the concerned system file, if any.
Code:20200114 01h17 DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL 20200117 19h49 MEMORY_MANAGEMENT 20200120 11h28 IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL 20200121 05h53 SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION 20200126 01h57 PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA 20200127 23h40 DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL 20200130 12h30 volsnap.sys 20200131 22h59 BAD_POOL_CALLER 20200205 07h48 MEMORY_MANAGEMENT 20200206 13h27 ? 20200208 03h30 ? 20200208 13h38 PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA 20200210 00h15 PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA win32k.sys 20200210 05h07 ntfs.sys 20200214 00h16 DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL 20200214 13h13 ntfs.sys 20200215 00h56 PFN_LIST_CORRUPT 20200215 22h47 PFN_LIST_CORRUPT 20200216 16h40 IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL 20200216 23h10 SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION 20200217 15h09 IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL 20200218 19h22 ntfs.sys 20200222 03h30 SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION 20200222 06h30 IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL 20200224 18h48 SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION 20200225 17h30 CLFS.SYS "Modification of system code or a critical data structure was detected" 20200227 19h34 sans cause identifiée 20200229 02h12 IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL 20200301 03h25 ntfs.sys 20200306 02h44 BAD_POOL_HEADER 20200308 22h48 SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION 20200309 05h24 PAGEFAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA win32k.sys 20200312 02h46 MEMORY_MANAGEMENT 20200313 06h35 PAGEFAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA win32k.sys 20200315 08h47 SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION win32k.sys 20200317 03h15 BAD_POOL_CALLER 20200318 04h32 ? 20200319 04h32 PAGEFAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA fltmgr.sys 20200321 04h41 SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION
Many thanks in advance if it finally gets solved !
(I already tried to solve those issues months ago on another forum, without much success.)
EDIT : Right after I published this post, I went to edit it, then about 10-20s later Firefox crashed, and about 5s later the system crashed, with a blue screen mentioning “storport.sys”, a file I had never seen mentioned ever before.
Last edited by abolibibelot; 22 Mar 2020 at 06:55.
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