BSOD of hell

[Hulk'O'Saurus]

Hello,

I have a gaming MSI laptop - https://www.msi.com/Laptop/support/GT83VR-6RF-Titan-SLI.

The thing is about 3 years old now, but has always ran without issues. About 2 months ago it started giving off BSOD while in Windows 10 and during various activities, as well. I tried a number of easy for me things like a fresh Windows 10 install or a BIOS update. None of them worked.

I sent the unit over to MSI main depot. Their technician determined that it had a faulty sound board so they changed that and shipped it back. It came with a document stating that various hardware checks were made and passed, however the thing is still giving BSOD.

First thing - I tried getting in touch with MSI, but their lines are off for maintenance - something that is very common with them.

On Tom's Hardware's I got a reply saying that at first they thought it was temperature related, however I am getting BSOD'd while watching youtube or straight up idle desktop. They also pointed out that they expect MSI to have cleaned the vents and fans off - something that I myself have done over the years, as well. With a special electronic blower and immobilized fans, of course.

This is the stop code, btw:

Spoiler

I also got advised to test the laptop running with one RAM plate swapped out, or try memtest86.

 

[Korin]

1. The first thing that comes to mind is a driver conflict because I had some similar issues with my PC that started suddenly without any obvious changes being made. It turned out that Nvidia's sound drivers (for the Nvidia card I plug my HDMI into - HDMI does sound) were competing with the onboard sound drivers. If you reinstalled Windows and didn't update any other drivers (video, sound, etc) and it was still crashing I would say that it is 100% a hardware issue. If you did install all the other software I'd actually say reinstall Windows and just Windows. See if it will crash with nothing else installed or updated. If it doesn't crash then you can start looking at software problems.

2. Does the laptop crash when it is plugged into a power source? Does it crash when it isn't plugged in/charging? Another possible issue is a problem with the power supply, the battery, the cable. Something that would result in voltage changes could cause similar issues. It's also possible that this could happen if the laptop is being used in a place where there is a lot of static, as it will often discharge around USB and other ports which could cause strange behaviour.

3. Memtest is also a really good idea because RAM issues would cause problems like this as well.

4. Given that it's a gaming laptop it could be an overheating issue but that shouldn't manifest like this. Is it overclocked at all? In the start up BIOS you can turn down the CPU - usually there is some kind of option for "energy savings" which might affect the frequency of crashing.

5. Any kind of external device being plugged into the laptop could also cause these problems. I've had USB wifi sticks that suddenly started griefing me and would crash any computer they plugged into.

 

[Hulk'O'Saurus]

Thanks for replying!

2. Does the laptop crash when it is plugged into a power source? Does it crash when it isn't plugged in/charging? Another possible issue is a problem with the power supply, the battery, the cable. Something that would result in voltage changes could cause similar issues. It's also possible that this could happen if the laptop is being used in a place where there is a lot of static, as it will often discharge around USB and other ports which could cause strange behaviour.

It always did while plugged in.

I never considered this could be the issue, but I just put it on to watch something while unplugged, and it never crashed. Until the battery began running dry, of course - but no crashes. Usually it would crash after 10 minutes of work and quite consistently so, but now it was running for an hour. This might explain why the technicians didn't find anything else.

Considering I am now using my other laptop in the same environment as before, can it be static electricity? Feels like it's a faulty power supply.

4. Given that it's a gaming laptop it could be an overheating issue but that shouldn't manifest like this. Is it overclocked at all? In the start up BIOS you can turn down the CPU - usually there is some kind of option for "energy savings" which might affect the frequency of crashing.

The thing is factory overclocked. One thing I did when it started crashing was turning down the cpu speed. I didn't disable it through BIOS but rather used the settings provided by their Dragon Centre and used a lower clocks that way. Not good enough?

1. The first thing that comes to mind is a driver conflict because I had some similar issues with my PC that started suddenly without any obvious changes being made. It turned out that Nvidia's sound drivers (for the Nvidia card I plug my HDMI into - HDMI does sound) were competing with the onboard sound drivers. If you reinstalled Windows and didn't update any other drivers (video, sound, etc) and it was still crashing I would say that it is 100% a hardware issue. If you did install all the other software I'd actually say reinstall Windows and just Windows. See if it will crash with nothing else installed or updated. If it doesn't crash then you can start looking at software problems.

I can reinstall it again, no problem . I am using the reset function of Windows 10 which actually reinstalls an updated version of the OS together with a number of programs with which the unit came with from the factory - Nahamic, Dragon Centre, ect. I usually only put Nvidia Experience on and update gpu drivers.

 

[Korin]

I never considered this could be the issue, but I just put it on to watch something while unplugged, and it never crashed. Until the battery began running dry, of course - but no crashes. Usually it would crash after 10 minutes of work and quite consistently so, but now it was running for an hour. This might explain why the technicians didn't find anything else.

That sounds promising... I'd charge it to full and test it a bit more but sounds like that might be the culprit.

 

[Hulk'O'Saurus]

That sounds promising... I'd charge it to full and test it a bit more but sounds like that might be the culprit.

Ok...

BTW, thanks for the help, man . Appreciate it.

I did another test today to see whether unplugged will work further.

This is how it went:

I put the laptop to charge while switched off. Once charged I unplugged it and did stuff for about 40 minutes without any problem, then I remembered that it was set to switch off within 5 minutes of inactivity while on battery power. I went to control panel to change that and it froze - no BSOD. I plugged it in and switched it off/on then went back to doing something and it BSOD within 5 minutes while plugged in and it gave this stop code:

I plugged it off and wait for Windows to restart. It went BSOD twice on Windows startup, giving a WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR then it gave a message that Windows did not start properly at which point I selected restart anyways. It did go into Windows this time, but at that point I switched it off and went back to the drawing board

This is something coming from the Obsidian forums:

''Battery power is already DC, wall power is AC and has to be run through a transformer to get to DC? So if the transformer (or rectifier maybe?) is bad... it causes fluctuating current and the over/under volt protection in the laptop kicks in?

I mean, I would have thought that would cause outright crashes/dying rather than BSODs or revert to using battery power, but 'bad' power from a dying psu can give some pretty baffling symptoms as well. I've also had plenty of non computer stuff fix itself by changing a power cord.''

 

[Hulk'O'Saurus]

memtest86 ran for 7 hours plugged in and gave 0 errors in the end.

Managed to open bluescreenviewer in windows unplugged. It froze once in between but did not produce a dmp file. This what I managed to take:

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On first glance they all look like driver related issues.

If anything rings a bell...

 

[Hulk'O'Saurus]

Running under safe mode produced another BSOD, running under Diagnostic startup did not, although under Diagnostic you can't set computer sleep off, so I don't know if that is significant in any way.

Started it up under Ubuntu from flash and it has been stable for a few hours now, will keep it running for the day.

Probably will get a fresh Windows to USB and install all drivers from clean.

EDIT: I called MSI, as well. I wanted to try and restore the factory image, but it wasn't working. Instead they said that because I've shipped the unit recently for inspection I am entitled to a 3 months extended warranty period for free. They have stated somewhere in their documents that they do not handle software problems, although I do not know how the issue would be classified.

Opinions?

 

[Hulk'O'Saurus]

Installed fresh Windows from USB on top of the old installation without wiping the system drive first. It has probably used some of the old files and updates as it went to BSOD within the first 5 minutes of work.

Some time later I put that installation under Diagnostic Startup and used Device Manager to uninstall Video Adapter Drivers. I installed DirectX 11 after that and put it back under Normal Startup. DxDiag still shows DirectX 12 is installed, but Windows has been stable for a few hours now without crash/freeze/BSOD. I've disabled updates for now.