BSOD ntoskrnl.exe

[grujea]

Hello there!

Could you please help me, I have a PC made mostly out of new components, and ever since I've made this configuration (almost two months) I've been getting some BSODs and PC freezes.
I use my PC for work, mostly in AutoCad, 3dsmax and Photoshop.

The BSODs, as far as I recall, appeared mostly after stressful conditions such as 3D renderings, but I can't say that I recognized a pattern as I've had a BSOD or two also when not rendering. Apart from the BSOD, two or three times my PC froze in such a way that even the Reset button wouldn't work (had to "reset" it by long-pressing the Power button) and a buzzing sound appeared in my headphones, although I wasn't playing anything.
I am not an advanced windows user, and this matter really goes beyond my knowledge of fixings windows issues. After researching the internet I've run Memtest86+ to check RAM (left it a couple of days working, hadn't got any errors), MemtestG80 to check video memory (reached about 3800 iterations, without any errors) and also reinstalled drivers that I suspected of being the culprit, but with no luck. I've also turned off the CPU overclocking and still got a BSOD and a freeze after that, so I believe overclocking is out of the question.
I've checked the minidumps with BlueScreenView, and apparently all crashes involves the ntoskrnl.exe.


I have the following configuration:

New components:
Mobo: Asus Z170-A
CPU: I7-6700K 4Ghz
RAM: Crucial Ballistix Sport LT 32GB DDR4 2400 Mhz
SSD: Kingston HyperX Savage 240 GB SATA-III
Case: Antec P280
CPU cooler: Arctic-Cooling Liquid Freezer 240

Reused components:
Video Card: PNY GTX 550 Ti
PSU: Chieftec APS-750c 750W

Windows 10 Pro 64bit


You have here the minidumps: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8roCU25P5U5VjF0T2Y1cHpoQ3c

I would be really thankful if you could help me, it's very frustrating for me to have a new PC that's acting like this...

 

[Regedit32]

Hi,

• Right-click on Task bar and select Task manager
• Click the Performance tab
• In left pane click Memory
  
  What is the reading on your Non-paged pool?
  
  Example image
  
  
  

While you are there: What's the Page pool reading too?

Also: What is the history of this computer? Did you upgrade from a former OS to Windows 10, or did you build this with Windows 10 being its first and only OS installed?

Some more thoughts: You mentioned you updated drivers you thought may be culprit?

• Which drivers?
• What made you decide they could be the issue? Did you use a utility like poolmon to analyze drivers to test if they may be the troublesome one?

Tweaking: You mentioned you reversed your overclocking. Have you at any time tweaked your Registry, via Registry Editor, or downloading a .REG file and merging it?

New Components: You listed there a new SSD drive. Was it SATA before then?

• Could you right-click on Start and select Command Prompt (Admin)
• In the Administrator: Command Prompt window that opens copy & paste the following:
  
  

  REG QUERY "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters"

  
  Pres Enter key to execute
  
  Reply with the details you see after executing command please.
  
  Example Image:
  
  
  

 

[Trouble]

Personally, I'd start with these drivers mostly bloatware that probably came on the motherboard disc and IMO should not have been installed unless absolutely needed and I can't imagine why.
AsUpIO.sys 8/2/2010 Some kind of ASUS hardware monitor
ASUSFILTER.sys 9/20/2011 Asus USB Hub filter driver, absolutely needs updating
AiChargerPlus.sys 4/18/2012 Asus Charger driver, known BSOD association
AsIO.sys 8/22/2012 Asus PC Probe
AND
Especially this one IOMap64.sys 10/22/2014 Asus Kernel Mode driver, probably associated with SMart Doctor or something similar.

UNEXPECTED_KERNEL_MODE_TRAP (7f)
This means a trap occurred in kernel mode, and it's a trap of a kind
that the kernel isn't allowed to have/catch (bound trap) or that
is always instant death (double fault).

I would uninstall any and all software that may have placed those five drivers on your machine and make sure that the drivers are uninstalled afterwards by checking C:\Windows\System32\Drivers
Judging by some of the dates they may have been present before you installed / upgraded to Windows 10

 

[grujea]

Hello and thank you once again for your interest!

​

@Regedit32

• the paged pool is 361 MB
• the non-paged pool is 142 MB

• Windows 10 is the first and only operating system installed on this computer, purchased at the same time with all other new components I mentioned in the OP. If I remember right, I assembled this PC and installed Windows and drivers somewhere between 2nd and 4th of April this year.

• I haven't checked the drivers with any application, just checked them manually in device manager, and tried installing the drivers from the manufacturers' sites (where I could find them) instead of the ones that were installed automatically by Windows. I did this at the advice of a customer support technician from the store where I ordered my new components, after explaining to him my problem on the phone... I can't remeber exactly all the drivers that I updated since I've done this a couple of weeks ago, but I am definitely sure about reinstalling the drivers from the Video Card, my Dell monitor and that I couldn't find a Kingston driver for my SSD, so I stuck with the Microsoft one.

• The only time I modified anything in the Registry Editor was to make my PC power on with NumLock on (which actually doesn't work always ). And I did this by following instructions found in an article on google, otherwise I wouldn't have had clue of how to do it. The overclocking was made via Asus's AI Suite 3 utility, which basically made the overclocking automatically (it reached 4700 Mhz). I've reversed it also through the same utility just by setting it to default.

• About the SSD, don't really know what do you mean when asking if there was SATA before then. Before when? All the new components were bought and assembled at the same time. It's basically a new PC with two exceptions (the video card and the PSU).
• Here is what the command prompt returned. Don't know why, but there is no EnableSuperfetch data:

​

I will also try what Trouble has suggested, just hope that it doesn't involve uninstalling the AI Suite 3, because I'd really like to overclock back my CPU, as it really helps my render times, which are important for my work.

 

[Regedit32]

Thanks for replying.

It helps to have the information.

In your case its good not to have EnabledSuperfetch as this is not required with solid state drives (SSDs).

Trouble's post is the route to take at this point. He is pointing you to drivers that more than likely are the root cause of your issue.

Your paged-pool versus non-paged pool results are good. That suggests we can rule out a memory leak there.

 

[grujea]

Hello guys,
I uninstalled all the bloatware Trouble suggested, but the IOMap64.sys is still in C:\Windows\System32\Drivers. So I was planning to reinstall Windows to get rid of it, but I couldn't make the time to do it yet. In the meantime I discovered a Bios update and I think that the update solved the problems as I hadn't had any problems since.
Hope this is the case, if not, I will go through with the Windows reinstall, and will keep you posted.
Thanks again for the help.

 

[Regedit32]

Thanks for the update grujea.

That sounds promising. Hope it continues to behave for you now.

 

[grujea]

Hello guys,

After over one year of problems with my PC, I've finally got it working...
It was a hardware problem, the PSU apparently was sub dimensioned...

Mounting a Corsair RM1000x PSU did the job! (I've also tried with a Corsair of 750W, but it was behaving the same)