I leave my computer running for long stretches because it also acts as a plex server. I turned my monitor on last night to open steam, and the window didnāt render in; I didnāt think much of it, but before I could restart my PC, I got a āmemory managementā BSOD. I turned off XMP, as well as taking out each RAM stick, but I continued to get BSODs. Either āmemory managementā or ācritical process errorā. Some other things Iāve attempted:
I canāt reset the PC; when I try, Iām told āthere was a problem resetting your PCā.
I canāt use a system restore point; that also fails.
When I open the terminal and run
sfc /scannow
it finds and fixes corrupt system files every single time (Iāve attempted 3 times now), but I still get a ācritical process errorā BSOD.
I attempted running
DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth
before āsfcā but this got an error 87 and didnāt work.
When I turn on the PC, my lights for DRAM and VGA stay lit up for maybe 5-10 seconds, but turn off while Iām in BIOS or the windows startup repair screen (and my monitor is plugged into the graphics card; my CPU canāt do display out).
Iām at a bit of a loss here. My next guess would be to attempt to reinstall windows, but I donāt have another windows PC handy to create bootable media, so Iām hoping I have a thumb drive laying around with an ISO on it, or Iāll need to wait to get one from a friend.
Also, in the event that reinstalling windows is the fix, should I disconnect the drives holding my plex media beforehand? Wouldnāt want to risk them getting wiped
An update: I have a drive with installation media for Windows 10 laying around, but when I got to the point where it was installing files on my boot drive, partway through it said it didnāt have the required files and cancelled.
THE FIX: Turns out it was an issue with my RAM. I plugged in a thumb drive containing memtest, and after running the test received a ton of errors. Swapping in a new RAM kit seems to have totally resolved my issues. The PC boots up perfectly fine now
Fwiw, this wasnāt in windows but the problem was a little similar, I once debugged a hardware problem for weeks until I finally found out that the cpu had crapped out for some reason. I managed to have it swapped on warranty and all was well.
Iād even changed the motherboard (and ram, and psu) at one point and was running out of ideas, the cpu was the last possibility.
Just to say that it can be many things.
But the ram is definitely the usual culprit.
Hereās hoping itās RAM (memtest seems to suggest so); thankfully DDR4 is probably as cheap as it will ever be right now
Suggestion: Look up the mobo and download the tested memory modules for it. In there youāll find part numbers compatible with the mobo that you can shop for online.
The QVL! Appreciate the reminder