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
Sounds like memory corruption. Before you do like the other poster said and run memtest, Iād suggest reseating the ram, possibly in different banks if you can, reseat the video card and then try again.
If you still get failures:
Always backup your important files!
Are there vendor tools that run off of a flash drive like memtest? I canāt boot into windows at all
Absolutely! Even memtest has a portable one.
https://www.memtest86.com/tech_creating-window.html
Thereās some to test the hardware and even SSD, but Iād need to know the ssd brand/vendor.
edit: Adding ultimate boot cd as another useful tool that can run on usb
https://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
Ultimate boot looks like an extremely useful tool, thanks for mentioning that. After testing each RAM stick in the primary slot for my MOBO, Iām running memtest and getting a lot of errors (now over 500 and still on pass 1)
Most RAM have a lifetime warranty, so please take a picture of the errors and use that to rma (return) to the memory maker for a free replacement.
In the meantime, consider buying new ram (unless you can wait 6 weeks for an rma return lol).
Itās DDR4 so not crazy expensive; I went ahead and got a new kit. Thanks for your help!