Pre-built PC constant crashes

jamesowens356

Active member
Hello,

I purchased a pre-built PC from PCSpecialist and have had non stop issues with it. I have installed my own GPU, USB card and aftermarket CPU fan however the card was fine in my previous PC, the fan temperatures are not overly hot and the crashes were happening before I installed the USB card. The RAM in the PC is overclocked FYI, but nothing else is.

The issues range from BSOD with various error codes (logs attached) to games crashing to my PC entirely or freezing in the middle of a game with absolutely nothing being responsive (even the keyboard caps light does not respond to the caps lock being pressed) leading me to have to hard restart the PC. There are also lots of errors in my reliability history and event viewer, which worries me.

The games I play are World of Warcraft and Valorant and have experienced issues in both however it is much rarer in World of Warcraft and fairly frequently in Valorant. I believe the kernel level driver for the Valorant anti-cheat Vanguard is somehow causing my PC to crash however that is just a hunch.

I have tried nearly everything I can possibly find to try and diagnose and fix this issue myself but nothing works. For reference I have uninstalled and re-installed Valorant and reset my PC using the windows tool to reinstall a clean OS. I have also confirmed that my BIOS version is up to date.

I will attach my MEMORY dump file which should contain the logs for the last 4 BSOD's I have had.

Here is an image of my reliability history to highlight the non stop issues - is this normal?

They are all either hardware errors or system shutdown unexpectedly. The one from yesterday has the information:
Problem signature
Problem Event Name: LiveKernelEvent
Code: 144
Parameter 1: 3003
Parameter 2: fffff88b968a86b0
Parameter 3: 40010002
Parameter 4: 0
OS version: 10_0_18363
Service Pack: 0_0
Product: 256_1
OS Version: 10.0.18363.2.0.0.256.48
Locale ID: 2057


Any and all help will be appreciated and I will try and reply as quickly as possibly with any extra information that you need.

Thank you!
 

Attachments

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Last edited:

jamesowens356

Active member
Sure.

Processor (CPU)AMD Ryzen 5 3600 Six Core CPU (3.6GHz-4.2GHz/36MB CACHE/AM4)
MotherboardGigabyte B450 AORUS ELITE: DDR4, USB 3.1 - RGB Ready
Memory (RAM)16GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3200MHz (2 x 8GB)
Graphics CardNONE, I ALREADY HAVE A GRAPHICS CARD
1st Storage Drive1TB PCS 2.5" SSD, SATA 6 Gb (520MB/R, 470MB/W)
DVD/BLU-RAY DriveNOT REQUIRED
Power SupplyCORSAIR 650W TXm SERIES™ SEMI-MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor CoolingSTANDARD AMD CPU COOLER
Thermal PasteSTANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound CardONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired NetworkingWIRELESS 802.11N 300Mbps/2.4GHz PCI-E CARD
USB/Thunderbolt OptionsMIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS

Installed separately:

Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 8GB
Scythe SCMG-5PCGH Mugen 5 "PCGH Edition" CPU Cooler
Inateck Superspeed 4 Ports PCI-E to USB 3.0 Expansion Card
 

jamesowens356

Active member
It's not overclocked to anything, it's just that XMP is enabled so that the full speed can be made use of. The mobo only supports 2400 by default. It was enabled on build not by me
 

ubuysa

The BSOD Doctor
Sorry for the delay, I did look at your dumps last night but was distracted by something else.

Your problems seem all to be driver related. That livekernelevent error is almost always a graphs driver problem.

Of your dumps:
051820-5453-01.dmp is a driver error. In this case it's vgk.sys, which is a driver in Valorant's anti-cheat system
051920-224406-01.dmp is a Windows kernel error. The failing reason is APC_INDEX_MISMTACH and that's almost always a driver error, although the process in control at the time was chrome.exe - a Chromium based browser.
052520-18859-01.dmp is also a Windows kernel error. The failing reason here is INTERNAL_POWER_ERROR but one of the arguments indicates that this was caused by a problem reading the hibernation file. Did this happen when resuming from hibernation?
053020-18109-01.dmp is also a Windows kernel error. The failing reason here is PFN_LIST_CORRUPT, this is a memory management failure. The process in control at the time was wow.exe - WOW of course.

All of these could be (and I suspect are) driver problems, most likely the graphics driver I would think. That said, you said this...

reset my PC using the windows tool to reinstall a clean OS

...and that doesn't give you a clean OS, it simply rebuilds the OS you already have from the existing install files and drivers. That's not good enough.

You need to do a completely clean install from bootable media. I would suggest that you download the latest version of Windows 10 to a bootable USB stick (via the Media Creation Tool), boot that USB stick, choose a custom install, delete all system partitions (EFI, MSR, Recovery, Windows), select the unallocated space that results and click the Next button. The installer will create the correct partition structure and install Windows. Then run Windows update repeatedly (even across reboots) until no more updates are found. You may need to locate the latest driver for your graphics card from Nvidia and install that.

That will give you a clean and stable operating system platform. See how it goes then.
 

jamesowens356

Active member
Sorry for the delay, I did look at your dumps last night but was distracted by something else.

Your problems seem all to be driver related. That livekernelevent error is almost always a graphs driver problem.

Of your dumps:
051820-5453-01.dmp is a driver error. In this case it's vgk.sys, which is a driver in Valorant's anti-cheat system
051920-224406-01.dmp is a Windows kernel error. The failing reason is APC_INDEX_MISMTACH and that's almost always a driver error, although the process in control at the time was chrome.exe - a Chromium based browser.
052520-18859-01.dmp is also a Windows kernel error. The failing reason here is INTERNAL_POWER_ERROR but one of the arguments indicates that this was caused by a problem reading the hibernation file. Did this happen when resuming from hibernation?
053020-18109-01.dmp is also a Windows kernel error. The failing reason here is PFN_LIST_CORRUPT, this is a memory management failure. The process in control at the time was wow.exe - WOW of course.

All of these could be (and I suspect are) driver problems, most likely the graphics driver I would think. That said, you said this...



...and that doesn't give you a clean OS, it simply rebuilds the OS you already have from the existing install files and drivers. That's not good enough.

You need to do a completely clean install from bootable media. I would suggest that you download the latest version of Windows 10 to a bootable USB stick (via the Media Creation Tool), boot that USB stick, choose a custom install, delete all system partitions (EFI, MSR, Recovery, Windows), select the unallocated space that results and click the Next button. The installer will create the correct partition structure and install Windows. Then run Windows update repeatedly (even across reboots) until no more updates are found. You may need to locate the latest driver for your graphics card from Nvidia and install that.

That will give you a clean and stable operating system platform. See how it goes then.

OK, I will give this a go.
 

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
I ordered the system with Windows but unregistered. I then registered it upon arrival.
That's your problem then. You can't use the test windows PCS use, it's not configured, it's just used for testing.

You need to install windows and drivers from scratch to fully configure it.
 

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
Yes I am following the instructions from @ubuysa.
To be honest I did research when using the reset tool in Windows and it seemed that it should have been as good as a clean install but I must have been misinformed.
Ah, yes, forgot @ubuysa posted it.

Reset from windows is not a reinstall, it will have any defects that are present in that copy, the way ubuysa has posted is always the way that should be followed for a proper reinstall.
 
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