1
Open | HardwareLaptop is extremely unstable (crashes, freezing, restarts), suspect power management or EC issue (specs + logs inside post, TL;DR at bottom)(self.techsupport)
Hi r/techsupport !!!
First of all, apologies if this is the wrong place to ask about this. If so, p...
since 2 months, 3 weeks ago
3 of 3
Tip Reveddit Real-Time can notify you when your content is removed.
your account history
Tip Check if your account has any removed comments.
view my removed comments you are viewing a single comment's thread.
view all comments
It looks like memory from the dump files. Memory doesn't have to mean RAM, but it's usually the main suspect. Windows puts low priority data from RAM into the page file and loads it back in when needed so storage can look like memory (And memory can look like storage). The memory controller is in the CPU and if this fails it will just look like memory.
When it's storage about half of the dumps will usually blame storage or storage drivers, which I don't see here, so it's likely not storage.
If anything is overclocked or undervolted, remove it. Make sure nothing is overheating.
To test the RAM, use the machine normally with one stick at a time. If just one of the sticks cause crashes, faulty stick. If it crashes with either stick it's probably the CPU. Memory testers miss faulty RAM fairly often with DDR4 and newer so I don't trust them.
Thanks so much for looking into that! Really appreciate it :)
If you don't mind sharing, what tool(s) did you use to look at the minidumps? And is there anything specific that tipped you off that it's a memory issue? Would love to learn how you came to that conclusion out of curiosity!
WinDbg, made by Microsoft and it's free on the Windows Store. Determining if it's memory is a bit more tricky than other issues because the dump file will just show us what corrupted, which with a memory issue is completely random. So they will sometimes blame specific drivers, but they will very rarely blame the same driver multiple times. You will also see more direct memory related BSODs like Memory_Management, Kernel_Mode_Heap_Corruption, etc. One of our Discord mods (The Jim) made a beginner's guide to debugging on our Wiki.
When looking at what the dump file blames, a lot of people use the Image_Name and Module_Name. While those are correct about 90% of the time and they are easier to look for, it's not always accurate. Reading the Stack_Text is the best way of determining the issue, but it's harder for a beginner to understand the stack and there are also crash errors that don't have the information you need in the stack (And it won't be in the Image_Name or Module_Name either). These require running more commands manually to find the data you need. A beginner mistake is also to look at the Process_Name. The Process_Name is the active process from the crash, but processes can't write to kernel space memory and you only get BSODs from errors in kernel space. So the process listed here is usually not related at all. The process could tell a driver to do something stupid which causes a crash, but then the driver should show up in the stack. You only care about the Process_Name entry if it's the same process every single time.
As a general rule of thumb, it's memory if there isn't a pattern to the crashes. Lots of different crash errors and lots of different stuff being blamed. And the stack should have hints of memory corruption like a PageFault entry or other memory related commands (PageFault being by far the most common which is why I bring it up).