I recently put together a gaming PC, and it's been running smoothly for about three weeks. All my parts are new and were bought from Microcenter. The specs are: AMD Ryzen 7700X CPU, Gigabyte B650 X AX V2 motherboard, 32GB G. Skill Flare X5 DDR5-6000 RAM, PowerColor Radeon 7900XT GPU, Inland Pro Performance 2TB SSD, Corsair RM850e PSU, all in a Montech 930 Air Max case, running Windows 11 Pro.
However, when I powered on my PC yesterday, I was hit with a series of BSODs, including Kernel Heap Mode Failure, NMI Hardware Failure, and System Thread Exception Not Handled, among others. I also encountered Windows error code 0xc000009a, which was pretty alarming. After these crashes, my PC booted into recovery mode.
I've already run a system file check (SFC), which reported no issues, but Windows Memory Diagnostic indicated "Hardware Issues Detected." I can access the BIOS, but I crash to BSOD shortly after booting into Windows. I've read that these crashes might be driver-related, but I can't update them since the system crashes too quickly. I also noticed that I played two new games from Steam the day before the issues started – Doom and Warhammer 40K – and I wonder if the anti-cheat software from Warhammer could be the culprit. I'm planning to boot into safe mode later today to see if I can figure things out. Any advice before I consider taking it back to Microcenter?
2 Answers
It sounds like a frustrating situation! First off, getting crash dump files can really help with diagnosing BSOD issues. If you can boot into Windows or Safe Mode, check the C:WindowsMinidump folder for any dump files. Zipping them up and sharing via a file hosting service can provide insights. Having multiple dump files is ideal for a more thorough analysis, so if you only find one, consider following a guide to adjust the dump settings for future crashes. Good luck!
You should definitely run Memtest86 to further diagnose your RAM. The built-in Windows tool flagged issues but didn’t specify which ones. Memtest86 will give you a better picture of what’s going on. Just to be safe, try running it overnight to see if it detects any errors – that's often a culprit in BSOD events.
I’ve seen that suggested too! I’ll give it a shot. Thanks for the tip!