My PC has been intermittently freezing or restarting while gaming for the past two or three years. The audio cuts out, and occasionally I see a BSOD for a fraction of a second before the system reboots. Other times it simply restarts, and no dump file is created. The crashes are inconsistent: demanding games can run fine while something lighter, such as Rocket League or Roblox, may trigger a crash when entering an actual match. I wondered whether the system could be compromised, although hardware or driver instability seems more likely. So far I have reinstalled Windows on the same drive, reset the BIOS to optimized defaults, disabled XMP, removed my GPU undervolt, reinstalled graphics drivers with DDU, reseated components, checked temperatures, updated the BIOS, and tested memory with both Windows Memory Diagnostic and four MemTest86 passes without errors. Previous stop codes included UNEXPECTED_STORE_EXCEPTION (0x154) and CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED (0xEF). Event Viewer also reported that dump creation failed during the crash. My hardware is an MSI RTX 3070 Gaming X Trio, Ryzen 5 5600X, 16GB DDR4-3200 memory, Corsair RM850x PSU, Aorus X470 Ultra Gaming motherboard, two NVMe SSDs, two hard drives, and Windows 11 Pro. What is the best way to narrow down the cause?
2 Answers
Reseating the NVMe drive is worth trying because a marginal M.2 connection can cause intermittent storage failures. Make sure it is fully inserted and secured, then check its health and temperature with a drive-monitoring utility. A reported health percentage and reasonable temperature do not completely rule out controller, firmware, cable, slot, or motherboard issues, so testing another M.2 slot or temporarily running with only the Windows drive connected may be useful. Also configure Windows to create small memory dumps and verify that the system drive has enough free space and that the page file is enabled; a sudden power loss or storage failure can prevent dump creation entirely.
The storage drive containing Windows would be one of the first things I would investigate. UNEXPECTED_STORE_EXCEPTION is often associated with storage or file-system problems, and CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED can occur when Windows cannot read something it needs. Run sfc /scannow and chkdsk /f /r from an elevated Command Prompt, disable Fast Startup temporarily, and check each SSD and hard drive for firmware updates. Since you have multiple drives, testing with nonessential drives disconnected can also help isolate the problem.
Thanks, I’ll test the drives and try disabling Fast Startup. I’ll also check their firmware and see whether the crashes change with the extra drives disconnected.
I reseated the SSD already, and its reported health is 81% with temperatures around 48–50°C. I’ll still check firmware, try another slot if possible, and test with the other drives disconnected.