I've been facing some serious issues with my laptop lately. In just two days, I've experienced three different Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) error codes. The first one was DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE, which left me with a black screen saying "No operating system was found on the hard disk." My laptop has both an SSD and an HDD, but I've always booted from the SSD after formatting the HDD and installing Windows on it. I managed to boot from the SSD again using WinRE after this first error.
However, after using the laptop for a bit, I encountered a second BSOD: UNEXPECTED_STORE_EXCEPTION. Luckily, this time it restarted without issue. Today, I hit a third BSOD called CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED, and it's been stuck at 0% for around 45 minutes now.
I'm really concerned about what to do next. I tried looking for the minidump file after the second BSOD but couldn't find it. I'm wondering if a Windows reinstall might fix the issue, but I'm also reading that if it's a hardware problem, reinstalling won't help. How can I tell if my problem is software or hardware-related?
Just to give you more context, these errors started appearing a day after I uninstalled several applications and deleted a ton of files. Could that have caused these issues?
2 Answers
First off, you need to get those minidump files. They're crucial for diagnosing what's causing these BSODs. Try booting into Windows normally or in Safe Mode, then check the C:WindowsMinidump directory for any files. If you find some, zip them up and upload them to a file-sharing service like catbox.moe or mediafire.com. If you only have one file or none at all, follow this guide to change your settings to create Small Memory Dumps for future crashes. You want to gather as much info as possible before troubleshooting further.
When you mentioned deleting a lot of files, what exactly did you remove? Sometimes uninstalling apps and clearing out old files can lead to issues if you're deleting important system files by accident. You might want to check that you didn't mess with anything crucial. For instance, if you were deleting stuff from your OneDrive Documents folder, those files may be critical if that's where you stored some of your key projects. Keep that in mind when evaluating if these deletions might have affected your system.
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