My husband's pre-built PC has been acting up recently. It started with minor issues like games not updating, but then Windows 11 stopped updating too, followed by troubles with the internet connection. The situation escalated when he started encountering frequent BSODs with the error code "DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION." I managed to temporarily fix it by booting into safe mode and updating the Wifi and Bluetooth drivers, which worked for a little while. However, after a failed game download attempt, he ran into more issues with updates, and now we're back to the BSOD error.
When trying to fix it again, I accidentally ended up in the UEFI BIOS and got stuck on a black screen. Hard restarting brings me to the login screen briefly before falling back into the BSOD loop. If I let it continue, it sometimes shows a blue troubleshoot screen, but any troubleshooting attempts fail. I have the same PC and have had no issues, so I could really use some clear advice on what to do next, especially since my tech knowledge is pretty basic. Help me understand like I'm five!
1 Answer
It sounds like your husband's PC could be having RAM issues. Since you mentioned you have the same setup without problems, you might want to run a memory test. A great tool for this is MemTest86. You’ll need to flash it onto a USB stick, as it runs outside of the regular operating system. If that finds no errors, you might have to dig deeper into diagnostics.
Can I still run this test if the PC won't boot past the login screen?