I've been dealing with some pesky BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) issues on our developer's PCs. Normally, I rely on tools like BlueScreenView and WinDBG to analyze minidumps or the memory.dmp file, and I've also tried looking through Event Viewer files, but those can be a nightmare to interpret. In the past, these methods have usually led me to the source of the problem, but recently, we've been experiencing consistent BSODs on several machines. A common factor seems to be that all these PCs have GPUs. We did update the GPU drivers to the latest versions, but that hasn't helped at all. I'm even considering swapping out the SSDs for fresh installs of Windows 11 and having the developers reinstall their software. I'm looking for any tips or diagnostic tools (either free or paid) that could help me get to the bottom of these BSOD errors, as I'm not very experienced in troubleshooting them.
3 Answers
If the BSODs appear to be random and using WinDBG with "analyze -v" doesn't give consistent results, it could indicate a hardware fault. If you suspect it's a 13th-gen Intel CPU, it might already be toast. A microcode update won’t help if a fault has developed.
Have you tried using the Driver Verifier Manager? It's located at C:WindowsSystem32verifiergui.exe. It helped me pinpoint which driver was causing my BSODs before. Some folks advise against using it, but I had good results (I tested it on a virtual machine).
If your developer PCs have Intel's 13th or 14th generation processors, check if there's a microcode bug affecting them, which can lead to over-voltages and cause instability. You should look for firmware updates that can address this issue.
I've heard about that specific bug and know it caused a CPU failure on the CIO's PC. My testing machine has a 13th gen Intel CPU, so I need to verify if the firmware updates were completed by the IT guys.
I just learned about Driver Verifier! I plan to run it on one of the affected PCs after taking a backup. I didn't come across any warnings against using it, though — why do some say not to use it?