I've been experiencing frequent BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) errors on my prebuilt gaming desktop, which I got last January. These crashes occur about once every three or four days, mostly while I'm playing Escape from Tarkov, but they have happened very rarely when I'm just at my desktop. I'm also noticing that the RGB lights and the PC itself don't completely shut off during the BSOD reboot, if that matters. The specific error I see is 'kmode exception not handled.'
Here are my specs:
- ZOTAC Gaming MEK HERO G3 A7647v2 SPIDER-MAN: Across the Spider-Verse Bundle Gaming Desktop
- AMD Ryzen 5 7600
- 16GB DDR5 (upgraded it to 32GB recently)
- GeForce RTX 4070 12GB
- 1TB M.2 SSD
- Air Cooled
- WiFi 6E + Bluetooth 5.2
I'm currently at work but wanted to reach out for support to figure out what steps I should take next. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
2 Answers
Did you run any tests like memtest86 or TM5 when you upgraded your RAM? If not, I highly recommend doing so. They can catch any errors in your RAM that might be causing the BSOD.
It sounds like you might have hit on a classic issue with gaming RAM management. Escape from Tarkov can be super demanding, and since you recently upgraded to 32GB, that's a good start. However, issues like a bad RAM stick or driver corruption could still be in play.
First, you should try using DDU (Display Driver Uninstaller) to completely wipe your GPU drivers and then reinstall them. After that, consider testing your RAM by only using one stick at a time to see if you can replicate the BSOD. If nothing works, a fresh Windows install could be your best bet since that has fixed similar issues for many people.
Okay! Kind of a dumb question but I’ve never used DDU. Is there a guide I can follow? Also, for the RAM testing, I should just remove one stick, play Tarkov, and see if it crashes, right?
Yep, you got it! Alternating the two 16GB sticks is the way to go. Just make sure to check the DDU guide for a smooth process!
I did run a memtest about three weeks ago and it didn’t show any errors, but I’ll run it again tonight just to be sure!