I leave my computer running for long stretches because it also acts as a plex server. I turned my monitor on last night to open steam, and the window didn’t render in; I didn’t think much of it, but before I could restart my PC, I got a “memory management” BSOD. I turned off XMP, as well as taking out each RAM stick, but I continued to get BSODs. Either “memory management” or “critical process error”. Some other things I’ve attempted:

I can’t reset the PC; when I try, I’m told “there was a problem resetting your PC”.

I can’t use a system restore point; that also fails.

When I open the terminal and run

sfc /scannow

it finds and fixes corrupt system files every single time (I’ve attempted 3 times now), but I still get a “critical process error” BSOD.

I attempted running

DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth

before “sfc” but this got an error 87 and didn’t work.

When I turn on the PC, my lights for DRAM and VGA stay lit up for maybe 5-10 seconds, but turn off while I’m in BIOS or the windows startup repair screen (and my monitor is plugged into the graphics card; my CPU can’t do display out).

I’m at a bit of a loss here. My next guess would be to attempt to reinstall windows, but I don’t have another windows PC handy to create bootable media, so I’m hoping I have a thumb drive laying around with an ISO on it, or I’ll need to wait to get one from a friend.

Also, in the event that reinstalling windows is the fix, should I disconnect the drives holding my plex media beforehand? Wouldn’t want to risk them getting wiped

An update: I have a drive with installation media for Windows 10 laying around, but when I got to the point where it was installing files on my boot drive, partway through it said it didn’t have the required files and cancelled.

THE FIX: Turns out it was an issue with my RAM. I plugged in a thumb drive containing memtest, and after running the test received a ton of errors. Swapping in a new RAM kit seems to have totally resolved my issues. The PC boots up perfectly fine now

  • comador @lemmy.world
    4·
    2 months ago

    Sounds like memory corruption. Before you do like the other poster said and run memtest, I’d suggest reseating the ram, possibly in different banks if you can, reseat the video card and then try again.

    If you still get failures:

    • memtest
    • update bios
    • dive deeper into the windows system logs for clues
    • then check your ssd for bad blocks using the SSD vendor tools

    Always backup your important files!

    • DonnieDarkmode@lemm.eeOP
      1·
      2 months ago

      Are there vendor tools that run off of a flash drive like memtest? I can’t boot into windows at all

        • DonnieDarkmode@lemm.eeOP
          2·
          2 months ago

          Ultimate boot looks like an extremely useful tool, thanks for mentioning that. After testing each RAM stick in the primary slot for my MOBO, I’m running memtest and getting a lot of errors (now over 500 and still on pass 1)

          • comador @lemmy.world
            4·
            2 months ago

            Most RAM have a lifetime warranty, so please take a picture of the errors and use that to rma (return) to the memory maker for a free replacement.

            In the meantime, consider buying new ram (unless you can wait 6 weeks for an rma return lol).