O
OwlShapedGhoul
So for a little bit of context, I purchased a PC in March of this year, and pretty much from the beginning it's been aggravating to me. I would like to avoid refunding the whole thing if at all possible (refunding would be very inconvenient for reasons I'd rather not get into), but I would be amenable to refunding and replacing one or two parts if a hardware issue is identified.
Here's a list of symptoms that is about as complete as I can make it, and some observations about how they seem to be triggered:
- Webpages randomly crash. This is a big one, and has affected all three browsers I've tried to varying extents (Firefox, Google Chrome, and Microsoft Edge). It was by far the worst with Firefox, which was prone to crashing completely and then being impossible to reopen (instead it would open a dialogue box that gave me the option to send the error logs to Firefox). Chrome seems to be a bit better than Edge, but not by much.
These crashes seem to be most common on pages that have a lot of Javascript and fancy things going on, like Google Drive apps and YouTube, but they have affected basically every website I frequently visit at some point, including Google search results.
- Random blue screens. An even bigger one. There generally seems to be no warning before a bluescreen will happen, but from what I can tell, if the PC doesn't bluescreen in the first hour or so after I turn it on, it won't bluescreen at all. Sometimes it will bluescreen before I even have a chance to log in, or just turn itself off without any messages or warnings shortly after the boot screen.
The messages on these blue screens are cryptic and inconsistent. Below is a list of the most common ones that I've seen in these last few months.
IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION (what failed: win32kfull.sys)
KERNEL_SECURITY_CHECK_FAILURE
ATTEMPTED_WRITE_TO_READONLY_MEMORY (what failed: FLTMGR.SYS)
MEMORY_MANAGEMENT
DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION
SYSTEM THREAD EXCEPTION NOT HANDLED
PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA
- Sometimes an application will fail to open. Sometimes, when I open an application that has been working just fine for a long time, it will fail to open and present an error message of some kind, which seems to vary based on the application. This has so far only affected certain applications: League of Legends, Steam (including various Steam games), and Discord. This is relatively easy to fix (I just run the installer again and it usually works afterward, no uninstall needed), but I figured I'd mention it in case it helps.
- Applications sometimes crash if I click too quickly. This has only affected League of Legends and Monster Train, but as far as I can tell that's only because these are the only applications where I'm prone to spam clicking. Like the other issues, this is inconsistent, and sometimes won't bother me for an entire four hour session... and sometimes will happen twice in thirty minutes if I don't regulate my clicks.
- SFC /SCANNOW and similar commands find problems, but can't fix them. I've been trying to research these issues on my own, and came across a few ways to try to diagnose and repair issues with a corrupt Windows installation through the command line. To date none of them seem to have done anything: they either return an all clear, or messages such as "Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files but was unable to fix some of them."
So far all of these issues have persisted through multiple reinstallations of Windows. The bluescreening one in particular has had a worrying habit of eventually going "terminal" and rendering it impossible to boot Windows entirely, forcing me to reinstall Windows just to get the PC working again, but it hasn't done this in two months since my last reinstall.
This has really been troubling me all year, so I would greatly appreciate any advice or guidance on this issue!
Continue reading...
Here's a list of symptoms that is about as complete as I can make it, and some observations about how they seem to be triggered:
- Webpages randomly crash. This is a big one, and has affected all three browsers I've tried to varying extents (Firefox, Google Chrome, and Microsoft Edge). It was by far the worst with Firefox, which was prone to crashing completely and then being impossible to reopen (instead it would open a dialogue box that gave me the option to send the error logs to Firefox). Chrome seems to be a bit better than Edge, but not by much.
These crashes seem to be most common on pages that have a lot of Javascript and fancy things going on, like Google Drive apps and YouTube, but they have affected basically every website I frequently visit at some point, including Google search results.
- Random blue screens. An even bigger one. There generally seems to be no warning before a bluescreen will happen, but from what I can tell, if the PC doesn't bluescreen in the first hour or so after I turn it on, it won't bluescreen at all. Sometimes it will bluescreen before I even have a chance to log in, or just turn itself off without any messages or warnings shortly after the boot screen.
The messages on these blue screens are cryptic and inconsistent. Below is a list of the most common ones that I've seen in these last few months.
IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION (what failed: win32kfull.sys)
KERNEL_SECURITY_CHECK_FAILURE
ATTEMPTED_WRITE_TO_READONLY_MEMORY (what failed: FLTMGR.SYS)
MEMORY_MANAGEMENT
DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION
SYSTEM THREAD EXCEPTION NOT HANDLED
PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA
- Sometimes an application will fail to open. Sometimes, when I open an application that has been working just fine for a long time, it will fail to open and present an error message of some kind, which seems to vary based on the application. This has so far only affected certain applications: League of Legends, Steam (including various Steam games), and Discord. This is relatively easy to fix (I just run the installer again and it usually works afterward, no uninstall needed), but I figured I'd mention it in case it helps.
- Applications sometimes crash if I click too quickly. This has only affected League of Legends and Monster Train, but as far as I can tell that's only because these are the only applications where I'm prone to spam clicking. Like the other issues, this is inconsistent, and sometimes won't bother me for an entire four hour session... and sometimes will happen twice in thirty minutes if I don't regulate my clicks.
- SFC /SCANNOW and similar commands find problems, but can't fix them. I've been trying to research these issues on my own, and came across a few ways to try to diagnose and repair issues with a corrupt Windows installation through the command line. To date none of them seem to have done anything: they either return an all clear, or messages such as "Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files but was unable to fix some of them."
So far all of these issues have persisted through multiple reinstallations of Windows. The bluescreening one in particular has had a worrying habit of eventually going "terminal" and rendering it impossible to boot Windows entirely, forcing me to reinstall Windows just to get the PC working again, but it hasn't done this in two months since my last reinstall.
This has really been troubling me all year, so I would greatly appreciate any advice or guidance on this issue!
Continue reading...