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Blorpy

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4 years ago

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Blorpy

2 Posts

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October 23rd, 2022 11:00

15 R4, BSOD only with external monitors

I have a recurring BSOD on Windows 10 running on my 15 R4 that I can't seem to nail down. This is a pretty long post, so sorry for that in advance. The commonality here is memory corruption, but for the life of me I can't figure out why this is happening?

After a couple hours to a couple weeks of uptime I will get a BSOD on this machine, but ONLY if I have an external monitor connected. If I have no external monitors connected this box can stay up for well over a month with no issues, and I've proven this repeatedly. I've gotten into the habit of just disconnecting the monitors before I walk away from the machine, but this isn't really a solution. 

The BSODs are always either:

0x1A  memory_management

P1 was 0x61948  last time, but its also been 0x41792, 0x888A. 

Stack trace varies, there is no commonality in anything being implicated I could find. Last time it was Dell.TechHub.Instrumentation.SubAgent.exe, before that it was backgroundtaskhost.exe a couple times. 

0x12B faulty_hardware_corrupted_page

Stack trace varies, seen dwm.exe, backgroundtaskhost.exe. 

Params 3 and 4 are always zero, which as per the MS docs "If parameters 3 and 4 are both zero, the bug check indicates that Memory Manager detected a single-bit error on a page that was expected to be zeroed."

Often if I leave chrome open, it will show a STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION hours or minutes before windows' BSODs with one of the memory management errors above. Other apps can randomly die as well in the time leading up to the BSOD, usually with some memory management error in event viewer as well. 

Again, this ONLY happens with external monitors connected. It doesn't seem to matter if its HDMI, or DisplayPort, both alone cause the BSOD eventually. It also doesn't seem to matter what the monitor is, I have two monitors the cause the issue. It just matters that there is an external monitor connected. 

What I've tried:

  • I've run memtest on here three times overnight, no issues. 
  • Run windows memory diag, no issues. 
  • Replaced memory twice, once with Kingston, once with another brand I forget. Used properly grounded ESD mat, wrist strap. 
  • Reinstalled windows from ISO, installed only chrome, thunderbird, 7zip, problem still happened. 
  • Swapped the NVME SSD
  • Swapped the secondary spinning HDD
  • Disabled the paging file entirely on all drives

I'm kind of out of ideas here, and wondering if anyone else has had the same issue. I would totally implicate the CPU at this point, but given how the issue only manifests when there are external monitors connected that doesn't make a lot of sense. Really skeptical I have had three bad sets of RAM, including the OEM ones. 

Is there some design flaw on the board here that is causing bit flips here? I know that bit flips can happen randomly based on environmental factors, but I really doubt that's the cause here since another machine three feet away on the same desk has no issues.