Windows 10: BSOD driver_power_state_failure when reboot on fresh Windows 10

Hi.

I have driver_power_state_failure issue on my desktop PC (see my specs) which has been running Windows 7 for 4 years without issues, and it also boots Linux Live CDs, USBs and Windows 8 PE from USB without any issues.

I install Windows 10 Pro 64 bit (without activating it yet) just fine, it boots, then it automatically updates its drivers and what not. Then later I do restart after installing some software (I have tried also clean Windows install & reboot without installing anything myself). Then it sits on Restaring screen for 5-10 minutes without any HDD activity (HDD led does not light up) and then shows the BSOD with driver_power_state_failure. It also shows that it is collecting some information.

Then I hard reset it, and it starts booting into diagnostic mode, reports that there's nothing to be fixed and offers to restart. I agree.
And then it just hangs on the Windows logo screen with rotating dots without any hard disk activity at all. I wait for 10-20 minutes and then just hard reboot. No improvement. The system is unbootable.
I tried adding legacy boot menu option from bcdedit in the repair tools and boot to Safe mode - does not boot. Enable boot logging - nothing.
I booted my PC with Linux live cd and inspected the Windows 10 drive for BSOD minidumps - nothing, no Minidump folder. I managed to collect only evtx files from logs.

Darn, Microsoft, why they don't show any clues in the BSOD about the driver which caused the issue?

The only way to install Windows 10 without getting this problem is to disable network. Then after first boot, Windows does not install additional drivers (Device Manager shows some question marks and Basic video driver). It reboots just fine.

My guess is that there is some driver coming from Windows Update causing the issue, but I have no idea how to catch it because there is no additional info in BSOD screen and there is no Minidump, and the BSOD happens only once after installing. On next reboot it just hangs. So I'll have to reinstall Windows (or restore from image) every time I want to reproduce the BSOD....

Do you, guys, have any ideas how to find the buggy driver? Currently I have a clean Windows 10 installed as secondary system and I disabled networking, so it is not yet corrupted with bad drivers. How do I proceed and install them one by one and prevent Windows itself from installing them from Microsoft servers? How to catch the minidump which for some reason is missing?

:)

 

DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE Windows 10

Yep, that's exactly what I also experienced on a fresh Windows install right after Windows downloads and installs drivers automatically. Now I have reinstalled it with internet disabled and will try to install drivers keeping restore points and backups to
find the cause of the BSOD (but there might be more than one...). But I've created a separate thread for my issue, so I'm just mentioning it here, in case someone finds it helpful:

BSOD driver_power_state_failure when reboot on fresh Windows 10 after install.
System unbootable afterwards.

 

BSOD driver_power_state_failure when reboot on fresh Windows 10 after install. System unbootable afterwards.

Hi.

I have driver_power_state_failure BSOD on my desktop PC which has been running Windows 7 for 4 years without issues, and it also boots Linux Live CDs, USBs and Windows 8 PE from USB without any issues.

Computer PC/Desktop

OS Windows 7 64 bit Professional

CPU i3-2120

Motherboard GA-H67A-USB3-B3

Memory 4x2GB Kingston kvr1333d3n9/2g

Graphics Card HD7750-1GD5-V2

I install Windows 10 Pro 64 bit (without activating it yet) just fine, it boots, then it automatically updates its drivers and what not. Then later I do restart after installing some software. Then it sits on Restaring screen for 5-10 minutes without any HDD
activity (HDD led does not light up) and then shows the BSOD with driver_power_state_failure. It also shows that it is collecting some information.

Then I hard reset it, and it starts booting into diagnostic mode, reports that there's nothing to be fixed and offers to restart. I agree.

And then it just hangs on the Windows logo screen with rotating dots without any hard disk activity at all. I wait for 10-20 minutes and then just hard reboot. No improvement. The system is unbootable.

I have tried also clean Windows install & reboot without installing anything myself. I tried removing graphics card after BSOD happens - does not help, system not bootable.

I tried adding legacy boot menu option from bcdedit in the repair tools and boot to Safe mode - does not boot. Enable boot logging - nothing.

I booted my PC with Linux live cd and inspected the Windows 10 drive for BSOD minidumps - nothing, no Minidump folder. I managed to collect only evtx files from logs.

Microsoft, why you removed detailed information in the BSOD about the driver which caused the issue? BSODs of Windows 7 are much more informative.

The only way to install Windows 10 without getting this problem is to disable network. Then after first boot, Windows does not install additional drivers (Device Manager shows some question marks and Basic video driver). It reboots just fine.

My guess is that there is some driver coming from Windows Update causing the issue, but I have no idea how to catch it because there is no additional info in BSOD screen and there is no Minidump, and the BSOD happens only once after installing. On next reboot
it just hangs. So I'll have to reinstall Windows (or restore from image) every time I want to reproduce the BSOD....

Do you have any ideas how to find the buggy driver? Currently I have a clean Windows 10 installed as secondary system and I disabled networking, so it is not yet corrupted with bad drivers. How do I proceed and install them one by one and prevent Windows itself
from installing them from Microsoft servers?

 

I would first make sure the hard drive(s) is/are fine as you speak of no activity from them after a restart.





Diagnostics Test

HDD & SSD TEST


Run SeaTools to check the integrity of your HDD. SeaTools for DOS and Windows - How to Use - Windows 7 Help Forums



Note Do not run SeaTools on an SSD as the results will be invalid.



Run chkdsk Disk Check - Windows 7 Help Forums

Also, try disabling automatic driver updates through Windows Update

 

Thanks for the idea.

I have used HDTune recently to scan my both drives for bad blocks in full scan mode (it took hours). I have Samsung EVO 840 120GB and Seagate 1TB. No errors found.


Now I managed to collect Windows Event Viewer files from my last failed install attempt of Windows 10 and attached them:
Attachment 45865

In System.evtx there are lots of errors:

but I have seen them also on my Windows 7 and still it has been working rock solid for years.

 

It would take me a lot of time to find out what is going on with the event logs, which I don't have.

Please fill in your system specsPlease follow this tutorial and download the tool. The tool will give you detailed information about your system specs, please fill in your system specs more completely including PSU and cooling system.How to fill in your system specs:

 

I have updated my specs. The SystemInfo tool tried to fill Sound Card section with more info but the browser input field cropped it, and I also could not add missing parts manually. maxlength="100" surely is not enough to enumerate all audio devices in that field...

Thanks for the hint of disabling automatic driver installation, I will try that immediately with disconnected Internet. Also, it seems, Windows 10 has System Restore disabled by default. I'll enable it, and also create a full copy using Paragon Free, and do my best to enable minidumps, and then I'll install drivers one by one until it crashes again, after that hopefully I'll be able to retrieve the dump file.

 

Let me know how it goes *Smile

 

I reproduced the issue again on a clean Windows install. But before that I cleaned System, Application event logs.

In system recovery settings I disabled automatic restarts and set dump to Small memory dump (256KB) with path %systemRoot%\Minidump and also verified that "Write an event to the system log" is checked.

Then I let Windows to update drivers automatically. After Windows installed everything, I clicked AMD Check for updates button, but it showed that I have the latest version. So, even if AMD drivers are the cause of the issue, I might have no options to fix them.

And the bad news: after I restarted my PC and got the BSOD and booted to my old Windows 7, there is no folder Windows\Minidump on my Windows 10 installation partition (I was careful not to confuse it with my working Windows 7 partition). I even ran full search for *.dmp - nothing. Again, I copied .evtx files and looked into System, but there are only 55 events, and none of them seem to be related to the BSOD.

My guess is that the BSOD happens so late during restart process that some important subsystems might already be shut down, therefore Windows cannot even log the event.

But when the crash happens, I see that Windows is counting percents from 0 to 100% - obviously, it is collecting something but I'm not sure if it is writing the data to disk.

Attached is the new archived package with events collected only during restart and also photo of the BSOD and some screen captures from AMD Catalyst installed automatically by Windows:

Attachment 45912

Not sure, what more can I do to retrieve minidumps. At least now I have captured a restore point and also a full partition image, so I can reliably reproduce the crash.

 

How much free space do you have?

 

My current Win10 partition has 20.2 GB free.

 

How is the Windows Error Reporting service set?
Search "services.msc" without quotes) in the search function and press enter, that should open the services and search for Windows Error Reporting Service.

 

Windows Error Reporting service is by default set to "Manual (Trigger start)" and currently was stopped.

But it seems I have found the cause of the issue. I also have seen some other threads where people were having some minor issues with Intel management engine interface on Windows 7, but it seems, what is just a minor issue on older Windowses, becomes a catastrophe on Windows 10.

Essentially, what I did was enabling boot logging mode and then letting it try to unsuccessfully boot for some minutes. Then I rebooted from my primary OS and was really glad to see that ntbtlog.txt was created on my Windows 10 partition because I read somewhere that it might be missing if Windows gets stuck before Session Manager starts.

So, at the end of ntbtlog.txt I see lots of lines

There's nothing else between them, only these lines.

Oh, Microsoft, why no timestamps for events? Anyway, I started thinking that maybe these lines matched those short bursts of LED activity which I saw while PC was trying to boot. Most probably, it tried to load TeeDriverW8x64.sys and wrote that to the log (hence the HDD LED flash), then maybe failed (but why no any failure messages in boot log?) and then decided to repeat it forever.

While looking for TeeDriverW8x64.sys on the Internet it led me to Intel(R) Management Engine Interface (IMEI) driver. So while I was on Win7, I looked in Device Manager, and IMEI was marked yellow with code 10. I tried to install the newset drivers, from Intel, but installer reported that the current drivers are even newer - so, Intel's site has out-of-date IMEI drivers. Then I stumbled upon a forum post which described that part of IMEI is actually embedded into BIOS firmware. Oh, I can reset BIOS! So I shut down the PC, removed CMOS battery, rebooted and for a short moment saw a cryptic message from BIOS which I haven't seen any other times when booting my PC:

It was counting percents and when it reached 100%, it booted to Windows 7. And hooray, no more warnings in device manager, and also event viewer did not have those messages.

And even better - Windows 10 also booted just fine.

So, I've been living with some IMEI issue for years on Windows 7 without any issues, but Windows 10 made a big deal about it.
Now when I know what to look for, I have found also similar stories from other Windows 10 users who have suffered from BSODs related to IMEI and they had to completely disable IMEI in device manager, if they are lucky enough to be able to boot into Windows.

I hope my experience will help other people to deal with IMEI. Definitely it is one of the first things worth checking before upgrading to Windows 10 and after the upgrade in case of BSODs.


BTW, ntbtlog.txt starts with some weird symbols
ªÝ ÿÿft (R) W11 2 2015 20:33:03.350
but I hope it does not mean that something has gone wrong... anyway, I'll reinstall Windows 10 from scratch, now that I hopefully know that it works.