Windows 10: Getting BSOD randomly & other issues - Windows 10 (Predator G9-591LV)

I know what you're going through, but please calm down, don't make hasty actions.
Hasty actions usually make things worse, because the user isn't thinking straight.

Acer, the age of the driver is irrelevant in this situation. Drivers for laptops are usually altered making them better for the laptop.
The drivers from Acer focus on your laptop hardware what makes it possible to get drivers more stable.

Please configure the recovery settings to NOT auto restart, this makes it possible for you to provide some information for me.
I would need you to make a photo of the BSOD, because I need to know at least the following

• The error code
• The parameters, these are sometimes quite useful
• Possible drivers that are mentioned
• Did the collecting of data come to 100%? If not, I would need to know that as there are some possibilities why that is happing.

Attachment 96590

 

Thank you axe0 for all your help. In the mean-time before you posted i actually installed the newest NVIDIA 372.54 drivers, i'm hoping this wasn't a mistake.

I went into the Startup & Recovery settings and made the changes you advised to (unchecked automatically restart).
I noticed under "Write Debugging Information" i have Automatic memory dump as the option while the option on your screenshot above has "(none)" as the option. Does this matter? I also changed ticked "Time to list operating systems" as it was unticked & greyed out & then changed the time from 30secs to 45 seconds. Is that ok?

I'm assuming we have to wait now until i get the next BSOD (hopefully not), then take a snapshot of this information and upload this photo/pic as a file to here? Will it be a .jpg type file of the screenshot?

Thanks again axe, you are a champ. As i said, ended up installing the newest NVIDIA drivers, not the Acer ones from their website. This was over an hour ago, i haven't had any problems but i haven't been in Excel yet either where i've noticed the BSOD occurs most of the time if my memory serves me correctly.

I will leave the computer for an hr or so and let it sleep and come back to see if i continue to have the other problem of not being able to wake up the laptop from sleep; whether the blue screen with the circular rotating dots occurs again or just a black screen when trying to boot up without power chord.

Will keep you informed. Sorry for all the trouble but it very much appreciated. Hope you are good & well.

 

I took the screenshot from my Windows 10 Insider VM, a small bug caused it.
Each option creates different dumps, for example the complete memory dump contains all information from both kernel and user mode. A kernel memory dump only contains the information from the kernel. It is usually a kernel dump that is being created, because only in kernel mode a fatal system crash can occur. A kernel dump is about a few 100MB's large, depending on how much kernel memory is used at the time of the crash. A complete memory dump is about the size of the physical memory, sometimes more than 10GB.

It depends on the situation and what an analyst requests, in our case we advice to set it on minidump as minidumps are usually enough for us.

That part is mainly for systems having a dual boot with multiple operating systems, like 1 partition having Windows 10 while another partition is holding Windows 7. The time setting is how much time the user has to choose what operating system to load before the default operating system is loaded.

 

Thank you axe0 for all your help. In the mean-time before you posted i actually installed the newest NVIDIA 372.54 drivers, i'm hoping this wasn't a mistake.

I went into the Startup & Recovery settings and made the changes you advised to (unchecked automatically restart).
I noticed under "Write Debugging Information" i have Automatic memory dump as the option while the option on your screenshot above has "(none)" as the option. Does this matter? I also changed ticked "Time to list operating systems" as it was unticked & greyed out & then changed the time from 30secs to 45 seconds. Is that ok?

I'm assuming we have to wait now until i get the next BSOD (hopefully not), then take a snapshot of this information and upload this photo/pic as a file to here? Will it be a .jpg type file of the screenshot?

Thanks again axe, you are a champ. As i said, ended up installing the newest NVIDIA drivers, not the Acer ones from their website. This was over an hour ago, i haven't had any problems but i haven't been in Excel yet either where i've noticed the BSOD occurs most of the time if my memory serves me correctly.

I will leave the computer for an hr or so and let it sleep and come back to see if i continue to have the other problem of not being able to wake up the laptop from sleep; whether the blue screen with the circular rotating dots occurs again or just a black screen when trying to boot up without power chord.

Will keep you informed. Sorry for all the trouble but it very much appreciated. Hope you are good & well.

 

Thanks again for the quick reply. As feared, i left the computer again about an hr ago, came back just now, hit the spacebar to wake the computer, at first i saw the windows log in screen for a brief moment but then the blue screen with the never ending rotating circular dots appeared, unable to press anything to get out of it (no CTRL-ALT-DEL) or any other key or mouse could do anything, had to press the power button like i have been to switch off and reboot again.

Just now while typing this response to you, a black command prompt, dos type screen flashed for a second then closed. Not sure if that is any useful information but thought id just mention that.

Not sure what to do now, do you think it could be RAM or a Motherboard problem? The problem has happened alot in Excel (the BSOD rebooting problem) and i'm guessing Excel would use more RAM than say just browsing and therefor if i do have a RAM problem it is unable to cope? I'm just guessing, stuck on what to do. Thanks for everything, i really do appreciate it.

 

I assume that you have configured your laptop to go into sleep after some time? If this is indeed the case then you may want to wait some time before the blue screen with circling dots goes away. It simply shows that everything is being loaded *Smile Unfortunately it sometimes could take some time before it goes away, even with an SSD.

 

I've attached a screen shot of the screen & sleep settings that i currently have. Have never had any problems before with these types of settings, i usually just press a key or move the mouse and the laptop is back on screen and usable again. Now it just has that blue screen with the rotating circle dots, unable to press anything to get the screen back on and usable, not even being able to do a soft reboot (CTRL-ALT-DEL). The laptop hangs too sometimes when saving files like just now when i took a snippet of the screen, it came up with 'not responding' and took some time to just save this little file to the desktop. There is just too many, multiple problems happening, 1) BSOD & rebooting randomly mainly in Excel...2) Unable to wake laptop up while away, blue screen circular dots 3)laptop hanging while saving files sometimes, happened just now with this uploaded pic and in excel a few times while saving files.

 

I would advice to change a few settings in the power options.
1. Hard disk, set it to turn off never (or 0 (zero) minutes)
2. Sleep, set 'sleep after' also to never

I would also change 'On battery power, PC goes to sleep after' and 'When plugged in, PC goes to sleep after' to 0 minutes.

Basically turning off sleep and keeping the hard disk active.
You may use sleep often, but some options in the power settings will always be somewhat unstable.

 

Ok, thanks axe. Changed those settings you wrote above. Still feel there is something fundamentally wrong that is causing the random BSOD and sleep, boot problems. Do you recommend or know of any software that could diagnose any potential RAM or Motherboard problems? Could i have something as simple as a loose cable or something inside?

 

For a motherboard, the only way to test it is by replacing it. In the case of laptops a laptop replacement is required.

For the memory, there are some tests *Smile
Please read below quote carefully and read the tutorial carefully, all common questions are answered in either the post itself or the tutorial.

Run MemTest86+ - Test RAM - Windows 10 Forums



Note



MemTest86+ needs to be run for at least 8 complete passes for conclusive results. Set it running before you go to bed and leave it overnight. We're looking for zero errors here. Even a single error will indicate RAM failure.

Make a photo of the result and post it.

Addition:
If errors show up you can stop the test, remove all sticks but 1 and test this single stick in each slot for 8 passes or until errors show, switch sticks and repeat.
If errors show up and you see them a lot later, no problem, the errors don't affect the test.

Note The test isn't updated in a long time, but it doesn't change anything for DDR4


Note 16GB could take up to a day or 2 days to finish the minimum of the requirement

 

I've decided to not run the memtest86 application, i've run it in the past and i dont' think i could leave it running for a day or so.
Earlier today when i first tried to boot up laptop, i had a full battery, was 100%, tried to boot up just with battery without being plugged in and it just stopped again after the Acer Predator logo, just a black screen with the white arror cursur on screen, i can move my mouse/cursor around the screen but it never boots to windows, just stays on the black screen with white arror.

I then power off, plug the power chords, boot up and it boots fine. You checked with the battery report that my battery is fine. Why can't i boot up unless i'm plugged in?

Funny thing is though, once i'm in windows, i can unplug power chord, it runs on battery fine; i can even REBOOT (without shutting down) while just on battery and it boots into windows ok. It's only when i am shutdown and try to boot up without power that it gets stuck on the black screen. Same with sleep (which i've disabled as you advised earlier); the laptop can't wake from sleep. Seems when laptop is shut off and in sleep are the problems. Is that some circuit/power problem? I'm lost what to do.

I'm thinking of trying one last time to reset laptop but i'm not confident of it helping, i did it last week and it didnt seem to stop the BSOD and these black screens and not being able to boot up to Windows without being plugged in.

 

The same problem happened to my fathers laptop, the problem in his case was the power button. It is a bit soft so it needs to be pressed with some more force than someone would think to turn the laptop on.

The battery report only shows the usage of the battery, for example:

• How many times it has been charged/discharged and when that happened,
• How much capacity there is left,
• How the life of the battery goes based on observed drains

Based on it, it can be said that the battery is fine, it is however possible that the battery is physically causing problems although then someone would've gotten shutdowns out of nowhere so I'm not saying that that is the case.

Was this with the dGPU enabled?

 

Yes, i have installed the newest NVIDIA driver from their website after removing the other one with DDU & doing a custom, clean install of this new one i installed. The integrated Intel & Dedicated NVIDIA are both now installed and enabled in Device Manager. I'm pretty sure though the dedicated nvidia doesn't get utilised unless i play games (which i don't).

 

I just went into Device Manager, disabled the NVIDIA driver, shut down laptop, unlplugged power chord & restarted computer to see if disabling the dedicated card would help but no, same story, without being plugged in & just trying to boot up on battery, it loads past the logo screen then gets stuck as usual on a black screen with white cursor, unable to do anything other than press & hold the Power button to shut off, then have to plug power chord back in, power up again and it boots to windows fine. Really baffling. This is a $3,000 laptop which i could barely afford and i feel really upset that this is happening and not being able to fix it.

I appreciate all your help Axe0, sorry for all the trouble. I haven't been into excel in the last day or so and haven't had a BSOD, it usually has happened when i've been in excel.

 

Has anything in the BIOS changed?