Windows 10: RAM Vampire, Random Shutdowns, USB hub failures, yet not a BSOD to be seen...

Figure it's time to ask for insight on the rather bizarre collection of 'bad habits' my Surface 3 has developed. I've held off mainly because I can't reliably reproduce the behaviors, though I have noticed some general trends. Come to the conclusion it's probably an issue beyond my comprehension, so this is me tapping out and appealing to the wise and all-knowing community!


In no particular order....

1. Memory is nearly always entirely maxed out. Even after a clean boot, with no apps opened, and startup programs all disabled. But it's not always the same process. Main offenders seem to be Antimalware Service Executable (MsMpEng.exe) and Microsoft OneDrive (32-bit) - and of course, if Edge or IE are open, they gobble up at least 60%.
2. CPU seems to be running high too, OneDrive and Edge especially.
3. Randomly shuts down, no notice, just off. On startup after this happens, nothing resumes or recovers, and there's nothing glaring in the event log to explain it.
4. USB device not recognized; keyboard ceases to work, Bluetooth capability vanishes, and no amount of Device Manager prodding will bring either back. Seems to coincide with low battery - but not always, and not always at the same % remaining. Rebooting solves the problem, though it's happened a few times that I've left it to charge overnight and things seem to magically sort themselves out.
5. Microsoft Office programs become non-responsive when doing an Auto Save. Window goes blank and glitches a bit, and then everything back to normal.

Things that were weird but I've managed to figure out, in case they shed light on the above issues:

• Plugged In, Not Charging.
  Seemed to happen over 50% of the time when using the Surface plugged in. Changing the physical order-of-operations seems to have resolved the issue. As long as I plug the charging cable into the PC first, before plugging it into the power source, there seems to be no issue.
• Things going haywire at 34% battery, PC shutting down at 14% - significantly improved after resetting the battery power profiles to default.
• I had been having high disk usage issues a while back, turned out to be something with OneDrive, I should have notes somewhere on what I did that seemed to resolve the issue.

Would love some insight, any thoughts or suggestions anyone may have. Thanks!

:)

 

Random BSOD while browsing internet


BitDefender is nothing special. mwac.sys causes BSODs anywhere.
A tiny documentation can be found here: Solved Random BSODs - Windows 10 Forums
In that very thread, the suggested action apparently worked.

The storage and network filters of any third party antivirus can cause BSODs. Neither MBAM nor BitDefender is any special. For a regular antivirus, it may be shifted to an alternative; but MBAM has no alternative. So a clean install of the said program is the most feasible first step.
As far as the first step is not failing, it is better to not think for the second step. Because the BSODs are not universal, failure at the first step is not universal; and success at the second step is also not universal.
That is why I posted that my suggestion may work, or may not. Let us see where it goes.

 

USB HUB

Hi,

Incompatible USB hub driver is one of the possible reasons why this issue is happening. We recommend uninstalling the USB Root Hub driver and see if it helps. Follow the stepes below:

• Open Device Manager.
  
• Double-click Universal Serial Bus controllers to expand.
  
• Right-click USB Root Hub, then click Properties.
  
• Go to the Driver tab.
  
• Click Uninstall.
  
• Restart your computer.
  

Note: Restarting your computer will automatically reinstall a generic driver for your computer. Also, we suggest connecting your USB hub while performing the steps.

If the issue still persists, let's disable the USB selective suspend settings thru Power Options to resolve the issue. Follow the steps below:

• Type Power Options in the search box, then press Enter.
• Locate USB settings > USB selective suspend settings.
• Select Disable.

Keep us in the loop with the result.

 

BSOD: Page Fault in nonpaged area File: cdd.dll

I'm running windows 10 build 14393 on a laptop.

Some backstory: I've been getting very frequent BSODs with the error being "kernel security check failure"- about once every 2 days. I think I finally narrowed the issue down to being caused by my new usb 3 hub. I unplugged the hub and got no BSODs for about a week- at least until today.

Today I got a BSOD but instead the error was "Page Fault in nonpaged area" (a message that I've never seen on this computer before). The file concerned was cdd.dll. What could be causing this type of BSOD?

My ram is new (got it around the same time as the USB hub- 2 months ago). However, this is the first time I've gotten the page fault error message in the 2 months with the new ram, and the "kernel security check failure" errors kept occurring when I put the old ram in as a test. Memtest also completed 1 pass fine. Other than that, no hardware has been "changed" per-se, but I did open my laptop and put it back together to replace the screen which had broken.

If you'd like to read the above paragraphs in bullet form:

• 2 months ago: Replaced screen
  
• 2 months ago: Changed RAM
  
• 1.6 months ago: Started using new USB hub
  
• 1.5 months ago: Started getting BSODs "Kernel security check failure" fairly regularly.
  
• 1 month ago: Put the old ram back in
  
• 1 month ago: Memtest completed successfully
  
• 1 month ago: Continued to receive kernel security check failure BSODs
  
• 1 week ago: Stopped using USB hub
  
• 1 week ago: stopped receiving kernel security check failure BSOD
  
• Today: got a BSOD "page fault in nonpaged area" with the file being cdd.dll
  
• Today: chkdsk completed succesfully