Random Crashing in Windows 10

No idea if this is been posted before (I’ve had a look through but only other blackscreen related errors are on log in or shut down, I don’t have that issue), but my issue is rather an odd one, I can still use all other functionality of windows 10, however ever since upgrading to windows 10 I’ve had the intermittent errors with the forsaken task bar not working, that I can handle. and put up with, however recently the OS has started to randomly crash, its as if the desktop ui just dies, I have no way to use the task bar, my background and all desktop related information is gone. and I can’t even see the clock, (image attached) the event viewer shows sweet FA but I can still upload it if needed.

I’ve tried restarting explorer, but that hasnt even crashed, BSOD’s I can repair myself, but this one. I simply have no idea, this has left me somewhat confused.

Figured I’d try here as a last resort (not for bad reasons, I can just usually resolve these types of thing myself) before I finally snap and actually go back to windows 7 or 8.1.

Anyway here it is a screen dump of my UI when its crashed.

I’ll be attempting a repair on the OS this weekend and see if I can’t fix it, else I’ll back up my entire SSD onto another HDD and do a fresh install of win 10.

So anyone got any ideas or suffered from this UI crash?

In this crash, only the desktop UI has died, the rest of the OS is completely working, I can control alt delete, open explorer, access all other functionality. but not the desktop or taskbar.

**** even open Chrome and print screen; hence how and I’m posting this.

Anyway any help would be most appreciated, If you need anymore information let me know and I’ll try to accomodate.

Right, fresh installed, after having issues with windows 10’s way of partitioning, I’ve cleaned and formatted my SSD and installed windows 10 from a usb stick.

So far no issues at all, though had an issue with microsoft product activation, as obviously that free upgrade doesnt give you a product key, so had to call up for product activation on the phone.

Usually that would be it, but no had to speak to a ‘technical advisor’ who seemed to think in order activate windows 10 that I would need to

Microsoft Activation Advisor: «install windows 7, then upgrade to windows 8, then update to windows 8.1 then upgrade to windows 10»

Me: «What, why windows 7?»

MAA: «You need to do it that way»

Me: «I’m not about to install win 7 then do that workflow, you must be mistaken or having a laugh, my win 7 ultimate disc and product key is 100 miles away»

MAA: «You need to do what I said sir»

Me: «I will not do what you’ve said as its not feasible or possible, I’m not about to drive 100 miles to get windows 7 and as it seems presently I’m much much much more clued up about how to activate software, I will not waste my time installing windows 7 then do what you’ve asked, just take my installation ID and give me a confirmation ID, instead of telling me complete nonsensical ****»

MAA: «No sir you listen to me, you must give me your windows 7 key, in order to activate windows 10. If you don’t you can’t activate»

Me: «No you listen and you listen again, open those cloth ears of yours, pass me to your manager or someone who actually knows what their talking about»

MAA: «I won’t pass you to them as you don’t understand me, listen and install windows 7»

ME: «Right, sorry but you’ve asked for this, transfer me to your manager and give me your name, you are wasting my time and money now, so transfer me now, I need to talk to someone that actually understands ENGLISH and not someone out in India which clearly has no idea about anything other than a set of preset lines that have been handed you by someone who thinks they know everything, it is clear as day you have no idea about anything and are just reading out a list, pass me to your manager now.

MAA: You cannot activate your copy of windows 10 without doing as I said.

ME: Right, thats it, I will no longer use your products, In fact I would much prefer now to use a crack and crack your software instead of carrying out what you’ve asked me to do.

MAA: «Oh but sir, you shouldnt do that»

ME: «Why not, your telling me complete **** and I don’t care anylonger»

MAA «do you have your product key available?»

MAA: «Win 7 then 8»

MAA «I need them to activate your windows»

ME: Right I’ve had enough, I’ll crack the software and just do a work around, I’ll never use your support line again,, good day.

Suffice to say I hate your product ‘technical supports’ they are absolutely useless at everything, I decided to try something else and just used my Windows 8 Pro key and it activated. why oh why don’t the support teams know that. jesus christ!

My head hurts, anyway so far I’ve had no random crashes, its still early days, though will update this if I have any further problems, thanks for the initial response though.

Windows 10 BSOD — Random Crashes

I have a custom build PC build in July 2019, which up until 1 month ago was running fine. Since then I’ve been experiencing multiple BSOD crashes repeatedly. I’m leaning towards a hardware issue (SSD or MB) but asking for advice.

Random BSOD crashes. These can occur any time from playing games, to watching youtube, to leaving the PC Idle over time. Near impossible to reliable reproduce. Yesterday PC ran fine all day. Today it crashed within 2 hours.

Ryzen 3600X [Stock Cooler]

Gigabyte Auros x570 Elite (No Wifi)

Corsair MX500 SSD (OS)

2 additional HDDs.

Nvidia RTX2060 Super

Corsair 550x Gold PSU.

Corsair CMK16GX4M2B3200C16 Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4 3200 MHz [Original]

G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series F4-3600C16D-16GVK 16 GB (8 GB x 2) DDR4 3600 MHz [New]

Things I’ve tried;

• Windows Memory diagnostics on old ram — 0 errors
• Memtest on original RAM — 4 Passes 0 errors
• Swapping to new RAM
• Windows Memory diagnostics on new ram — 0 errors
• Memtest on new RAM — 4 Passes 0 errors
• Reseating RAM/CPU/Power Cables/GPU.
• Updating all drivers to latest. (Including downloading from Gigabye Website )
• Using older Nvidia Graphics Drivers. (Used DDU)
• Ensuring Windows is up to date (Including running Windows v1903 & 2004)
• Removing all external hardware (Other than Mouse/Keyboard, both Logitech).
• Running driver verifier — Only crashed twice — Once from Gigabytes software (Uninstalled) and Nvidia Driver (Reinstalled)
• Reset Windows 10 (Using the Keep my Files option)
• Ensuring power options are set to not turn off devices.
• Disabling Windows fast boot
• Monitoring Temps (Although crashes can occur when PC is idle)
• CheckDisk
• System File Checker
• Enabling/Disable XMP
• Running RAM in slots 2/4 (Reccomended) and 1/3

These are all since the Windows 10 reset.

gdrv2.sys crashes were Gigabyte app center during driver verifier (Uninstalled). [Instant crash on login]

Random Crashes with Windows 10

I am having random crashes with windows 10 pro. These usually happen when the PC has been running for a couple of hours. I have recently replaced the PSU and installed a new graphics card. The graphics drivers and windows updates are all up to date. I have also updated to the latest bios. The error codes in reliability histor are:

Summary
Hardware error

Date
‎04/‎05/‎2016 16:27

Status
Not reported

Description
A problem with your hardware caused Windows to stop working correctly.

Problem signature
Problem Event Name: LiveKernelEvent
Code: 117
Parameter 1: e599b2e0
Parameter 2: 96ab28e8
Parameter 3: 0
Parameter 4: 0
OS version: 10_0_10586
Service Pack: 0_0
Product: 256_1
OS Version: 10.0.10586.2.0.0.256.48
Locale ID: 2057

Summary
Hardware error

Date
‎04/‎05/‎2016 16:27

Status
Not reported

Description
A problem with your hardware caused Windows to stop working correctly.

Problem signature
Problem Event Name: LiveKernelEvent
Code: 141
Parameter 1: 97f63500
Parameter 2: 96ab28e8
Parameter 3: 0
Parameter 4: 4
OS version: 10_0_10586
Service Pack: 0_0
Product: 256_1
OS Version: 10.0.10586.2.0.0.256.48
Locale ID: 2057
Source
Windows

Summary
Hardware error

Date
‎04/‎05/‎2016 16:27

Status
Not reported

Description
A problem with your hardware caused Windows to stop working correctly.

Problem signature
Problem Event Name: LiveKernelEvent
Code: 141
Parameter 1: c6a37008
Parameter 2: 96ab28e8
Parameter 3: 0
Parameter 4: 4
OS version: 10_0_10586
Service Pack: 0_0
Product: 256_1
OS Version: 10.0.10586.2.0.0.256.48
Locale ID: 2057

The last event is repeated a few times.

The CPU and GPU seem to be running at normal temperatures.

Other times, the screen will just turn black and the keyboard/mouse won’t respond.

I have to push the power button to do a hard restart.

The PC then runs normally again for a few hours.

I would be grateful for any assistance with this frustrating problem.

Replies (4) 

Please upload no more than five copies of your dump files that were created during the last 14 days as shared files to your OneDrive with a link here. No more than five files please.

Dump files are usually found at c:\windows\minidump. You may need to change your settings in Windows to be able to see the files. To show hidden files select the keyboard shortcut Win+S, type Folder Options in the Search box and click Folder Options in the drop down menu. Select View, Advanced Settings and verify that the box before «Show hidden files and folders» is checked and «Hide protected operating system files» is unchecked. You may need to scroll down to see the second item. You should also make certain that the box before «Hide extensions for known file types» is not checked.

What is your computer make and model? If not a branded computer what is your motherboard make and model?

Please download and run Driver View and upload a copy of the report it produces to your OneDrive. To get a report on all drivers select Edit, Select All followed by File, Save Selected Items. Text file format please.

Please provide a copy of your System Information file. To access your System Information file select the keyboard shortcut Win+R, type msinfo32 and press the ENTER key. Select File, Export and give the file a name noting where it is located. Do not place the cursor within the body of the report before exporting the file. The system creates a new System Information file each time system information is accessed. You need to allow a minute or two for the file to be fully populated before exporting a copy. Please upload the file to your OneDrive, share with everyone and post a link here. Reports in normal mode preferred. Please say if the report has been obtained in safe mode.

Random crashes on Windows 10 64bit with ATL subclassing

Just from the start: Since March 1st 2017 this is a bug confirmed by Microsoft. Read comments at the end.

Short description:

I have random crashes in larger application using MFC, ATL. In all such cases after ATL subclassing was used for a window upon simple actions with a window (moving, resizing, setting the focus, painting etc.) I get a crash on a random execution address.

First it looked like a wild pointer or heap corruption but I narrowed the complete scenario down to a very simple application using pure ATL and only Windows API.

Requirements / my used scenarios:

• The application was created with VS 2015 Enterprise Update 3.
• The program should be compiled as 32bit.
• Test application uses CRT as a shared DLL.
• The application runs under Windows 10 Build 14393.693 64bit (but we have repros under Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2, all 64bit)
• atlthunk.dll has version 10.0.14393.0

What the application does:

It simply creates a frame window and tries to create many static windows with the windows API. After the static window is created, this window is subclassed with the ATL CWindowImpl::SubclassWindow method. After the subclass operation a simple window message is sent.

What happens:

Not on every run, but very often the application crashes upon SendMessage to the subclassed window. On the 257 window ( or another multiple of 256+1) the subclass fails in some way. The ATL thunk that is created is invalid. It seems that the stored execution address of the new subclass-function isn’t correct. Sending any the message to the window causes a crash. The callstack is always the same. The last visible and known address in the callstack is in the atlthunk.dll

The thrown exception in the debugger is shown as:

or another sample

What I know about atlthunk.dll:

Atlthunk.dll seems to be only part of 64bit OS. I found it on a Win 8.1 and Win 10 systems.

If atlthunk.dll is available (all Windows 10 machines), this DLL cares about the thunking. If the DLL isn’t present, thunking is done in the standard way: allocating a block on the heap, marking it as executable, adding some load and a jump statement.

If the DLL is present. It contains 256 predefined slots for subclassing. If 256 subclasses are done, the DLL reloads itself a second time into memory and uses the next 256 available slots in the DLL.

As far as I see, the atlthunk.dll belongs to the Windows 10 and isn’t exchangeable or redistributable.

Things checked:

• Antivirus system was turned of or on, no change
• Data execution protection doesn’t matter. (/NXCOMPAT:NO and the EXE is defined as an exclusion in the system settings, crashes too)
• Additional calls to FlushInstructionCache or Sleep calls after the subclass doesn’t have any effect.
• Heap integrity isn’t a problem here, I rechecked it with more than one tool.
• and a thousands more (I may already forgot what I tested). 😉

Reproducibility:

The problem is somehow reproducible. It doesn’t crashes all the time, it crashes randomly. I have a machine were the code crashes on every third execution.

I can repro it on two desktop stations with i7-4770 and a i7-6700.

Other machines seem not to be affected at all (works always on a Laptop i3-3217, or desktop with i7-870)

About the sample:

For simplicity I use a SEH handler to catch the error. If you debug the application the debugger will show the callstack mentioned above. The program can be launched with an integer on the command line.In this case the program launches itself again with the count decremented by 1.So if you launch CrashAtlThunk 100 it will launch the application 100 times. Upon an error the SEH handler will catch the error and shows the text «Crash» in a message box. If the application runs without errors, the application shows «Succeeded» in a message box. If the application is started without a parameter it is just executed once.

Questions:

• Does anybody else can repro this?
• Does anybody saw similar effects?
• Does anybody know or can imagine a reason for this?
• Does anybody know how to get around this problem?

Notes:

2017-01-20 Support case at Microsoft opened.

The code

Comment after answered by Eugene (Feb. 24th 2017):

I don’t want to change my original question, but I want to add some additional information how to get this into a 100% Repro.

1, Change the main function to

Uncomment the LoadLibrary call. Compile.

Run the programm once and stop in the debugger. Note the address where the library was loaded (hMod).

Stop the program. Now comment the Library call again and change the VirtualAlloc call to the address of the previous hMod value, this is the prefered load address in this window session.

Recompile and run. CRASH!

Thanks to eugene.

Up to now. Microsoft ist still investigating about this. They have dumps and all code. But I don’t have a final answer. Fact is we have a fatal bug in some Windows 64bit OS.

I currently made the following changes to get around this

Open atlstdthunk.h of VS-2015.

Uncomment the #ifdef block completely that defines USE_ATL_THUNK2. Code lines 25 to 27.

Recompile your program.

This enables the old thunking mechanism well known from VC-2010, VC-2013. and this works crash free for me. As long as there are no other already compiled libraries involved that may subclass or use 256 windows via ATL in any way.

Comment (Mar. 1st 2017):

• Microsoft confirmed that this is a bug. It should be fixed in Windows 10 RS2.
• Mircrosoft agrees that editing the headers in the atlstdthunk.h is a workaround for the problem.

In fact this says. As long as there is no stable patch I can never use the normal ATL thunking again, because I will never know what Window versions out in the world will use my program. Because Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 prior to RS2 will suffer on this bug.

Final Comment (Mar. 9th 2017):

• Builds with VS-2017 are affected too, there is no difference between VS-2015 and VS-2017
• Microsoft decided that there will be no fix for older OS, regarding this case.
• Neither Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2012 RC2 or other Windows 10 builds will get a patch to fix this issue.
• The issue is to rare and the impact for our company is to small. Also the fix from our side is to simple. Other reports of this bug are not known.
• The case is closed.

My advice for all programers: Change the the atlstdthunk.h in your Visual Studio version VS-2015, VS-2017 (see above). I don’t understand Microsoft. This bug is a serious problem in the ATL thunking. It may hit every programmer that uses a greater number of windows and/or subclassing.