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REGISTRY_ERROR Blue screen when idle
Hi all,
I'm experiencing random blue screens (REGISTRY_ERROR) when I idle for 5-10+ minutes. The time is never consistant, but if I leave a game playing in the background I can idle fine. Under heavy load I face no issues, either. I've disabled any tasks that were scheduled to run on idle already.
This began on the 21st out of the blue - I do recall losing power and the machine shutting down 'dirty', which I assume has caused the problem.
BlueScreenView/minidumps point to ntoskrnl.exe being the problem...which is bad - and also, probably not where the actual problem lies.
More or less a cross post from Windows 10 Blue Screen when idle, no root cause : techsupport at this point...
What I have done:
Multiple MemTests
SFC Multiple times
CHKDSK Multiple Times*
Latest chipset/BIOs updates
Latest drivers (as far as I know) for audio, gpu, etc.
Default BIOs setting, took out and put back in CMOS battery
Manual ram timings
Maintenance/Power troubleshooters in W10
DISM SFC checks
Examined .dmps with WinDbg, however, I am very green in that aspect.
Deleting entries in /SOFTWARE/, importing and exporting on top of this - still can't hammer down the EXACT cell that is corrupted but it is definitly in /SOFTWARE/.
What I haven't:
Stress tested CPU (not sure if I should bother - does not seem hardware related and CPU is fairly new and running at normal temps.)
SeaTools on Windows drive - my C:/ drive is a SSD.
Furmark to stress test GPU - again, doesn't seem hardware related and everything has been status quo.
Manually upgraded to threshold 2
Refresh/Reset Windows 10 option
*The first pass of chkdsk did return some bad data on my C:/ drive, but it was seemingly repaired after that.
Some of my minidumps may be unrelated at this point as I've gone through my registry a few times deleting/recovering what I can here and there. My event viewer may be reporting funky things at this stage, too.
I also attempted to use the driver verifier, but after the splash screen would BSOD with a DRIVER_VERIFIER type error - it would point to random drivers but after uninstalling a handful I decided these were false flags. (Uninstalled Avast, Daemon tools)
Prior to these issues I ran CCCleaner,SuperAntiSpyware, Malwarebytes Anti Malware, Avast, and defragged regularly.
Occasionally the power does cut out in my apartment - although I'm plugged into a strip I believe this is what corrupted some area of my registry, I'm assuming an update was installing at the time behind the scenes.
I've entered my specs on my account when I signed up here, but here they are again:
Windows 10, 64Bit Threshold 1 (2 won't appear when I Check for Updates)
16 GB RAM, GSkill 4gb sticks at 2133 set to 'auto' timing in BIOS (should be 11-11-11-30)
EVGA GTX 970
1200W Corsair PSU I believe...
Intel i5 4690
Mobo is Gigabyte Z97X-SLI Rev 1.0, F9 BIOS
Latest chipset driver, latest GPU driver, Windows all up to date (last update was 1/12 according to my machine)
Windows is sitting on a 120GB SSD, rest of my drives are older large storage (1-3 years)
I've found one other identical occurance to my issues here : Solved BSOD when idle for 4 minutes, REGISTRY_ERROR - Windows 10 Forums although he/she ended up starting fresh.
Unlike his/her's issues though, my BSOD is caused by trying to mess with the registry - Windows Defender runs fine although I have disabled it for now.
I did watch my task manager before the crash and notice nothing abnormal in terms of load.
Initially scanning through minidumps with WinDbg I was assisted in finding the following possible problem areas:
SOFTWARE\Clients\Media\Media Player Classic\Capabilities
Software\Blizzard Entertainment\StarCraft II Editor\Capabilities
Software\Blizzard Entertainment\Battle.net\Capabilities
SOFTWARE\Clients\Internet Call\Skype\Capabilities
however, I was able to remove them completely. I run into issues when deleting the entire SOFTWARE hive with blue screens I assume due to the corrupted cell - I'm able to import back in my exported .reg to get back to a working state but obviously this doesn't get rid of the BSODs nor it is a very smart idea.
If I get adventurous and go down the list it appears deleting the SOFTWARE/Microsoft key blue screens and from what I remember SOFTWARE/Wow6432node, too. I'm able to import back anything I deleted without issues.
I did see another entry referenced involving Quicktime, though I recall being able to remove that key fine.
I have been able to export my SOFTWARE hive to a .reg file and a regular hive dump using Shadow Copy. According to Debugging BSOD when trying to delete malformed registry key on Windows 8.1 | I should have been able to load this hive over my bad one, but I hit permission not allowed problems doing that.
I am able to load the exported hive as 'SOFTWARE2' and delete it cleanly - so I assume if I can remove the corrupted SOFTWARE hive I can use an external machine to replace the corrupted hive - though I assume I could throw a Linux distro on a flash drive and do this from the machine, too.
Most likely I'll end up having to reset/refresh, but I'd just like to get more visiblity into my issue beyond being buried on reddit. Currently, I'm downloading the latest W10 ISO to hopefully get up to Threshold 2 - I'm not sure why I'm not able to update to it.