Random CRITICAL_STRUCTURE_CORRUPTION BSODs

Altruistic troubleshooters,

Lately I've been feeling blue. Blue screened to death specifically. I need your help.

This is my first time ever posting a computer problem to Al Gore's Internet. Usually I'm the nerd others go to for help, but this is above my nerd rank. I have been humbled. I hang my head in shame.

That said, here goes my distress call:

I started getting daily BSODs in late December with the following error message: CRITICAL_STRUCTURE_CORRUPTION
WinDBG shows: "CRITICAL_STRUCTURE_CORRUPTION (109)

This bugcheck is generated when the kernel detects that critical kernel code or data have been corrupted."


These BSODs occur randomly when watching movies, playing music, gaming (simple or complex), or just surfing the Web. Sometimes it occurs 5 minutes after boot and sometimes after hours of use. I'll load up the CPU with a video compression task and it does the job. Then I'll read a static web page and it explodes. I haven't been able to discern any sort of pattern. I can always get it to BSOD when watching a Blu-Ray, but it happens at random times during the movie.

A full run of MemTest86 shows no discoverable errors with RAM.

Most of the hardware in the box is a few years old. It was rock solid on Windows 7 for years. In Sept 2015, I bought an SSD (Samsung 850 EVO) and installed Windows 10. It ran without errors until late December 2015 when this BSOD business started. There were no hardware changes at that time and no new software (other than Windows updates) was installed around that time either.

I feel like this is either a hardware problem (but not heat, the water flows cool) or a driver issue. I did have to use several Windows 8 drivers for my old hardware that doesn't have Windows 10 drivers available for it. The only potentially dodgy driver I had to install was for my Auzentech Prelude soundcard: Daniel_K's Official Blog: SB X-Fi Series Support Pack 3.4

Take a look and let me know your ideas.

Your time and expertise is much appreciated.

Do you play any games on the PC ?

And any software installed like "Steam Games"

Yes, I game on it. I run the Steam client only when playing Steam games (which I have too many of).

This game seems to be causing the error: LA Noire

Can you try to reinstall it

Yes, I am uninstalling it now.

Afterwards I'll reboot then play a Blu-Ray movie to test.

I will report back afterwards.

JuliusMariani said:

Yes, I am uninstalling it now.

Afterwards I'll reboot then play a Blu-Ray movie to test.

I will report back afterwards.

I removed the game, rebooted, then played a Blu-ray movie. BSOD occurred.

The computer did BSOD a few weeks back while playing that game. That must have been what you saw in the logs, but I don't think it's related to that game.

Thanks for the response.

axe0 said:

Remove TrueCrypt, it hasn't been updated since it isn't supported anymore.

Code:

*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for truecrypt.sys
*** ERROR: Module load completed but symbols could not be loaded for truecrypt.sys

I heard about TrueCrypt having known security issues. I need to switch to another program once I find one that works across Windows, Linux, and Android...any suggestions?
Is that in any way related to the BSODs?

axe0 said:

Remove Bitdefender while troubleshooting and use Windows Defender as alternative
Uninstall Bitdefender

Code:

*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for gzflt.sys
*** ERROR: Module load completed but symbols could not be loaded for gzflt.sys

I'm removing Bitdefender now. I removed it before thinking it might be the problem, but was unable to get Windows Defender to run (the service would auto-stop after starting). I need to work on that some more to get Defender to run. Even after removing Bitdefender, Windows thinks there is AntiVirus installed and won't run Defender. Will probably have to tweak something in the registry.

axe0 said:

From where did you get the settings of driver verifier?

Code:

0: kd> !verifier

Verify Flags Level 0x03a1efbb

  STANDARD FLAGS:
    [X] (0x00000000) Automatic Checks
    [X] (0x00000001) Special pool
    [X] (0x00000002) Force IRQL checking
    [X] (0x00000008) Pool tracking
    [X] (0x00000010) I/O verification
    [X] (0x00000020) Deadlock detection
    [X] (0x00000080) DMA checking
    [X] (0x00000100) Security checks
    [X] (0x00000800) Miscellaneous checks
    [ ] (0x00020000) DDI compliance checking

  ADDITIONAL FLAGS:
    [ ] (0x00000004) Randomized low resources simulation
    [X] (0x00000200) Force pending I/O requests
    [X] (0x00000400) IRP logging
    [X] (0x00002000) Invariant MDL checking for stack
    [X] (0x00004000) Invariant MDL checking for driver
    [X] (0x00008000) Power framework delay fuzzing
    [ ] (0x00040000) Systematic low resources simulation
    [ ] (0x00080000) DDI compliance checking (additional)
    [X] (0x00200000) NDIS/WIFI verification
    [X] (0x00800000) Kernel synchronization delay fuzzing
    [X] (0x01000000) VM switch verification

  RESERVED FLAGS (use of these flags is unsupported):
    [X] (0x00010000) Unused or reserved flag
    [X] (0x02000000) Unused or reserved flag

    [X] Indicates flag is enabled


Summary of All Verifier Statistics

  RaiseIrqls           0x19
  AcquireSpinLocks     0x10
  Synch Executions     0x0
  Trims                0x18

  Pool Allocations Attempted             0x6579
  Pool Allocations Succeeded             0x6579
  Pool Allocations Succeeded SpecialPool 0x6579
  Pool Allocations With NO TAG           0x0
  Pool Allocations Failed                0x0

  Current paged pool allocations         0x12 for 000026EA bytes
  Peak paged pool allocations            0x13 for 00002776 bytes
  Current nonpaged pool allocations      0x79 for 00223F15 bytes
  Peak nonpaged pool allocations         0x79 for 00223F15 bytes

I followed the instructions here: Driver Verifier-- tracking down a mis-behaving driver. - Microsoft Community
After doing this and rebooting, the system came back with a BSOD driver error on trufos.sys. I read that this is used by Bitdefender. I removed Bitdefender but was then having issues with Windows Defender running, so I reinstalled BitDefender.

Okay, Bitdefender has been removed. I will reboot and run the Blu-Ray again to see if it BSODs. I'll respond back afterwards.

After removing BitDefender and rebooting (running no antivirus whatsoever), I played a Blu-Ray movie again. It made it most of the way through the movie and then blue screened.

I'll remove TrueCrypt, reboot, and try the movie again.

Note that I'm only using Blu-Ray movies as a test case since that is the only thing that will consistently cause a BSOD. Getting the BSOD during other activities happens, but more sporadically.