How To set up 'watching' regimen?

abrogard · 30 Mar 2021

If a computer regularly has system crashes bad enough to require reinstalls how best to set up some kind of watching regimen that might see the problem accumulating, rising to the critical point?

My son has such a computer. Win10 of course.

He tells me it regularly crashes every month or so and he reinstalls Windows and 'that seems to fix the problem'.

Of course that's contradictory. If the thing occurs again then it wasn't fixed.

And if it occurs again on a new install of windows each time then it sounds to me like it's very probable it is not windows where the problem is but somewhere in the installed software - in his case all games.

I've never seen this angle questioned before and never thought of it myself until now.

We watch disk space diminishing and cpu usage rising and mem usage but that's all.

Is there anything we can monitor that might show the progress of a growing problem that would eventually lead to these 'crashes' that windows finds irrecoverable and eventually need a new install?

At the very least I guess I should be learning how to salvage the system logs after one of these events and make sense of them. New Windows installs leave the old install on the disk so they'd still be available I guess? And I think perhaps I should be initiating certain system logs - I think there's a lot of potential logs that are not enabled by default?

steve108 · 30 Mar 2021

Hello abrogard,
This post/quetsion would be a good candidate to move to the BSOD section. @Brink, do you agree?

abrogard · 31 Mar 2021

Yes, I agree if that's what you say. Sorry I'm a bit oblivious to those aspects... Fine by me.

zebal · 31 Mar 2021

These sorts of problems are hard to diagnose, and it gets even harder when the user is a child who just want to play games and have it's PC run.

abrogard said:

He tells me it regularly crashes every month or so and he reinstalls Windows and 'that seems to fix the problem'.

If the thing occurs again then it wasn't fixed.

it's very probable it is not windows where the problem is but somewhere in the installed software - in his case all games.

You kind of answered your own question...

My quick suggestion is as follows:
1. After clean install of OS, first install all and only drivers from motherboard site
2. Let your son use standard Windows account, not Administrator
3. You keep another admin account that only you will have access to
4. Install only original games and software, if that's not affordable look for alternatives that are free.

Then, if the problem happens again, create another standard Windows account and test using computer there.
if it works, transfer important son's data from old account to new one, then delete old one.

Does this sounds like doable for you?

You can solve many problems by limiting what can be done directly to system, ex. without your consent.
That way you also isolate a lot of potential problems that can be hard to discover if not prevented.

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Following tutorials may help:

Add Local Account or Microsoft Account in Windows 10
Turn On or Off Device Driver Automatic Installation in Windows 10

Btw. regarding drivers after fresh install of system following in following order is important:

1. chipset driver followed by reboot
2. graphics driver from either NVIDIA or AMD site
3. Audio, LAN, WIFI, bluetooth, Intel or AMD specific drivers followed by reboot

Other drivers, utilities and BIOS should be avoided as a general rule.
This is step No.1

Next step is completely updating and\or upgrading Windows
Creating standard in addition to Administrator account

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Btw. if Administrator account is problem, (it surely is), let your son use it, but only trough UAC from standard account to install things:

Change User Account Control (UAC) Settings in Windows 10

If the UAC doesn't came up "blue", ex. it's "yellow" then that's potential issue and it defeats the whole purpose of Administrator account.

Standard user account is fine to do anything, except it doesn't let you do bad things to computer, so it should be used regardless of whether you share your Admin password with your son.