Mystery Shutdowns when launching games and Critical Process Died BSODs

Running version 22H2 (OS Build 19045.3208)
I've been having 2 Major issues for the past few months.
The first issue started like 8 months ago, it happened rarely at the time. When I launch a game, what would happen is that the fan would accelerate to max and would not stop, then after about 20 seconds of running like this the laptop would turn off abruptly, no shutdown screen no nothing, as if I'd pressed and held the power button. At the time I tried everything, I cleaned the fan in and out, I uninstalled windows and reinstalled. I set up a hardware monitor and while the fan was running like crazy the temperatures were normal. I tried multiple programs to control the fan speed but none of them worked, some of them couldn't connect to the fan. Lenovo vantage can't seem to access the fan either. I used Vantage to update my bios and firmware and such to no effect. I still have no idea why this happens. What confuses me more is two things: first, this only happens when I launch a game, while I am in game I have never gotten such a shutdown, nor any freezes, crashes or weird behavior. As long as a game is actually running the laptop behaves completely normally in fact, despite my recent BSODs. Second is that I will sometimes go days without encountering it, and the times when I reinstalled windows I didn't run into it for 2-3 days, and then it started all over again.

The second issue is the BSODs, I'd say out of the 19/20 are CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED with no additional information, I get the BSOD, and then windows tries to "collect data" and gets stuck at 0%, at which point I have no choice but to hold down the power button and reset. Now, the way this happens is that it's usually not just one BSOD. So if I get a Critical process died, I will get it another 5-6 times before my PC goes back to normal, or I will boot, and then I get a freeze followed by a Critical process died BSOD either at the login screen or after I launch an app. Sometimes I will see other codes, but rarely and never the same one twice. I've seen Registry Filter Driver exception Wdfilter.sys for example once, and others that I can't remember, but they don't repeat, only Critical Process Died repeats. (Something else I've experienced during the BSODs is that sometimes the system will not even detect the OS at start, however this seems to have stopped once I disconnected my external hard drive before resetting.) Another thing is that system doesn't create minidump files on BSOD even though I've checked the option.

Again, this never happens when I'm actually gaming, my laptop runs as smooth as butter while gaming, and I've had no performance issues as long as a game is running, and no crashes AT ALL while gaming.

What I've tried so far:

• Running Lenovo Vantage to Troubleshoot and run system tests, the result was no probelms detected
• Running dskchck, DISM and SFC multiple times with no problem detected
• Running hardware monitors to check for GPU temperatures, which indicated nothing abnormal
• Running stress tests on my GPU using the fuzzy donut thingy and Lenovo Vantage
• Cleaning the insides of the laptop
• Clean installs of NVDIA drivers

The only things that are left to investigate that I'm not finding any leads on:
1. I can't seem to control or even connect to my system fans.
2. In the Event Viewer, the following two events are recorded when the fan goes to max and causes a shutdown:

The application-specific permission settings do not grant Local Activation permission for the COM Server application with CLSID

The speed of processor 7 in group 0 is being limited by system firmware. The processor has been in this reduced performance state for 71 seconds since the last report.

the latter also repeats for all 8 processors

To recap: Two problems. First problem is that when I launch a game (often but not always) the fan will go crazy, and then the system turns off as if I had pressed and held the power button. This power down happens instantly, as in I don't go to a shutdown screen, rather the power goes out and the screen goes black. Second problem is random freezes followed by a CRITICAL PROCESS DIED BSOD

Again what makes this odd to me is how random it all seems, some days the system will just keep Freezing and BSODing for hours and then I don't run into the problem again. The fan problem is also erratic, and sometimes it won't happen if I just leave the laptop running for a while and try to launch a game again.

I would greatly appreciate any help. I'm not financially well at the moment so the prospect of getting a new machine or even fixing the hardware on this one is not great. Thank you in advance.

If you're having BSODs then it would be good if you were able to write dump files. For dumps to be produced The following should all be true...

• The page file must be on the same drive as your operating system
• Set page file to "system managed"
• Set system crash/recovery options to "Automatic memory dump"
• Windows Error Reporting (WER) system service should be set to MANUAL
• User account control must be running

In addition, these factors can impact dump writing...

• Sometimes SSD drives with older firmware do not create dumps (check for a firmware update via Samsung Magician)
• Garbage cleaner applications like Ccleaner (and the Microsoft Disk Cleanup app) delete dump files so don't run any cleaner app until you are fixed
• Bad Physical RAM may prevent the data from being saved and written to a file on reboot. Download Memtest86 (free), use the imageUSB tool extracted from the download to make a bootable USB drive containing Memtest (1GB is plenty big enough), and then boot that USB drive. Memtest will start running as soon as it boots. If no errors are found after the four iterations of the 13 different tests that the free version does, then restart Memtest and do another four iterations.

In looking through the data upload there are a few things that stand out. Firstly there are several devices that are missing drivers...

Code:

PCI Simple Communications Controller	PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_A13A&SUBSYS_382217AA&REV_31\3&11583659&0&B0	The drivers for this device are not installed.
WD SES Device USB Device	USBSTOR\OTHER&VEN_WD&PROD_SES_DEVICE&REV_1033\575835314139324B37333937&1	The drivers for this device are not installed.
SM Bus Controller	PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_A123&SUBSYS_381C17AA&REV_31\3&11583659&0&FC	The drivers for this device are not installed.
PCI Memory Controller	PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_A121&SUBSYS_381817AA&REV_31\3&11583659&0&FA	The drivers for this device are not installed.
PCI Data Acquisition and Signal Processing Controller	PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_A131&SUBSYS_381A17AA&REV_31\3&11583659&0&A2	The drivers for this device are not installed.

The WD SES device you can ignore, you don't need this driver. The other devices however really should have drivers installed. When you open Device Manager are there any devices with a yellow triangle containing a black exclamation mark?

Run Windows Update and then click the blue 'View optional drivers' link, in there expand the Driver Updates section. Do not select the WD SES driver in there, but do select any other drivers in that list and install them.

Your System log contains repeated messages about problems with your WD Passport drive...

Code:

Event[1105]:
  Log Name: System
  Source: disk
  Date: 2023-07-28T01:12:48.2090000Z
  Event ID: 11
  Task: N/A
  Level: Error
  Opcode: N/A
  Keyword: Classic
  User: N/A
  User Name: N/A
  Computer: DESKTOP-MTTLFEB
  Description: 
The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Harddisk1\DR1.

This sort of message wouldn't normally be of interest, since it's not a system drive. However, the size of your installed Windows system and apps comes to only 57.46GB, and that's pretty small for a Windows 10 install, with applications. That leads me to ask; what do you have on the D: drive? Is there anything at all that is system related on that WD Passport?

I'm assuming that all of your games are on that WD Passport drive? That might explain the curiosity of your issues happening during game loading (from a faulty D: drive) but running fine once they are in memory. If there is anything at all system related on that D: drive, then the flaky Passport could be causing all your other issues.

I'm gonna do what you said. In the meanwhile, no, I have nothing system related on my WD Passport. I use it only for games and documents. I'll try installing some games on my SSD and see if I ever encounter the problem there.

1) Run:
laptops and netbooks :: legion series :: legion y520 15ikbm :: 80yycontentdetail - Lenovo Support US

2) Plan to run overnight the Lenovo custom diagnostics > take pictures > post images or share links displaying the tests performed with results

Estimate Time

112 mins


laptops and netbooks :: legion series :: legion y520 15ikbm :: 80yy - Lenovo Support US

So I tried installing the updates in Windows Updates, didn't help. I downloaded Samsung Magician and it didn't show any firmware updates for my SSD. Then I tried installing Lenovo Service Bridge and Vantage and that's when my PC just died. My keyboard stopped working entirely while I was in Windows (it worked fine in the BIOS and troubleshooting screens) and I coulnd't even launch into safe mode, I just kept getting Critical Process Died BSODs over and over, and in the end got a WHEA Uncorrectable Error BSOD. In the end I uninstalled again, this time I made sure to delete the old partitions before installing, which I noticed I didn't do previously. However, I still ran into BSODs when I was using Service Bridge and vantage to update my drivers. I'll see what I can do with those while I wait for Ubuntu to download, if Windows bricks again I'll be swapping it out, but I want to still try to make it work.

When you reinstalled was that WD Passport drive connected? If so, please do another clean install of Windows (deleting partitions during the install again) - but with the WD Passport disconnected from the laptop (and any other external devices too). Don't connect the WD Passport (or any other external devices) until you have completed the Windows install AND installed all necessary drivers.

Let us know how that goes.

I gave up hope after the SSD stopped being detected in the BIOS, so I just opened up the laptop, unplugged the SSD and put it back in and so far everything works. I'm installing the Samsung SSD firmware thing and will update with the Lenovo stuff and we'll see how that goes.

- - - Updated - - -

This is what I'm seeing in Samsung Magician. It can't seem to detect the SSD health, nor did it show any firmware updates for the device. Don't know what the next move is.

Magician seems not to recognise the driver for that NVMe drive. I would normally expect the NVMe driver entry to say 'Microsoft' (if using the built-in Microsoft driver). That the driver (and thus the interface) are unrecognised is a concern, it suggest that the drive is not being properly recognised by Windows - in which case it would cause all sorts of problems.

I think I would try the Magician diagnostics test to see whether that throws up anything. I would also suggest running Windows Update and then click on 'View optional updates'. In there expand the Driver Updates section and look for an NVMe driver in there.

You might also see whether Magician can find a driver for that drive.

I'm not at all confident that the NVMe drive is 100% good.....