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.

axe0 said:

I understand that your problem started with editing the registry and became worse with more editing of the registry?

Please try Repair Install Windows 10 with an In-place Upgrade - Windows 10 Forums

Not exactly - it appears the problem began after the power gave out and I had an unexpected reboot. Since then, something in the registry has been corrupted and after 5 minutes or so of idle time my machine blue screens.

If I leave an intensive game running in the background I don't crash, I assume because my machine is 'in use'.
If I attempt to delete the SOFTWARE hive I encounter the same REGISTRY_ERROR blue screen, so my assumption is that when the power was cut it corrupted an entry in the registry - however, I'm unable to determine the exact cell that is corrupted or how to repair that cell.

That said, I will attempt to repair install according to the link you posted and report back my findings. Thanks!

axe0 said:

I do believe that, it would be difficult to find the root cause in the registry if the software hive is the problem (depending on how much is installed).

If the software hive is the cause, have you tried to remove (reinstall) software and associated registry keys?
This may be possible with revo uninstaller
Download Revo Uninstaller Freeware - Free and Full Download - Uninstall software, remove programs, solve uninstall problems

So far, I've only seen the following registry entries in my dumps:
SOFTWARE\Clients\Media\Quicktime\Capabilities
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

I was able to remove all of these without a blue screen though - when I made a backup and attempted to delete the 'Microsoft' key I hit a blue screen, but it's hard to tell if that was because I deleted an important entry or if the corrupted entry was in there. In any case, I restored back to my previous state on top of that since it was unsuccessful.

I did use Revo last night to uninstall those programs to no avail - I also attempted to do an in-place upgrade to threshold 2. I reached about 85% on the first step of 'Copying Files' on setup but I froze - 25% all together. I didn't let it sit for more than 2 hours but at that point I assumed it crashed - I believe the install error was 0xC1900101 - 0X20004. I don't recall having issues like that in the past - but I had many USB devices still plugged in. I will attempt to do another upgrade via the Media Creation tool with everything but my main hard drive connected and report back my findings.