Windows 7 fails to start (ntoskrnl.exe fault). Long topic, most common solutions doesn't fix the problem.

RBuczynski

Reputable
Apr 4, 2016
64
2
4,565
Good day everyone.

It's my first topic here, but I've been reading topics here sice few last hours. Yesterday, when I was playing CS:GO I've stumbled some weird stuff - at one moment, my PC just turn blackscreen (box itself were still running, no beep or anything). After hard reset and re-entry to my Windows 7 Enterprise x64 I've noticed, that forced restard kill my temp files. It happeend sometimes, so without a doubt I've started to click on everything "allow" (I'm using Outpost Firewall Pro 9.5.1), but BSOD came to me again. And again, again - summary, it made 17 of them - both in "normal" boot or in the safe mode.

After I've started to dig (I've got really wide spectrum of BSOD - Memory Management, NTFS_Filesystem, 0x1a, BAD_POOL_HEADER, PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA, PFN_LISTCORRUPT, SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION, my first one was KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDELED), but wariety of different options left me amount of choices to make. To make things a bit easier:

1) I've NOT been installing new software recently - just an upgrade on...Chome I think. I've disabled either auto win update (although, I'm up to date with windows defender db, since it doesn't require a restart after upgrade), ATI Crisimon update (I'm having runner-up to latest version), I've NOT been upgrading Razer Synapse (piece of crap IMHO, will probably come back to old version of driver, dated back to 2012/2013 - Rzstats already causes few crashes of CS:GO in my history and it was more often screwed, than working). I'm keeping up to date both my Outpost db and Avast db. Since Agnitum's product download it's own stuff without prompt, and it's been doing that since... 3 years, both on XP and Windows 7 (x86 and x64) - I don't think that this is the case.

2) I've NOT beed making ANY hardware changes since install of new, x64 system. Summer and autumn last year I've bought used (but still good on SMART) SD2000, as well as 8GB od Goodram 1333 CL9 (one piece). Both of these elements run fine, either on Windows 7 pro 32 bit (which I'm using to type post now) and Win 7 64-bit. I've not been changing the places of electronica stuff inside PC, all of my temperatures looks fine (ok, CPU might get a little too hot, but still - 60*C after few hours of playing, despite being OC to 3.56GHz isn't a bad score).

3) My temperatures are looking ok-ish. In hottest scenarios, my CPU doesn't go beyond 70*C, my GPU - the same. HDDs are running around 45-50*C at most of the time (could be colder, but they are lying next to PSU unit). I could always set a new placement of these components, as well as give them some fresh, compressed air to get rid of dust.

4) Some of my BSODs had entries like MEMORY_MANAGEMENT. I've read on Internet that it could be caused by RAM - I've already put it in different slot, reset BIOS (and, after proper boot on secondary OS, set my small OC, that runs well with 2 different RAMs for over 4 years - I'll put details below). I will do a boot memtest, to see how does it work, but I'm thinking (despite having no troubles at all, no BSODs, no faults, no weird behaviour before) that RAM is ok.

5) My SD2000 (Seagate 2TB SD2000MD001-9YN164) is accesible easily with x86 windows. However, things are getting nasty, when I try to get direct fix. I've tried before sfc, with different endings, typed as it occur:
a) sfc /scannow, used on bootable windows 7 DVD with option "repair now" - doesn't even finish first step, then show BSOD known from win8 and 10 - without code
b) sfc typed with offbootdir and offwindir commands, rest as above (DVD, repair option) - Windows Resource Protection could not finish the operation
c) startup repair, chosen from advanced boot option, after choosing win 7 x64 causes fail and restart the PC - "startup repair tool could not determine the cause" (or something like that)
d) trying to get easiest way out - repair now, using DVD - system partition is locked, you need to unlock it before you can make any operations,
e) restoring point - from DVD could not be used, DVD says that I need to go to safe mode and start there,
f) save mode - yesterday it was accesible, but when I've tried to restore OS from week before or so, system stucked at "preparing to restore", afrer 15 minutes or so, it decided to turn itself off,
g) save mode today - I cannot even enter there anymore, after choosing "safe mode" and load all drivers, OS itself reboot,
h) before I've had struggle to make sfc work, tool itself find few errors (as well as chkdsk /f /r). What's worrying me - one of them was at the sector with very low number (128 or 144). However, even after repair - all of that effort go to waste next time I'm trying to start windows normally,
i) bootrec - only command /fixmbr is doing something. Next two - fixboot and rebuildbcd shows "cannot finish procedure", even after pointing correct partition before that.

What else could be helpful? All of these BSOD have common fail in process ntoskrnl.exe. Few of first one - also failure in ntfs.sys. Since both of them are rather basic components of OS, I've tried to re-install them, but - fails continue to stumble across me during the time - listed above. Either I cannot run CMD, or run it in the way I want, either partiton/disk is locked (diskmgr shows no atributes in "read only" and rest of the stuff - all of it is "0") or simply I cannot force PC to make all steps to copy files directly from DVD to hdd. I also cannot make *.bak files (which was part of some solution that I've founded), because I cannot even access safe mode in x64 OS or at least force it to boot in that mode.
Analysys of the magnetic sufrace of disk (using ADRC HDD Checker) showed no errors. Also - both Total Commander and PerfectDisk are able to access every acre of HDD. No errors have been founded, using sfc or chkdsk on other partitions of that disk. Also - as mentioned above - no errors from RAM have been detected on second OS - which is pre-installed since begging of my collaboration with this rig.

About OC - I've been using it since the begining. Having Phenom II X4 955 (RB-C3 revision), GB MA790XT-UD4P (BIOS has not been changed since 3 years, it's latest official F8), Radeon HD 5850 1GB and 4, then 8 GB of DDR3 (first - Kingston 2x2 GB 1066, now - 8GB Goodram 1333 CL9) I've made a small OC. My PC is running at all this time at 220 MHz on NB and FSB (instead of 200), with extra 0,075V on CPU Vcore and 0,05V on DDR3 (I've made that yesterday, when I was looking to find a solution to MEMORY_MANAGEMENT BSOD). My GPU is also overclocked, just a bit - from 725 to 775 MHz on GPU core and from 1000 to 1100 MHz on memory. No errors so far in any game, benchmark, no wild BSODs appears situation - everyting worked fine.

BSOD and their details has been checked with BlueScreenView. I also wanna say, that it happened in random ocasions - at first system crashed when I gave permissions to Razer stuff, then - to ATI drivers, then to some inner windows service itself - I began to think that ntoskrnl.exe fault will be happening even if I would not make any decisions on that system.

What should be my next step? I'll run memtest this evening, just to make sure that everyting is ok. I've also copied already data from that partition. Does any extra tries with MBR and system critical files have any chance of success? Or should I rather give it a good night sleep, type in CMD "format T:" and get rid of problems? Reinstalling will not be a huge problem to me, but still - saving few extra hours spent on reinstalling stuff and configuring it are kindly welcome. Excuse me for all english mistakes that I've been made, I hope that explanations are precise and that someone will be able to help me. Thanks for all the help that is (and will be) done here!
 
Solution
If this happened to me, I'd restore from one of my full system backups I've made to external hard drives. If you haven't done that, consider this a learning experience for the future. It sounds like you're going to need to save your data and restore to factory settings using the procedure in your user guide.

Good luck.
If this happened to me, I'd restore from one of my full system backups I've made to external hard drives. If you haven't done that, consider this a learning experience for the future. It sounds like you're going to need to save your data and restore to factory settings using the procedure in your user guide.

Good luck.
 
Solution

RBuczynski

Reputable
Apr 4, 2016
64
2
4,565
Some news. My RAM IS damaged - memtest showed around 100k of errors in each run in memory from 4 to 6 gb of silicon piece (banks 5 and 6). For some reason, x86 systems ignore, or at least try to do so with stuff beyond 4gb capacity, which allowed me to use 32 bit os without errors. I've made a contact with my seller and will send himS RAM tomorrow.Since it's GoodRAM, which has offices and main HQ in Poland, where I come from, I'm hoping that whole process won't take too long.

Two main things - always remember to myself to make whole memtest run, when I got new memory toy, always make initial safe image somewhere.IActually, second option is made by me, but since RAM showed like 200M errors in whole memtest pass it's obvious, what made my PC unable to use.
But sure thing, I'll try my best with latest copy (30th of March, or a week before that), once my hardware will be working again.

Thanks for help!