New Windows 11 feature aims to diagnose crashes — will check RAM after BSODs to look for problems

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Microsoft is testing a new memory diagnostic scan that will run whenever Windows 11 encounters a bug check, triggering a BSOD. The new scanning tool was announced on the Windows Insider Blog and is available starting with Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.6982 (KB5067109) for dev channel users. Microsoft hopes this new tool will help whittle down errors that are caused by memory corruption.

In this latest preview version of Windows 11, the memory diagnostic scan will trigger after rebooting from a BSOD. A pop-up window will appear recommending that the user schedule a memory scan during the system's next reboot. In the pop-up window, the user has buttons to skip the memory scan or schedule the scan as previously mentioned.

It's great to see Microsoft adding another memory scanning tool to Windows. Memory-related errors are some of the most difficult errors to track down. Unlike CPU instability, moderate levels of memory instability can remain hidden for years on a host machine and trigger occasional crashes that might not seem memory-related on the surface. Worse still, leaving a system with memory instability for such a long period can lead to slow but potentially serious data corruption.

While memory corruption could happen on any system, if the memory is defective, it's also worth mentioning that memory corruption can also occur with XMP or EXPO-enabled memory modules as well. This can happen because these modules are technically factory overclocked, and implementing these modules in a system can often overclock the chip's integrated interconnect and memory controller. This is the main cause of instability if the CPU's memory controller and/or interconnect can't handle the speeds of the XMP or EXPO memory kit's rated speed.

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Aaron Klotz is a contributing writer for Tom’s Hardware, covering news related to computer hardware such as CPUs, and graphics cards.

14 Comments Comment from the forums

kyzarvs

Great! But you'd think the worlds most popular desktop O/S would have had these basic tools automated in this way 20 years ago or more surely?
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bit_user

kyzarvs said:
you'd think the worlds most popular desktop O/S would have had these basic tools automated in this way 20 years ago or more surely?
Yeah, the timing of this couldn't be worse, coming just as we're seeing unprecedented spikes in both DDR4 and DDR5 memory prices.

I do remember hearing something about how Microsoft wanted to require ECC RAM for machines running Windows Vista. I guess they backed down after facing backlash from big PC OEMs.

I think they really should implement this as a background service that memtests a few pages at a time. If it finds isolated problems, it could warn you but automatically exclude those pages from use.

FWIW, I use ECC RAM whenever it's an option. We need wider support for in-band ECC, when it's not!
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Li Ken-un

bit_user said:
Microsoft wanted to require ECC RAM for machines running Windows Vista.
I’ve since made it my own rule that if it doesn’t have ECC RAM, I’m not buying. That includes laptops, which are notoriously hard to get with ECC RAM.

bit_user said:
We need wider support for in-band ECC, when it's not!
I learned recently with the purchase of an AMD Ryzen Pro mini desktop that came with LPDDR5X, there’s a third form of ECC: link ECC. It didn’t have the extra RAM packages from what I could tell from a teardown, so this is a cheaper form of ECC that protects the bits in transit. (It doesn’t make a great difference to since the DDR5’s OD-ECC already provides protection at rest.)
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gamerk316

I note Windows Memory Diagnostic has been built into Windows for a while now; this sounds more like just automating the process of running what's already there, unless I'm misunderstanding.
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das_stig

How about Microsoft put there own coding house in order spewing out broken updates and features each month before fixing other peoples errors.
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GreatIsbjorn

gamerk316 said:
I note Windows Memory Diagnostic has been built into Windows for a while now; this sounds more like just automating the process of running what's already there, unless I'm misunderstanding.
pretty sure that's exactly what it is, at least part of it. Saves me a step of pasting dump file to chatgpt and see what the problem might be I guess...
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russell_john

I can't even remember the last time I had a hard crash on Windows 10 only buggy games that CTDed but never took down the system with it. I do know it was before the final 22H2 update. Once they stopped screwing around with Feature Updates it became one of the most stable versions of Windows ever made in my experience. That's why I'm sticking with it for another year and laughing at all the people having problems with Windows 11. I'll probably go to Linux next October since nearly all my games run on it now
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bit_user

Li Ken-un said:
I learned recently with the purchase of an AMD Ryzen Pro mini desktop that came with LPDDR5X, there’s a third form of ECC: link ECC.
Interesting.

Li Ken-un said:
(It doesn’t make a great difference to since the DDR5’s OD-ECC already provides protection at rest.)
That protection is rather weak, however. It was added only to achieve equivalent bit-error rates with DDR4, and necessitated by DDR5's shrinking cell sizes and longer refresh intervals. You can still find people with DDR5 who experience memory errors. The way you can tell they're not happening in transit is if it's consistently the same addresses that fail.
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JRStern

Make parity bits great again.
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Sluggotg

When it does a memory dump, I will always want the option to deny Microsoft access to that data depending on the incident. If I am just doing normal things, (Gaming, Surfing, Streaming etc), they can look at it all they want. If I have sensitive data open when it crashes, I want the option to not allow Microsoft to view said data.

Certainly it is very, very rare for me to get a crash on my computers, (Unlike a few decades ago).
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