BSOD whea_uncontrollable error in 8 Pro but not Enterprise

Hi, wondered if someone could help?

I have an HTPC that I built myself a couple of years ago - I upgraded to Windows 8 Enterprise last August/September and after rearm(ing) once the trial period cam to an end a week ago. I therefore decided to purchase Windows 8 Pro - there were no other changes at all.

Almost straight away I experienced blue screens with the whea_uncontrollable error message - I looked into the possible cause using this forum and others. It would seem that the general consensus is that it is a hardware issue or possibly a driver. However, the recommendations were to look at the software side first before upgrading the hardware (and spending more money!)

The first recommendations I found were to do with the Power Options and turning off the Fast Startup and Sleep options that are enabled by default and going into Advanced System Settings - Settings and changing the Automatic Memory Dump to Small Memory Dump. I also disabled dynamic ticks through the command prompt.

Next, I updated the BIOS (Gigabyte H55-USB3) and the firmware on my SSD (Sandisk Extreme 240GB) and attempted to update the drivers using Driver Detective - I had trouble working out the correct driver (INF Utility I believe) for my i3 540 processor with HD Graphics, but pretty sure I got there in the end.

None of this worked, so having read that others were having trouble with their SSD and Winows8 I installed a WD hard drive and reinstalled the OS. By the way, I had done a couple of reinstallations on the SSD - always a full installation (not upgrade) on a formatted drive - with full updates and 8.1 and without any updates.

The HDD seemed to be more stable, but eventually the blue screens came back - after time, not necessarily doing anything.

I ran chkdsk and memtests and a series of stress tests using RealTemp & Prime95 - all looked fine, the temperature peaked at 65 degrees C and during these tests there were no blue screens. I also ran an Intel Processor stability test which all passed.

The memory dump file after being examined by the Windows Bugging Tool indicated a processor issue and a TBL cache error - although I have to admit I'm not entirely sure what I'm looking at with this - txt file is attached.

At this point I thought I would dismantle the entire system and rebuild using the core components - leaving off the storage drives, disk drive and tuner card. I cleaned the case and parts thoroughly, removed the heatsink, reapplied thermal paste and put the heatsink back in place.

Still no good - it wasn't until this point that I realised that the only thing that had changed was Enterprise to Pro; not sure why I hadn't thought about it before really! So a fresh install of Enterprise and 36 hours later all is fine.

The problem is Enterprise has a limited trial period and I'd rather not be reinstalling every few months.

So my question is, if anyone can help, what is so different between Enterprise and Pro (both 8.0) that is not compatible with my machine or vice versa and is there anything I can change to fix it?

Many thanks for your help.

Not sure how much help this will be as the system is now running fine with Enterprise and therefore their are no event logs etc... I have included the minidump file though

Many thanks for any help you can provide

heh heh bsods do not fix themselves. 0x124 crash. Hardware hal. Most serious crash there is.

You need to install drivers for your machine from makers' sites, especially Intel video.

Update bios to newest, then set Optimized Defaults. Clean fans if necessary.

Thanks for your reply MasterChief - yeah, I wasn't thinking it had fixed itself, just assuming, hoping maybe, that there was a fundamental difference between Enterprise & Pro that was creating a compatibility issue with my hardware/drivers.

One thing is for sure, with Windows Pro my system crashed all the time, with Windows Enterprise it never crashed during the first 6 months and hasn't since re-installing for the past 4 days.

My understanding is that the blue screen happens because something tells Windows that there is a fault and Windows shuts down to prevent any more damage - is it therefore possible that the error is still happening but under Enterprise the system is not being told to shutdown? I'm assuming not, but the fundamental and only difference is Pro & Enterprise.

I did update the Bios and all drivers, optimized defaults on the bios and cleaned thoroughly including the fans and the problem still persisted.

Resurrecting this old thread of mine if I may and if someone could help?

Earlier this year I had the above problems with my HTPC - it would blue screen after I installed Windows 8 Pro but not when I had Win 8 Enterprise Evaluation installed. I ended up building a new machine, pretty much from scratch apart from the PSU, but have now bought a new case and installed my previous build into this as a secondary machine.

As expected, the problems returned - absolutely fine with Enterprise Eval for a few days, no blue screens whatsoever, as soon as I install Pro the blue screens appear (0x124). I then installed Windows 7 Home 64-bit and the problems continued and then Windows 7 Home 32-bit - I have had one blue screen since but it does seem much more stable.

I realise that I most probably have a hardware issue somewhere along the line, what would be helpful given the above, is whether anybody here would know which area the problem most likely lies in? I'm assuming it is either memory, processor or motherboard. The PSU was used on my new machine for the last 6 months, so no problems there, and the hard drives have been used as well with no issues. It would be handy to know which area to replace first, my feeling is to start with the memory and then the processor and then finally the motherboard, but if anyone has any other ideas they would be welcomed?

For info my motherboard is the Gigabyte H55-USB3, processor is i3-540 and memory is 2 x 2gb Kingston KHX1600C9D3K2

Many thanks