Hello everybody,
Frustrated Windows 8 user and busy college student here. Small background on this longstanding current problem: a couple years back I had to replace most of the main components in my HP desktop due to a motherboard defect that essentially destroyed the motherboard’s ability to read from my hard drive. My computer at the time was running Windows 7, and it was around the time Windows 8 had just become available as a beta. As I had to replace the motherboard, and therefore the processor and RAM with up-to-date parts, the original Windows 7 key that came with the computer could no longer be used, so I decided to just run the beta until Windows 8 came out, at which I would just purchase it and run that, since buying Windows 8 was going to be much cheaper than buying Windows 7.
Windows 8 beta worked smoothly on this system without a hitch that fall of 2012. When the beta ended, I purchased Windows 8 and that worked without a hitch too until the beginning of 2013. Sporadically my computer would crash, but I dismissed it as nothing major as computers sometimes just crash… right? But the crashing became way more frequent after a few months, to the point where I almost always expected the computer to crash at least once within the hour. At that point I thought perhaps I should attempt to replace any other leftover old parts in the computer. I purchased a new hard drive, thinking something corrupt there could have been the problem, but that didn’t solve it. I’ve tried searching online for solutions to the issue on and off for a very long time (uninstalling particular updates, updating particular hardware drivers) but nothing seemed to work, and I was far too busy with school to spend my days troubleshooting.
So I decided to carry my desktop computer to the local computer repair shops near my school in the hopes that I could pay someone to help me salvage my investment in this old computer, when I probably should have used the money on a new computer to have avoided all of this headache. The shops held onto my computers for about two weeks each, trying fresh installs, trying replacing different components of my computer, like the power supply, the hard drive, the cables involved in the motherboard connections, etc. but they couldn’t figure it out either. (thankfully, they didn’t charge me for the work) I also tried taking out different combinations of the RAM sticks, only using 1 of them, 2 of them, 3 of them, etc – no dice.
Fast forward to now, I’ve been putting up with this computer crashing, and all my programs crashing but it’s severely detracting from my ability to do schoolwork efficiently (and I really need it in particular these next few months). I would much rather just buy a new computer, but I simply don’t have the money right now, so I’m reaching out to the Internet for someone to help me get to the bottom of this. Why does my computer keep giving me BSODs and can I fix this at all?
TLDR: BSODs and app crashes for years, no computer repair shop has had success fixing – Windows 8 used to work fine a few years back, but in recent 2 years keeps crashing – why?
Main symptoms of problem:
- BSOD errors I get most frequently are: MEMORY_MANAGEMENT and PFN_LIST_CORRUPT
(sometimes also get SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION and REFERENCE_BY_POINTER and VIDEO_MEMORY_MANAGEMENT_INTERNAL)
- Chrome tabs and extensions crash VERY frequently – probably on the order of every 5 mins something crashes. (error is like “He’s dead Jim --- perhaps Chrome ran out of memory, please reload, etc” or “extension X has crashed” or the whole browser just crashes)
- other apps I run crash, like Spotify or utorrent
- I think some of the services in charge of managing USB inputs crash too because sometimes my mouse and keyboard hang until the computer recognizes the connection again, or my wireless internet adapter loses signal because it gets disabled.
Please help me This is the only computer problem I’ve ever encountered that I’ve been at an absolute loss for.
Let me know if any other details are needed, or if there are any questions, or if I should try replacing any parts. (I was kind of considering RMA-ing the RAM, but I have to use this computer daily, so I would need something in its place if I did)
EDIT: wanted to add that this computer has been through very many clean re-installs on Windows 8. on the most recent, there were some errors installing Windows 8 off of the official CD initially, but after multiple attempts it was eventually successful. At some point I tried installing just Windows 7 on the system instead but it still continued to crash with similar errors.
Frustrated Windows 8 user and busy college student here. Small background on this longstanding current problem: a couple years back I had to replace most of the main components in my HP desktop due to a motherboard defect that essentially destroyed the motherboard’s ability to read from my hard drive. My computer at the time was running Windows 7, and it was around the time Windows 8 had just become available as a beta. As I had to replace the motherboard, and therefore the processor and RAM with up-to-date parts, the original Windows 7 key that came with the computer could no longer be used, so I decided to just run the beta until Windows 8 came out, at which I would just purchase it and run that, since buying Windows 8 was going to be much cheaper than buying Windows 7.
Windows 8 beta worked smoothly on this system without a hitch that fall of 2012. When the beta ended, I purchased Windows 8 and that worked without a hitch too until the beginning of 2013. Sporadically my computer would crash, but I dismissed it as nothing major as computers sometimes just crash… right? But the crashing became way more frequent after a few months, to the point where I almost always expected the computer to crash at least once within the hour. At that point I thought perhaps I should attempt to replace any other leftover old parts in the computer. I purchased a new hard drive, thinking something corrupt there could have been the problem, but that didn’t solve it. I’ve tried searching online for solutions to the issue on and off for a very long time (uninstalling particular updates, updating particular hardware drivers) but nothing seemed to work, and I was far too busy with school to spend my days troubleshooting.
So I decided to carry my desktop computer to the local computer repair shops near my school in the hopes that I could pay someone to help me salvage my investment in this old computer, when I probably should have used the money on a new computer to have avoided all of this headache. The shops held onto my computers for about two weeks each, trying fresh installs, trying replacing different components of my computer, like the power supply, the hard drive, the cables involved in the motherboard connections, etc. but they couldn’t figure it out either. (thankfully, they didn’t charge me for the work) I also tried taking out different combinations of the RAM sticks, only using 1 of them, 2 of them, 3 of them, etc – no dice.
Fast forward to now, I’ve been putting up with this computer crashing, and all my programs crashing but it’s severely detracting from my ability to do schoolwork efficiently (and I really need it in particular these next few months). I would much rather just buy a new computer, but I simply don’t have the money right now, so I’m reaching out to the Internet for someone to help me get to the bottom of this. Why does my computer keep giving me BSODs and can I fix this at all?
TLDR: BSODs and app crashes for years, no computer repair shop has had success fixing – Windows 8 used to work fine a few years back, but in recent 2 years keeps crashing – why?
Main symptoms of problem:
- BSOD errors I get most frequently are: MEMORY_MANAGEMENT and PFN_LIST_CORRUPT
(sometimes also get SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION and REFERENCE_BY_POINTER and VIDEO_MEMORY_MANAGEMENT_INTERNAL)
- Chrome tabs and extensions crash VERY frequently – probably on the order of every 5 mins something crashes. (error is like “He’s dead Jim --- perhaps Chrome ran out of memory, please reload, etc” or “extension X has crashed” or the whole browser just crashes)
- other apps I run crash, like Spotify or utorrent
- I think some of the services in charge of managing USB inputs crash too because sometimes my mouse and keyboard hang until the computer recognizes the connection again, or my wireless internet adapter loses signal because it gets disabled.
Please help me This is the only computer problem I’ve ever encountered that I’ve been at an absolute loss for.
Let me know if any other details are needed, or if there are any questions, or if I should try replacing any parts. (I was kind of considering RMA-ing the RAM, but I have to use this computer daily, so I would need something in its place if I did)
EDIT: wanted to add that this computer has been through very many clean re-installs on Windows 8. on the most recent, there were some errors installing Windows 8 off of the official CD initially, but after multiple attempts it was eventually successful. At some point I tried installing just Windows 7 on the system instead but it still continued to crash with similar errors.
My Computer
System One
-
- OS
- Windows 8