Help determining driver(?) causing BSOD crashes
Specs:

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-14900K
Operating System Version: Windows 11 (64 bit)
Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER
Motherboard: TUF GAMING Z790-PLUS WIFI
RAM: 48GB

For the past couple months my PC has been getting intermittent Blue screens, and I cannot pin down what the exact cause is. There doesn't appear to be a specific action/process that triggers it, I've had crashes ranging from in the middle of a game to just using a web browser.

This primarily started after trying to run Monster Hunter Wilds, and while troubleshooting that I updated nearly every driver i can think of (including the BIOS/Microcode fix for the CPU), and now crashes are happening outside of it.

From what I can determine using a combination of the Reliability Monitor, WhoCrashed, and WinDbg, the signs point to a rogue driver being the cause, but i have no idea how to figure out what is the culprit, and how to fix it. Reliability Monitor commonly states that it is a hardware error, Whocrashed gave the following for the 2 most recent crashes:

Oprindeligt skrevet af WhoCrashed:

On Sat 21/06/2025 16:31:25 your computer crashed or a problem was reported

Crash dump file: C:\windows\Minidump\062125-9609-01.dmp (Minidump)
Bugcheck code: 0x3B(0xC0000096, 0xFFFFF804E24FD0E5, 0xFFFFF98C21756D30, 0x0)
Bugcheck name: SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION
Bug check description: This indicates that an exception happened while executing a routine that transitions from non-privileged code to privileged code.
Analysis: This is a typical software problem. Most likely this is caused by a bug in a driver.


On Wed 11/06/2025 20:34:28 your computer crashed or a problem was reported

Crash dump file: C:\windows\Minidump\061125-10375-01.dmp (Minidump)
Bugcheck code: 0x1E(0xFFFFFFFFC0000096, 0xFFFFF807878B48C9, 0x0, 0x0)
Bugcheck name: KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED
Bug check description: This indicates that a kernel-mode program generated an exception which the error handler did not catch.
Analysis: This could be caused by either a software or hardware problem.
Hardware failure is often caused by overheating. Read this article on thermal issues



And the most recent minidumps appear to point to ntkrnlmp.exe, but that's not helping narrow down anything.

I've put the 2 most recent minidumps here:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1td1I9LmDRQiqP_-bnE-9hJL4__BX4jcH

Is anyone able to interpret what the issue could be from this, or is more information required?

...
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wing0zero 21. juni kl. 10:02 
You have crashes reporting to different thing so tricky.

Open Command Prompt as Administrator and run sfc /scannow to check for and repair corrupted system files.
Follow up with DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth to repair the Windows component store if needed.

Do that first.
_I_ 21. juni kl. 10:03 
update bios and drivers
chipset, lan, audio, wifi, bt
https://www.asus.com/motherboards-components/motherboards/tuf-gaming/tuf-gaming-z790-plus-wifi/helpdesk_bios?model2Name=TUF-GAMING-Z790-PLUS-WIFI

after updating bios, boot to bios, and reset to defaults and enable xmp, and set boot order or any other changes made
bios settings dont always carry over correctly from previous versions

post a cpuz validation link
http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html
cpuz -> validate button -> submit button
it will open a browser, copy the url (address) and paste it here


13-14th gen intel i series are flawed from mfg process
they will degrade over time and faster with higher core voltage or overclocking
PhΩmega 21. juni kl. 10:35 
Oprindeligt skrevet af wing0zero:
You have crashes reporting to different thing so tricky.

Open Command Prompt as Administrator and run sfc /scannow to check for and repair corrupted system files.
Follow up with DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth to repair the Windows component store if needed.

Do that first.

I've run the following commands on CMD previously after a crash:

sfc /scannow
DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Scanhealth
DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth
DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /AnalyzeComponentStore
DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /StartComponentCleanup

Still getting crashes.




Oprindeligt skrevet af _I_:
update bios and drivers
chipset, lan, audio, wifi, bt
https://www.asus.com/motherboards-components/motherboards/tuf-gaming/tuf-gaming-z790-plus-wifi/helpdesk_bios?model2Name=TUF-GAMING-Z790-PLUS-WIFI

after updating bios, boot to bios, and reset to defaults and enable xmp, and set boot order or any other changes made
bios settings dont always carry over correctly from previous versions

post a cpuz validation link
http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html
cpuz -> validate button -> submit button
it will open a browser, copy the url (address) and paste it here


13-14th gen intel i series are flawed from mfg process
they will degrade over time and faster with higher core voltage or overclocking

I've recently used the ASUS DriverHub installer to update the motherboard drivers, was made aware of the issue with the 13-14th gen intel CPUs so installed the fixes/updated BIOS as soon as they were made available. no overclocking etc for that reason

cpuz validation link:
https://valid.x86.fr/wnrbe3

One other lead that I've received is that ntkrnlmp.exe may indicate a driver issue with Razer products, and i do have a BasiliskV3 X Hyperspeed Mouse...
wing0zero 21. juni kl. 11:05 
Oprindeligt skrevet af PhΩmega:
One other lead that I've received is that ntkrnlmp.exe may indicate a driver issue with Razer products, and i do have a BasiliskV3 X Hyperspeed Mouse...

ntkrnlmp.exe is the Windows NT Kernel, a core system component, it’s rarely the cause but often implicated in crash dumps when a driver or hardware issue triggers a failure in kernel operations, this makes it a symptom, not the cause.

Oprindeligt skrevet af PhΩmega:
I've recently used the ASUS DriverHub installer to update the motherboard drivers

Go to the ASUS website and check for a match that the software put the latest BIOS and chipset driver on and there is no mismatch.

https://www.asus.com/motherboards-components/motherboards/tuf-gaming/tuf-gaming-z790-plus-wifi/helpdesk_bios?model2Name=TUF-GAMING-Z790-PLUS-WIFI

You can test and pinpoint faulty drivers.

Open a Command Prompt as Administrator and type verifier
Select “Create standard settings” → Next → “Automatically select all drivers installed on this computer.”
Reboot. Driver Verifier will run in the background and may trigger a BSOD if a driver misbehaves, providing a clearer crash dump.
If a crash occurs, use WhoCrashed or WinDbg to analyze the minidump, which should now point to the specific driver.
Disable Driver Verifier after testing (run verifier /reset in Command Prompt) to avoid performance issues.


What PSU do you have?

Also is your RAM 2x24GB not 2x16GB + 2x8GB.
Sidst redigeret af wing0zero; 21. juni kl. 11:11
I normally hate to jump to conclusions, but given that it's a Raptor Lake CPU, and that degrading when running on pre-mitigation BIOS is what they do... it has a good chance of being what's going on. The updated BIOS doesn't always help because that should prevent further degradation, but it can not fix an already degraded CPU.

If you want to try and find out if the CPU might be the cause of the instability, you can try the following.

1. Use the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility to reduce the p-core ratio to 50x.

2. Disable XMP and let the CPU run at stock JEDEC RAM speeds.

If this doesn't improve stability, it doesn't guarantee the CPU is fine (the possibility remains that it's degraded enough to be unstable even at these settings), but if it does improve stability, then it strongly suggests (read as, confirms) that the CPU is degraded.

Other common symptoms it has degraded would be if you're getting sudden application closures with no messages, fatal errors in Unreal Engine 5/DirectX 12 games, or "out of video memory trying to allocate a rendering resource" error messages.

Since your errors seem all over place, this seems unlikely to be a single bad driver, but more of a particular hardware part responsible for managing overall OS stability that is bad. That could be the CPU, and failing memory or a failing storage drive (or really corrupted OS) are other possible causes.
C1REX 21. juni kl. 11:16 
I wanted to make the same, negative bet and accidentally deleted the message on my phone :(

I also would bet on degraded CPU silicon and especially if the BIOS update was done after the problems started to develop.
Sidst redigeret af C1REX; 21. juni kl. 12:28
PhΩmega 21. juni kl. 12:18 
Oprindeligt skrevet af wing0zero:
Oprindeligt skrevet af PhΩmega:
One other lead that I've received is that ntkrnlmp.exe may indicate a driver issue with Razer products, and i do have a BasiliskV3 X Hyperspeed Mouse...

ntkrnlmp.exe is the Windows NT Kernel, a core system component, it’s rarely the cause but often implicated in crash dumps when a driver or hardware issue triggers a failure in kernel operations, this makes it a symptom, not the cause.

Oprindeligt skrevet af PhΩmega:
I've recently used the ASUS DriverHub installer to update the motherboard drivers

Go to the ASUS website and check for a match that the software put the latest BIOS and chipset driver on and there is no mismatch.

https://www.asus.com/motherboards-components/motherboards/tuf-gaming/tuf-gaming-z790-plus-wifi/helpdesk_bios?model2Name=TUF-GAMING-Z790-PLUS-WIFI

You can test and pinpoint faulty drivers.

Open a Command Prompt as Administrator and type verifier
Select “Create standard settings” → Next → “Automatically select all drivers installed on this computer.”
Reboot. Driver Verifier will run in the background and may trigger a BSOD if a driver misbehaves, providing a clearer crash dump.
If a crash occurs, use WhoCrashed or WinDbg to analyze the minidump, which should now point to the specific driver.
Disable Driver Verifier after testing (run verifier /reset in Command Prompt) to avoid performance issues.


What PSU do you have?

Also is your RAM 2x24GB not 2x16GB + 2x8GB.

After digging through the receipt, I believe the PSU is "Corsair RM Series 750W 80+ Gold Power Supply"

The Asus site was where i grabbed the BIOS versions when updating, pretty confident i'm on the newest version but i'll double check. The other Motherboard drivers should be up to date after using driverhub, the alternatives were manual installing each one (which I admittedly couldn't figure out) or using Armory Crate (god awful bloatware).



Oprindeligt skrevet af Illusion of Progress:
I normally hate to jump to conclusions, but given that it's a Raptor Lake CPU, and that degrading when running on pre-mitigation BIOS is what they do... it has a good chance of being what's going on. The updated BIOS doesn't always help because that should prevent further degradation, but it can not fix an already degraded CPU.


I originally picked up this PC in February 2024, and until Monster Hunter in March 2025 It wasn't really being used for high intensity games (and the microcode fix/BIOS update for the CPU was well before then), Would the CPU still have significantly degraded if this was the case? either way i'll add running the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility to the list.

Thankfully this PC is under warranty, but i'll probably have to exhaust all troubleshooting options before the vendor gives it a look (including reinstalling Windows, which i'm dreading).
Carlsberg 21. juni kl. 12:25 
It may not make a difference but according to CPUz you are not running the latest bios, latest also includes fix for the cpu issue.
PhΩmega 21. juni kl. 12:29 
Oprindeligt skrevet af Carlsberg:
It may not make a difference but according to CPUz you are not running the latest bios, latest also includes fix for the cpu issue.

yep your right:

"Update the Intel microcode to version 0x12F to further improve system conditions that may contribute to Vmin Shift instability in Intel 13th and 14th Gen desktop-powered systems."

That'll be worth updating!
Oprindeligt skrevet af PhΩmega:
I originally picked up this PC in February 2024, and until Monster Hunter in March 2025 It wasn't really being used for high intensity games (and the microcode fix/BIOS update for the CPU was well before then), Would the CPU still have significantly degraded if this was the case? either way i'll add running the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility to the list.

Thankfully this PC is under warranty, but i'll probably have to exhaust all troubleshooting options before the vendor gives it a look (including reinstalling Windows, which i'm dreading).
The (many) BIOS releases that were meant to address those problems first released mid to late last year I think? And it took many of them before it was actually resolved? I forget the exact time frame now but early 2024 is early enough that it was probably running for long enough at damaging levels.

It doesn't need to be running games to degrade, and honestly, most games aren't "high intensity" for CPUs. This is why when people do run into instances that result in crashes, the first reaction is usually "but everything else is fine until now". When it comes to games, it's mostly the ones doing DirectX12 shader compilation or decompression that first show it. But anything that causes it to boost high enough in voltage/clock speed (which simply opening applications, albeit briefly, can do) may eventually contribute to it.

It's something you'll need to do further testing to find out. You can't guess with certainty based on the time frame alone.
Sidst redigeret af Illusion of Progress; 21. juni kl. 12:38
wing0zero 21. juni kl. 12:38 
Oprindeligt skrevet af PhΩmega:
Oprindeligt skrevet af Carlsberg:
It may not make a difference but according to CPUz you are not running the latest bios, latest also includes fix for the cpu issue.

yep your right:

"Update the Intel microcode to version 0x12F to further improve system conditions that may contribute to Vmin Shift instability in Intel 13th and 14th Gen desktop-powered systems."

That'll be worth updating!

Make sure you manually get the latest chipset driver also from the site, that's why I said compare and don't trust the software.
PhΩmega 21. juni kl. 12:56 
Oprindeligt skrevet af wing0zero:
Oprindeligt skrevet af PhΩmega:

yep your right:

"Update the Intel microcode to version 0x12F to further improve system conditions that may contribute to Vmin Shift instability in Intel 13th and 14th Gen desktop-powered systems."

That'll be worth updating!

Make sure you manually get the latest chipset driver also from the site, that's why I said compare and don't trust the software.

Sorry should have clarified - i did compare the driver versions between what the software said and the newest versions listed on the Asus web site, and they do match. The software can't update the BIOS though, I've been doing that manually.
Sidst redigeret af PhΩmega; 21. juni kl. 12:56
wing0zero 21. juni kl. 13:44 
Oprindeligt skrevet af PhΩmega:
Oprindeligt skrevet af wing0zero:

Make sure you manually get the latest chipset driver also from the site, that's why I said compare and don't trust the software.

Sorry should have clarified - i did compare the driver versions between what the software said and the newest versions listed on the Asus web site, and they do match. The software can't update the BIOS though, I've been doing that manually.

Man maybe a fresh Win install just to rule out software, just put drivers and Steam on play some games and see how it goes, still happens it's probably not looking good for some piece of hardware.

If it was only while gaming you could maybe suspect the PSU as it's not ATX 3.0/3.1 which are made to handle the power spikes that came about heavy with the 30 series and up, some don't like them while some are ok, 850W is recommended for your PC but recommended always overshoot.

CPU? I personally don't know how bad the problem is with them CPU's.
wing0zero 21. juni kl. 13:53 
Man found a few things on a quick look.

"A tester at Chiphell, cited in a Wccftech article, tested hundreds of i9-14900K and i9-13900K CPUs and reported stability rates as low as 20% (2 out of 10 units stable) under ASUS motherboard "AUTO - 253W" profiles, 30% with reduced loadline settings, and 40% on B760/B660 motherboards. This implies a 60-80% failure rate in certain configurations, though the exact cause (manufacturing defect vs. motherboard settings) remains unclear."

"An Unreal Engine supervisor reported a 50% failure rate for i9-14900K and i9-13900K CPUs in their production environment over one year, prompting a switch to AMD CPUs for reliability."

"Hardware Times claimed a near 100% failure rate over time for affected 13th and 14th Gen K-series processors, suggesting that CPUs initially working well degrade and eventually fail, though this figure is based on their testing and may not isolate manufacturing defects specifically."

"It’s unclear how much of the failure rate is due to manufacturing defects (e.g., oxidation) versus design flaws (e.g., aggressive turbo boost algorithms or high power draw). Intel has pointed to motherboard manufacturers’ “extreme” power profiles as a contributing factor, but their own microcode and chip design play significant roles."

Pretty bad, seems if it was made late 2023 the manufacturing fault is fixed but there is no way of knowing when it was made from serial numbers apparently, seems a bit up in the air as to if it is because of manufacturing or just bad design with too much power going through, which late chips dying would point to.
_I_ 21. juni kl. 13:59 
report back after you update bios

and try this

cpuz also shows the fsb/bclk at 100
previous gens of intel cpus did not like it at or above 100
try lowering it to 99.5 or down just one bump to put it below 100 or its current setting
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