Blue Screen

[glorybound]

I have a computer which goes to blue screen. DELL can't figure it out, without swapping parts, which is a slow way to troubleshoot. I updated the BIOS, launched Windows and it went to bluescreen. They replaced the motherboard, but still bluescreen. Next, they'll be replacing the hard drive. It usually crashes when running a plugin while in Photoshop, but it isn't always the same script. It also crashed doing something else outside of Photoshop.

[Morne]

Whats the message on the bluescreen?
it usually gives a HEX error code


Some thoughts, did you recently update to Windows version 1903 up from version 1809? That could be the culprit

Or do a windows memory diagnostic check (you can find it Windows Administrative Tools). It will restart your system and with default, it runs a basic check. You can also do a medium or advanced check.
Let the medium one run overnight and see if it reports erros after it automatically restarts when its done. Dont do the advanced one, as with 128GB like you have, it will take forever

You can also physically take out half your ram and see how it goes. Then you could take the 2nd half out and put back the 1st half etc.

[glorybound]

I do a memory test in my troubleshooting, but no errors. I do keep Windows current, so I’ll check what version I’m on. Is there a known issue?

[Morbid Angel]

if its not ram and video card it could be powersupply is not supplying enough power. That and also check the cpu voltage in bios. Too low voltage could cause instability, though I'm not sure if its a xeon you can't adjust that.

[Muhammed_Hamed]

Could be a million different things like what others said
You need to share the code of blue screen and take it from there
Huge chance this could be a memory issue, with this kind of instability and specially that you have new Mobo .. It could be a bad RAM stick
You need to take all of them out except for 2 and see if it crashes or not
It takes time to test but it is worth
Honestly Dell should do better, Maingear or Origin support would be able to figure this out on phone and tell you what to do

[Muhammed_Hamed]

What I'm sure about is that hard drives has nothing to do with this

[Neilg]

Every blue screen i've had in 15+ years has been because of a bad stick of ram.

[glorybound]

I did a RAM test, which took many hours and there were no errors. I found it strange that the DELL people did no troubleshooting. No request for code, event viewer, nothing. They just want to replace parts. It is like a backyard mechanic. I'll take a photo of the blue screen when it happens again, I did the research on the code, and it was so generic, it didn't help.

[Muhammed_Hamed]

The code won't confirm if it is a RAM issue, although some codes would point you to recent windows updates or Nvidia drivers..
It is still possible that your BSOD is related to RAM, even though your RAM test came clean
some of the RAM issues are nasty, and very hard to track. Trouble-shooting should start by checking your RAM sticks 2 at a time, and see if you get crashes
Vray can trigger most of RAM issues btw, pick a scene that has fur or something and use it for your testing
Let me know how it goes

[glorybound]

Here is the bkuescreen

[Muhammed_Hamed]

I have dealt with this before, 90% chance it is your memory causing this error specially that it happens using a PS plugin
could also be one of your CPUs .. If you want, I can guide you through troubleshooting this
How frequent do you get this error? Is it random or specifically in PS?
Do you have steps to trigger this error? so finding out the faulty RAM stick wouldn't take time?
Heading to bed now, will check here tomorrow after work

[glorybound]

It happens when I run PS plugins, but it also happened when I was doing something else (I forgot what it was). It doesn't matter what plugin. It happens like this. I work in MAX to create an image, usually an EXR. I open it in PS, do some color correction and then run a plugin, which will crash Windows. I'll reboot Windows (it won't' reboot by itself) and go to PS again and the same plugin will perform perfectly fine. PS won't crash every time in the order described above, but usually every 2-3 times. I have 8 sticks of RAM and they all tested file the other day. The DELL guy that came out had a hard time getting Windows to boot when he replaced the motherboard. He had to do one stick at a time and at one point he thought he found a bad stick until he put it into another slot.

[Muhammed_Hamed]

It is possible that the memory test doesn't pick the memory issue.

I'll reboot Windows (it won't' reboot by itself) and go to PS again and the same plugin will perform perfectly fine

100% it is a memory issue, I had the same behavior with Adobe premiere in the past. stress testing wouldn't crash the system, it only will bluescreen occasionally in PR
Now we need to find a way of triggering this error, so we find the faulty stick
Did you crash on rendering with Vray/Corona so far? Have you tried rendering something that uses Vray fur?
We can try stress testing the memory with Aida 64, there is a chance we can trigger this crash. If we cannot trigger the error this way, you will take out half of your RAM.. we might get lucky and find the faulty one fast.
If you don't mind me asking, why did he change your motherboard?
And are you running windows 1903 with all updates?

[Oleg_Budeanu]

You can download 2 awesome utilities
WhoCrashed - https://www.resplendence.com/whocrashed
and
BlueScreenView - https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/blue_screen_view.html
Both utilities will show you details of what crashed and why. Helped me to resolve a couple of issues.

[glorybound]

Thank you, but both links are dead.