Issue

After an in-place upgrade from Windows 7 Pro to Windows 10 Pro, computer started crashing multiple times per day with “Blue Screen of Death” (BSOD) and seemingly random error messages. Here are some of the BSOD messages I recorded:

• KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED (NTFS.sys)
• DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION
• RDR_FILE_SYSTEM (rdbss.sys)
• MEMORY MANAGEMENT
• SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION
• BAD_POOL_HEADER
• SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED(NTFS.sys)
• RDR_FILE_SYSTEM (rdbss.sys)

All this looked very much like a faulty hardware, but what seemed weird was that BSOD crashes started pretty much immediately after installing Windows 10. The same PC, with exactly the same hardware was running Windows 7 for a few years without any issues. 

Resolution

It was indeed a faulty hardware… A quick memtest 86+ scan revealed that one the Corsair XMS3 RAM modules was throwing errors. Replacing the faulty RAM module stopped all BSOD crashes. It’s still a bit of a mystery why the computer started crashing only after upgrading to Windows 10… I think the most likely explanation is that Windows 10 started using a (faulty) part of RAM that Windows 7 never touched. Since the PC had 16GB of RAM is not hard to imagine that some of these 16GB was never used.

August 2015
Windows 10 Pro 64bit