BSOD on newly-built PC IRQL NOT LESS OR EQUAL ntoskrnl.exe

Greetings, tech enthusiasts!

I'm currently experiencing a highly frustrating issue with my newly built PC, and I was hoping someone here might be able to help me out. In February, I put together a new system, which worked flawlessly for about two weeks until it started throwing me a BSOD on almost every startup. I didn't install much software on the system - only Steam, Microsoft Office, and the like. I've been dealing with this issue for almost a month now, and I'm at my wit's end. If it lets me into the OS it will BSOD within 5 minutes.

Here are the codes I've been getting:

• IRQL NOT LESS OR EQUAL (the most common one, about 90% of the time)

What failed: ntoskrnl.exe

• HYPERVISOR ERROR
• CLOCK WATCHDOG TIMEOUT
• CRITICAL PROCESS DIED
• SYSTEM THREAD EXCEPTION NOT HANDLED

At first, I tried all the basic fixes - safe mode, removing GPU, memtest, SFC scan, chkdsk, BIOS update, and so on - but nothing seemed to work. I even reset my PC and did a clean install of Windows 11 Pro with a brand-new installation media stick, but to no avail (this worked for 1hr - until I began installing updates, drivers, etc). I must have tried to perform a fresh install at least seven to ten times, but nothing seemed to fix the issue.

I then thought it might be a hardware issue, so I replaced my NVMe SSD and did another new Windows installation, but the problem persisted. I even took it to two repair shops, but they couldn't identify the issue either. I then figured it might be a faulty motherboard, so I RMA'd it through ASUS and got a replacement. Unfortunately, that didn't fix the issue either.

Most recently, I replaced my RAM sticks with brand-new ones from Kingston, but even that didn't help. I'm at a complete loss, and I don't know what to do next.

Here are my PC specs, in case that helps: Also attached dumps below

• Motherboard: ASUS ROG STRIX B760i + WIFI
• CPU: Intel i5 13600K
• RAM: CORSAIR - VENGEANCE 32GB (2PK x 16GB) 5600MHz DDR5 C36 DIMM
• New RAM: Kingston Fury Beast 32GB (2x16GB) 5200MT/s DDR5 CL40
• GPU: ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3070
• SSD: Samsung - 980 PRO 2TB Internal Gaming SSD PCIe Gen 4
• New SSD: SABRENT 2TB Rocket 4 Plus NVMe 4.0 Gen4 PCIe M.2 Internal SSD
• Cooler: Cooler Master master liquid PL240 Flux
• Fans: Lian Li UNI FAN SL120 (in use with controller)
• PSU: CORSAIR rm850x 80 plus GOLD 850W
• OS: Windows 11 Pro x64

If anyone has any ideas or suggestions, I'd be incredibly grateful. Thanks in advance for any help you can provide! I am desperate for an answer.

Wow, I’m having a very similar issue. Built a new machine back in late January and it started crashing mid March and has become unusable at this point. I’ve replaced RAM, motherboard, SSD. Have reinstalled Win 11 about 5 times. It’s stable until it connects to the internet. Also using i5-13600k.

Once it connects to the internet it crashes within 10 minutes. I’ve tested this 5+ times after doing a fresh install. Tried installing windows 10, but it wouldn’t even install BSOD during the install.

Running in safe mode seems to be stable.

Ok, so first things first:

What did the repair shop try to do with the PC?

Secondly, are you on latest BIOS/UEFI?

Since you have already replaced the MB and it didn't help, it is possible your driver installation order is screwing up something.

Could you get a Windows 11 clean install into a state where you are disconnected from Internet, not installing other drivers except for the latest Chipset Driver, and test with just that? Also disable Virtualization support, XMP and any other tweaks, that boosts your system to the limits, in BIOS.

Only other thing you may install, is some simple program that monitors CPU temps. Then use prime95 to test stability. It utilizes memory and CPU a lot, so if you can run that stable and cool for more than 15-30mins, then your system is stable at this point.

Now we have a starting point to work from. Let us know the results this far.

Thank you for responding.

Initially, the repair shop conducted individual tests on my components, namely the CPU, GPU, and PSU. However, they did not test the motherboard and RAM. Despite attempting to perform fresh installations of both Windows 10 and Windows 11, the system continued to crash within 15 minutes, without any drivers or updates being installed at the repair store.

To address your second question, I have disabled XMP, Intel Boost, and ASUS CPU Boost, and my BIOS is up to date.

Yesterday, I reset my PC (complete reset) and installed only the essential drivers (chipset) before performing automatic Windows updates. Surprisingly, the system remained stable for about an hour until I experienced another BSOD (ntoskrnl.exe) and my system began freezing during startup. Safe mode has been stable throughout this process. (drivers were installed using ASUS Armoury Crate)

My CPU temperatures are normal, below 45 degrees. Do you have any further suggestions? Do you think this is likely a hardware issue? I am feeling quite lost and am close to giving up.

OK, what I would do next, is disable Intel virtualization in the BIOS. If this did not help I'd start eliminating any possible cause.

1. I would remove the whole thing from the case.
2. I Would inspect every single pin and knob on the MB (even the pins in the CPU socket with a magnifying glass), for any bent pins.
3. I would reassemble on the table (cardboard box) keeping only basic components (MB, CPU, SSD, RAM and PSU)
4. I would even try to replace the cooler with something that is very basic, but good enough for the CPU. Reasoning for this is that the cooler you use, may be bending the MB or not press evenly on the CPU. The tricky part is to find something cheap that can handle the 125-181W TDP.
5. I would leave the GPU out for now
6. Then I would grab a copy of Windows setup media straight from MS, so you can verify the integrity of the image. Preferably EN-US version just to be on the safe side.
7. After this I would create an installation media (USB stick), from that image and clean install, wiping everything on the SSD
8. If using Windows Pro Edition, I would install Windows completely offline, and only using an offline account.
9. After Windows is installed I would manually install the latest Chipset driver form manufacturer. Then reboot.
10. Then I would install the rest of drivers manually provided by manufacturer.
11. NOTE!!! I Would not use Armory Crate or other Asus software at this point. ONLY bare drivers.
12. Now, I would grab some very simple app that can monitor CPU temps in real time and prime95 and test.

If you try these steps, let me know what you did and if you got any BSODs.

Having the same issue with 2 newly purchased 980 Pros I just got this week. I installed them as extra storage, and not my OS drive, but anytime I go to load a game off them system BSOD's with IRQL not less or equal or bad pool caller. I've done much trouble shooting, and I am convinced it comes down to some driver issue within Windows, but Windows won't let me update the NVME drivers no matter what I try.

What I did to confirm it was Windows, and nothing within my system, was download Linux Pop OS, and installed it on one of the 2TB drives, then downloaded Steam and the games the were BSOD'ing, and it gave me ZERO trouble what so ever, and played for hours with no issue. Where as before it was BSOD'ing on any application start up. I wasn't shocked, but glad it confirms it's with Windows, and none of my hardware.

I have a 2TB WD Black SN770 coming tomorrow, as the one drive that was replaced was a 500GB WD Black, and has been working great for the last 3 years. So, going to see if it is just some Samsung issue with Window's generic NVME drivers?

silvia95guy said:

Having the same issue with 2 newly purchased 980 Pros I just got this week. I installed them as extra storage, and not my OS drive, but anytime I go to load a game off them system BSOD's with IRQL not less or equal or bad pool caller. I've done much trouble shooting, and I am convinced it comes down to some driver issue within Windows, but Windows won't let me update the NVME drivers no matter what I try.

What I did to confirm it was Windows, and nothing within my system, was download Linux Pop OS, and installed it on one of the 2TB drives, then downloaded Steam and the games the were BSOD'ing, and it gave me ZERO trouble what so ever, and played for an hour with no issue. Where as before it was BSOD'ing on any application start up. I wasn't shocked, but glad it confirms it's with Windows, and none of my hardware.

I have a 2TB WD Black SN770 coming tomorrow, as the one drive that was replaced was a 500GB WD Black, and has been working great for the last 3 years. So, going to see if it is just some Samsung issue with Window's generic NVME drivers?

Click to expand...

I've got a 2TB 980 Pro, a 1TB 970 Evo Plus and a 1TB 970 Evo, all running with the generic MS NVMe driver. Not had a single BSOD.

osalah said:

this worked for 1hr - until I began installing updates, drivers, etc

Click to expand...

This right here says a lot. Seems like the system was fine until a certain driver was updated. We need to figure out which driver is causing us issues. As this is not just a AMD or Intel system based problem, as I'm running an 5800X3D and 7900 XTX. Really frustrating.

Please see posting instructions.

The one you mentioned in the title, if it's "0x0000000a" and "CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT" are symptoms of CPU core instability. It's more likely to occur if you have an unsuccessful overclock of your cores, "IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL", (without "DRIVER" mentioned) can occur when running Linpack, and you need more Vcore or need to back off on your core OC frequency.

Those errors are unexpected at stock CPU core clocks! It may be bad caps in the PSU or the CPU is defective.

Yes, with a bad CPU core OC, you can get "IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL" instead of a fatal WHEA error. In the past, I used to.

BrianInEngland said:

I've got a 2TB 980 Pro, a 1TB 970 Evo Plus and a 1TB 970 Evo, all running with the generic MS NVMe driver. Not had a single BSOD.

Click to expand...

I don't know what to say, other than my Windows doesn't like the 2TB 980 Pro's? Got the 2TB WD Black SN770 in today, and installed it. Put all the games/applications that were immediately BSOD'ing the system with the 980, and every application started and ran flawlessly like it should on the WD SN770. Don't know why, other than what I suspected is a driver issue with the 980 Pro?

Maybe Samsung changed memory controllers on some 980's or something and there is a conflict with that particular sku? As I have seen other's with the 980 with the exact same issue. I honestly have no idea? Shooting in the dark. Just find it really puzzling the WD SN770 worked no problem, and both 980's I had just BSOD'd my system any time I would try and launch an application from them, but put Linux POP OS on the 980, and install the same applications that were crashing in POP OS and had zero issues as well, which tells me it's a Windows issue.

silvia95guy ,​

If you decide to troubleshoot the BSOD then open a new thread and post a V2 share link using one drive, drop box, or google drive.

if you have anything like msi afterburner or any other gpu monitor software, there was issue with nvidia drivers where it caused bsods

Cromax said:

if you have anything like msi afterburner or any other gpu monitor software, there was issue with nvidia drivers where it caused bsods

Click to expand...

Running an 7900 XTX, and uninstalled Afterburner shortly after I got the card, as it no longer had the flexibility it had when I was using my 1070Ti, and just use AMD's Adrenaline software, so pretty sure that isn't the issue I'm having.

zbook said:

silvia95guy ,​

If you decide to troubleshoot the BSOD then open a new thread and post a V2 share link using one drive, drop box, or google drive.

Click to expand...

No more trouble shooting needs to be done for me to confirm my suspicions of a software driver issue with the 980. No I don't have proof that is what it was, but I DO NOT feel like doing another clean Windows install to try and figure this out. Especially when just installing another NVME drive from another manufacture just works no issue.

For Intel users, running Linpack and getting an auto-reboot with "0x0000000a" logged or "0x00000101" (IIRC) logged, would be a defective CPU or a power delivery problem, most likely. Same, if Linpack shows an error.

To the OP, this is possibly the result of installing a "K" CPU on a non-Z motherboard!

RJARRRPCGP said:

For Intel users, running Linpack and getting an auto-reboot with "0x0000000a" logged or "0x00000101" (IIRC) logged, would be a defective CPU or a power delivery problem, most likely. Same, if Linpack shows an error.

To the OP, this is possibly the result of installing a "K" CPU on a non-Z motherboard!

Click to expand...

Hello, thank you all for your advice. I have paused to attempt to fix this issue for the time being as I wrap up my semester. However, the above message is something I want to try. Could this be a compatibility issue with my CPU and motherboard? As mentioned in the OP, I replaced my motherboard with a new version of the same model. RJARRRPCGP do you think replacing my motherboard with a Z version would solve the issue? According to ASUS, my current B series board should be compatible with my CPU but I am at a loss. Thanks.

It should work, but it may be that the components on the B boards on Intel, are unable to support the boosting, even without you OC'ing.

RJARRRPCGP said:

It should work, but it may be that the components on the B boards on Intel, are unable to support the boosting, even without you OC'ing.

Click to expand...

Tried it. Bought a Z series board and the problem persists. I am confident that it could be a defective CPU. Thoughts?

Hola, tengo un problema muy similiar, se me bloquea cuando lo estoy exigiendo la pc, ya sea navegando tranquilamente o cuando la dejo sola en escritorio. Tengo un Ryzen 5 3600, ASUS PRIME B450M-A y hace mas de un año que vengo con este problema, hice chequeos de ram y discos, pero eso lo descarte. Alguno pudo resolver el BSOD ntoskrnel.exe?