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black screen of death (ksod)

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  • Last reply by AVNand

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I have a new Dell Inspiron 7373 released in October 2017 with 8th generation i7 and Intel 620 graphics...

This is a new problem from sometime around (before?) the release of Quantum...

After some time using the browser, my laptop inevitably has a black screen of death (KSOD) issue where the device screen will not wake from display sleep (before the device enters sleep or hibernation) and the device must be shut off by holding the power button as the track pad or special key combinations do not work to wake the screen...

I have tried disabling hardware acceleration and uninstalling/reinstalling the Intel graphics driver (which is not testable for long since Windows Update re-installs it almost immediately, though I could try disabling wuauserv in the services manager...)

I also reinstalled Firefox and refreshed my profile, and tried running the browser in with the add-ons disabled...

...Please advise

Thank you for your time and consideration

I have a new Dell Inspiron 7373 released in October 2017 with 8th generation i7 and Intel 620 graphics... This is a new problem from sometime around (before?) the release of Quantum... After some time using the browser, my laptop inevitably has a black screen of death (KSOD) issue where the device screen will not wake from display sleep (before the device enters sleep or hibernation) and the device must be shut off by holding the power button as the track pad or special key combinations do not work to wake the screen... I have tried disabling hardware acceleration and uninstalling/reinstalling the Intel graphics driver (which is not testable for long since Windows Update re-installs it almost immediately, though I could try disabling wuauserv in the services manager...) I also reinstalled Firefox and refreshed my profile, and tried running the browser in with the add-ons disabled... ...Please advise Thank you for your time and consideration

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...There are three security settings that I changed but am setting back to default to test KSOD issue...

System Properties Advanced Performance Options DEP for all programs --> off, back to essential programs and services only

Force Randomization of Images (Mandatory ASLR)--> use default, off

Controlled Folder Access --> Off

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Hi there, It sounds like you have tried: Uninstalling Flash (32bit) disabling hardware acceleration Changing some security settings submitting crash reports - and finding it might be Flash


Please update to Firefox 63.0.3 Is there any reason why we are not using the 64bit version of Flash, Windows and Firefox?

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Win is 64 bit, but for whatever reason, when I reinstalled Firefox using the default installer and settings (after recovery resetting my OS sometime around the 2018 Spring Creators Update) it seems that Firefox was installed in the AppData folder (or maybe even the Programs (x86) also) instead of the 64 bit Programs folder... So I guess this is why my flash install may have been 32 bit?

But I have recently reinstalled and refreshed firefox so now it is installed in the Programs folder, and by reinstalling flash according to the support forum, flash should now be 64 bit too...

I have updated to firefox 63.0.3, but I am currently using windows without running any non windows store apps for a few days to check if KSOD is happening for some other reason because, unfortunately, I have now found that this issue has spread to Chrome too, which was not doing this before either...

In the meantime, I am starting to think that it may be because the apps status is not correctly working with Win 10 OS, because I notice that Firefox, Chrome, and Andy all continue to use cpu when idle, as viewed in the task manager process tab with no green leaf to indicate the process has been suspended when not in use...

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If you have a problem with a program, or think you do; totally remove the program, then test your system.

Once you are satisfied, get and use the current full installer.

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I found some common steps to take for Win lock up and freezing issues on the web and started with these few steps together to save time...

1) I logged into the Guest account and found that now KSOD is happening without any suspected apps running...

Next...

a) Reset Windows power plan... b) Reset my BIOS settings... c) Uninstalled some apps from around the date the Event Viewer shows that the errors started, and some other apps too... d) Reset network adapter and turned off bluetooth...

2) To be sure, I booted into safe mode and noticed that the task bar was crashing every few seconds until I shut off the People taskbar item, so if this is not due to a safe mode issue, I though this may be the cause in normal mode -- I have noticed that the taskbar icons refesh or blink from time to time in normal boot, so maybe People is causing explore to crash?

(I was going to try a clean boot, but the Microsoft site seems to not recommend this unless advised to do so by one of their techs)

3) ...I Booted Windows normally and KSOD on day three (this seems to be the usual time passed until KSOD, and I do not see any scheduled tasks on that timeframe except for Dell Update, which I tested for when off), so none of these changes worked...

I guess I could try disabling C-States, turbo frequencies, do a clean boot, etc., though my hardware testing scans are clean...

(...As I am losing hope I am having Deja Vu and memories of these as future failures are already occuring to me...)

Also, I think this is likely going to be a MS Windows or driver issue, unless you can think of something else (please let me know), so sorry for posting on the wrong forum, and thank you both for your time and consideration as I learned some things about Windows lock ups and clean booting...

...I did get good news recently on MS Power User that Intel has released Windows Modern Drivers, so I am hoping that when Dell releases these for my device the issue will be solved...

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...Some good news...

I changed the power settings by turning off display sleep and making the device sleep before the hard drives turn off and the KSOD with no mem dump turned into a BSOD with a mem dump... So I used MS Debug Preview and clicked on !analyze and this pointed from the initial kernel Driver State Power Failure to usbhub3.sys for three consecutive BSOD's...

Then, I received a cumulative update to Win 1803 to 17134.471 and the BSOD is still there, but this new mem dump does not point to anything, so I checked the cumulative update info and it says it solved a BSOD/KSOD isuue for some people, and the update manifest shows that usbhub3.sys was one of the files updated in 17134.441...

With these changes, the issue was still present, but I found a temporary solution for the problem by disabling power management for USB ROOT HUB 3.0 in device manager, which did not work to fix this before the updates...

Now, with my power settings back to normal, no more KSOD or BSOD!! :-)

I am going to post this on MS and Dell support and I hope they solve this soon...

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