I've had windows 10 since the free upgrade came for win7 years ago and haven't had this bluescreen until just recently. A few months ago I replaced my motherboard, graphics card, and processor and had no issues. I know replacing your motherboard is usually cause for reinstalling your OS but I don't have external storage so there's no way I can pull everything from the drive before doing a clean install. My HDD is a 1TB Seagate drive with 73GB free. I scanned it with SeaTools and it passed every test.

Here's what I was doing when the crash occurred:
While recording a video with OBS, my computer experienced a massive slowdown, and the hardware (probably the hard drive itself) began making a steady mechanical noise, like it was misfiring or something. I was able to stop the recording and attempted to exit the game before the slowdown occurred again and eventually ended with a BSOD where it left me with an error code of "UNEXPECTED_STORE_EXCEPTION". After rebooting, it asked me to insert a valid drive, as if my hard drive wasn't being read correctly by the system. I rebooted it again and it started as expected, if a little slower than normal. After this the mechanical noise stopped.

Some time later, a second bluescreen occurred, but my computer restarted too fast for me to see the error code. After a reboot, a third bluescreen with the error code "CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED" occurred. I've begun researching solutions but so far /sfc scannow, virus scans, CCleaner, etc have all turned up zero results. It happened directly after a windows update so if all else fails I'll roll back the update, though I still don't have a suspect for the first crash. As of now I have only experienced these two bluescreens.

I use my computer frequently and restart once every 5-7 days. I believe windows update was active during the crash which may explain it, but I'd like to know how to avoid it in the future.

Here are the last three days in event viewer (does not include data from the second crash):
https://mega.nz/#!2tZwiYDJ!vVRODSyRbxSNhbXs1hfSvwloApWZXhiSsoGBLnVvGMk

My memory.dmp file is 1.4GB and I'd rather not upload the whole thing, but I imagine it includes some pretty vital information. If anyone can walk me through the process of pasting the appropriate documentation I'll take care of it. I've never had to report this kind of problem before. Thanks for your time.

Seems indeed related to a crash during an update. Best fix would probably be to upgrade to Windows 7. Next best fix would be to reinstall Windows 10. It's probably faster to do a clean install rather than finding the cause and a fix to it and it definitely wouldn't come back to haunt you later.

For this reason it's recommended to have your system and data on different drives, or at least partitions. You can just format your system drive and your data remains unaffected. It's entirely possible to split your current drive into a system partition and a data partition, while the system is on it and the data remains undamaged. This requires an advanced partition tool that comes with its own boot environment. I've used Paragon Partition Manager in the past, but I can't vouch for its performance in Windows 10 environments. It needs to be able to play nice with Windows 10's boot sector. In any case a quick google search should turn up a program that fits your needs.

Should you go this route it's recommended to reserve about 100GB on your system partition. Those need to be free when you create the new partition, so you would need to make some room for it. After using the new partition to install a fresh Windows you can just delete the old Windows 10, programs and users folders on the 900GB partition to free up some of it again. Or copy part of it back to retain program settings where applicable. Although be conservative with that or you may end up with the same error again.

I strongly suggest you go this route because it's a common 'best practice' and will make your life easier whenever you have trouble again. If this seems too much trouble I can't be of too much help, I'm afraid, as I'm completely unfamiliar with your error or something similar. And I'd think this is true for most SENners. You'll likely get better help in a Windows specific forum.

Thanks Nude. I posted in a few other places that are more windows-specific but they had far less helpful info than what you provided (so far, anyways). I'm glad I tried my luck here as well. Much appreciated.

I think I'll spring for a cheap 1TB external that lets me transfer all of my data before doing a reformat and reinstall, just to be safe. The whirring sound seems to come and go since the event earlier this morning and as a result I'm not comfortable doing anything HDD-intensive like recording until it's fixed. The last time I had a bluescreen it happened as I was saving one of my campaign maps and cost me a month of work, and I don't want that kind of thing happening again.

Cheers and thanks again for your help.

It's never a bad idea to have backups of your valuable data on a separate drive.

Also unfamiliar noises from your HDD may mean nothing or mean that it's about to die. At the very least it should make you suspicious and prepare for the worst. You already did all the recommended scans but it's not always possible to predict HDD failure. If it's about to die it may very well do so while doing a repartition because it needs to move A LOT of data around for that. The HDD would be running under full load, possibly for hours.

Given all this I'd play it safe as you suggested and get a backup HDD. If you're unlucky your old HDD might even die during copying. Or, as I've said, it could also mean nothing and still run for years. (I've had such a drive. Loud as fuck after a while but lived longer than the rest of the computer.)

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Aug 1 2017, 5:00 am by NudeRaider.