For the past few months now, I have been getting random restarts on my Windows 11 machine. I would play a game or spin up a Hyper-V virtual machine and then suddenly, my monitor turns black and I see the reboot sequence. This sometimes happens once every week or so, completely random of course, and I would ignore it thinking it may be just a random power failure.
However, in the recent weeks, I have been getting random restarts more frequently, sometimes everyday, and it is literally causing my computer to be unusable. In fact, it has gotten so bad that at the time of this posting, its crashing and restarting every few minutes or so, and its extremely hard for me to diagnose the error because even by the time I navigate to event viewer, I barely have time to find the error before it crashes. However, I did manage to get some information on the culprit when looking at event viewer. Take a look below, the event is logged by WHEA and says
A fatal hardware error has occurred.
Reported by component: Processor Core
Error Source: Machine Check Exception
Error Type: Cache Hierarchy Error
Processor APIC ID: 0
The details view of this entry contains further information.
I click on more details and I get a XML data tree which I have no idea how to interpret:
- <Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
- <System>
<Provider Name="Microsoft-Windows-WHEA-Logger" Guid="{c26c4f3c-3f66-4e99-8f8a-39405cfed220}" />
<EventID>18</EventID>
<Version>0</Version>
<Level>2</Level>
<Task>0</Task>
<Opcode>0</Opcode>
<Keywords>0x8000000000000000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime="2023-11-28T15:19:07.3980418Z" />
<EventRecordID>15617</EventRecordID>
<Correlation ActivityID="{4aae74a7-1c24-46bf-9c40-40ba752c5291}" />
<Execution ProcessID="4864" ThreadID="5368" />
<Channel>System</Channel>
<Computer>VJZ-WORKSTATION</Computer>
<Security UserID="S-1-5-19" />
</System>
- <EventData>
<Data Name="ErrorSource">3</Data>
<Data Name="ApicId">0</Data>
<Data Name="MCABank">22</Data>
<Data Name="MciStat">0xbaa000000002010b</Data>
<Data Name="MciAddr">0x0</Data>
<Data Name="MciMisc">0xd0130fff00000000</Data>
<Data Name="ErrorType">9</Data>
<Data Name="TransactionType">2</Data>
<Data Name="Participation">256</Data>
<Data Name="RequestType">0</Data>
<Data Name="MemorIO">256</Data>
<Data Name="MemHierarchyLvl">3</Data>
<Data Name="Timeout">256</Data>
<Data Name="OperationType">256</Data>
<Data Name="Channel">256</Data>
<Data Name="Length">1163</Data>
<Data Name="RawData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ata>
</EventData>
</Event>
I do not know how to read this at all and I do not have the resources to buy new components and try to test each one. Maybe somebody can decode the XML data and tell me exactly where went wrong. For reference, I have the following specs on this machine
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X
RAM: 32 GB DDR4
GPU: GTX 1650 SUPER
SSD: 1 TB Samsung
I should note that in the BIOS I have auto overclocking and precision boost overdrive enabled. I did not do any manual overclocking because I am afraid to brick the system entirely. My leading suspects are those 2 settings even though AMD says its safe to auto overclock. Then again, I may be completely wrong since I do not know how to read WHEA error logs. Please help because it is making my machine unusable!
