DPC WATCHDOG VIOLATION during upgrade

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My wife’s HP envy X360 refuses to update from 1909 to 2004 or 20H2. I’ve been fighting this battle with it some some months now, first with 2004, and now with 20H2 (since there’s no point going through this hassle twice to get to 20H2.)

It gets a DPC WATCHDOG VIOLATION blue screen during the update process. This is most likely a driver problem, and probably easily fixed if I could just figure out *which* driver! It seems that while backing out the failing update, the 20H2 also backs out any logging.

Note that this system never normally blue-screens. CHKDSK, DISM and SFC scans show no problems, and I’ve run full system hardware UEFI diagnostics.

I have all updates for this system from HP applied, and Windows 10 is up to date (apart from this month’s new lot.) I have used Driver Easy to see what that thinks might be updated (note: I have not used it to actually apply any updated drivers.) There’s nothing there which look likely to trip up an update (e.g. HDD/SSD drivers.)

I am doing the update from a 20H2 .iso file (the .iso is for all, the system is x64 W10 Pro) but was previously doing it from Windows Update (which I have now set back to 1909 as the target version to keep it from trying over and over again.)

If anyone has any suggestions as to how I can get to the bottom of this problem I’d be grateful.

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Is Malwarebytes Pro (ransomware protection) present?

Windows 10 Version 2004: Issues with Malwarebytes 4.1.0?

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doriel

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[Graham]

I should have mentioned: only Windows Defender for anti-virus etc.. I do have Malwarebytes Windows Firewall Control (which as you may know, wasn’t a Malwarebytes product until recently and just manages Windows own fireall.)

Edit: Oops, no WFC: that’s my PC! Just Defender.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by Graham.

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b

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[EP]

there are several versions of HP Envy X360 laptops, Graham.
what specific model of Envy x360 are you using?
perhaps run either Dxdiag.exe or MSInfo32.exe to gather either the exact model or HP product number of your HP Envy x360 laptop

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by EP.

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It’s 15-cp0xxx.

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I would recommend to go to Windows logs and see, what Event ID the problem has. It can be used for troubleshooting then.

Rightclick This PC and select Manage.
Then go to Event Viewer – Windows Logs – System

Find the critical error (red circle with white cross), that happened at the time, when installation crashed. Sorry for Czech screenshot, but it could help you what I mean. Try to post Event ID here.

PS – there are several posts with similar problems, trying to analyze the problem via sending DUMP file to Microsoft.

For example you could try THIS. Update the SATA AHCI controller driver.

Dell Latitude 3420, Intel Core i7 @ 2.8 GHz, 16GB RAM, W10 22H2 Enterprise

HAL3000, AMD Athlon 200GE @ 3,4 GHz, 8GB RAM, Fedora 29

PRUSA i3 MK3S+

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As I said initially, there’s nothing logged: “It seems that while backing out the failing update, the 20H2 also backs out any logging.”

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Most of the thigs I can find about DPC WATCHDOG VIOLATION is about SSDs drivers or firmware. I think it could be storage issue, but thats just my guess. You wrote you updated all you could, maybe SATA driver too. Its hard to estimate.
Whats left? BIOS, SSD firmware?

Dell Latitude 3420, Intel Core i7 @ 2.8 GHz, 16GB RAM, W10 22H2 Enterprise

HAL3000, AMD Athlon 200GE @ 3,4 GHz, 8GB RAM, Fedora 29

PRUSA i3 MK3S+

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SATA driver is current and is the standard W10 one. BIOS up to date. SSD firmware up to date.

What I really need is some way to determine what is causing the DPC WATCHDOG VIOLATION, despite Windows best efforts to thwart me!

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Is the DUMP file available? You should analayze it. HW could malfunction.

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No dump file. The backout from this failure seems to wipe out all traces of any useful diagnostics. If it hasn’t, I’ve no idea where they are.

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Does the PC run 2 a/v applications ? Disable/remove one of the a/v ?

Check error details in the Event Viewer

I always disable my A/V when installing Windows updates/upgrades.

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Already answered that: just Defender and there are no logs.

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I wont mention downloading differet ISO, because you said, you tried via Windows updates too.

Then all that remains is to try various benchmarks and see, which part of your PC is broken, but you said you alredy did UEFI HW benchmarks. The thing is, that even the newest driven can crash.
But my bet would be on malfunctioning HW. You can test them one by obe through some benchmarks, but I dont know such programs for free. Maybe someone could recommend something here. Or you can replace HW one by one and try all over again.

If there is no DUMP or Event Viewer, there is nothing to analyze.

Bring the PC to your local PC service maybe? They could find the erroring HW for you for small ammount of money.

Or try GNU/Linux 😉 just kidding, its probably not Windows fault. But there are less updates and you can fully control them.

Dell Latitude 3420, Intel Core i7 @ 2.8 GHz, 16GB RAM, W10 22H2 Enterprise

HAL3000, AMD Athlon 200GE @ 3,4 GHz, 8GB RAM, Fedora 29

PRUSA i3 MK3S+

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A hardware problem which does not show up any other time seems to be something MS overlooked in the upgrade process. I can fix whatever problems there are (I’ve been working on computer hardware and software for over 50 years,) but not if the evidence is destroyed! The blue screen could at least show the equivalent of what should end up in the event log, but no, since MS don’t like to present useful information to users in case it confuses them.

(I’ve been a Linux system administrator in a past life too, but Linux on the wife’s PC is not an option.)

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doriel

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[Alex5723]

Graham wrote:

Event Viewer

Have you checked Event Viewer for errors, system diagnostics or Reliability Monitor ?

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by Alex5723.

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@Graham says, the Event viewer is wiped out during BSOD, thus no events there.

Dell Latitude 3420, Intel Core i7 @ 2.8 GHz, 16GB RAM, W10 22H2 Enterprise

HAL3000, AMD Athlon 200GE @ 3,4 GHz, 8GB RAM, Fedora 29

PRUSA i3 MK3S+

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If the process goes like this:

Installing update -> BSOD -> Restart -> Rolling back changes

I suggest to do this

Installing update -> BSOD -> Turn off PC -> Physically place SSD into another machine* -> Extract DUMP file

* Not as the system disk C:, but only as storage via USB-SATA reduction

Dell Latitude 3420, Intel Core i7 @ 2.8 GHz, 16GB RAM, W10 22H2 Enterprise

HAL3000, AMD Athlon 200GE @ 3,4 GHz, 8GB RAM, Fedora 29

PRUSA i3 MK3S+

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I have been thinking about that.I did try to get it to reboot into WinRE, but during the upgrade process, that does not appear to be possible. The upgrade process seems to completely replace the normal boot sequence until it has either completed or backed itself out.

This machine is not the easiest to open up (but very far from the worst – no glue!) and does require replacement of a sticky foot strip. I don’t currently have an external NVME drive adapter – a lack which I have now rectified by ordering one.

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These adapters are must-have for me. I personally have NVMe-USB adapter too. The largest one I could find 😁

Dell Latitude 3420, Intel Core i7 @ 2.8 GHz, 16GB RAM, W10 22H2 Enterprise

HAL3000, AMD Athlon 200GE @ 3,4 GHz, 8GB RAM, Fedora 29

PRUSA i3 MK3S+

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[Alex5723]

doriel wrote:

@Graham says, the Event viewer is wiped out during BSOD, thus no events there.

BSODs display some lines of info which can be saved taking a screenshot with a smartphone.

To Temporarily Disable BSOD Automatic Restart in Advanced Startup Settings at Boot

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by Alex5723.

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doriel

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In this case, the only thing the blue screen says is DPC WATCHDOG VIOLATION or I might have a better idea of what the problem actually is. There is no automatic restart. But thanks for trying.

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See if this article helps diagnose the issue – Log files and resolving upgrade errors – Windows Deployment | Microsoft Docs

The log files should still be there after a rollback.

 

--Joe

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Graham

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Thanks, I’ll take a look at that tomorrow (bed time now!)

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There’s a whole wealth of useful information there, along with its related pages. I didn’t know this exists. Thank you. With any luck, this will actually enable me to figure out which driver (or device) is causing the problem.

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[Graham]

The update is complete!

The parent of that link: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/upgrade/resolve-windows-10-upgrade-errors contains a link to SetupDiag.

SetupDiag is a command line tool which tells you where the information is, and collects it into the directory from which it is run. In particular, it creates Logs.zip, and within that there is setupact_rollback.log, in which I found the failing driver conveniently logged near the top. (Note: I couldn’t get this tool to run from a network drive, possibly because it wasn’t not writable. I just copied it to the temp directory and ran it from there.)

The offending driver was one which Driver Easy had suggested updating, but which neither Windows nor HP had an update for. With an image backup in hand, I let Driver Easy install the update.

After a re-boot and incremental image update, I started the update again. This time it completed sucessfully (and another image incremental is in progress!)

Joe, thank you for addressing the specific problem I had and providing the information I needed to get it resolved.

Edit: typo.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by Graham.

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Thanks! Could you share which driver that was?

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I could, but that would be counter-productive. Instead, thanks to Joe, this thread now shows how, under similar circumstances – and probably others – how to determine the real cause of the problem, rather than just guessing.

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🙂 Yep, I thought so.

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You did all the hard work. Nice detective work. Glad to help. Glad you got the update installed.

--Joe

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Graham

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Nvidia or AMD chip and drivers?

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AMD, but really, it doesn’t matter because unless I can figure out which device or driver is the problem, I fix anything.

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[a]

right. So my suggestion would be to uninstall the AMD driver and all related stuff and let it use windows default, and then try the update. (I assume you have an image in case anything goes wrong.)(I use Macrium free)

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by a.

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Which of the dozen or so AMD drivers do you suggest?

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