Puzzling Dump File?

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Hi,

On Woody’s recent recommendation, I loaded WinDirStat on Win 10 Pro Anniversary Edition.

Some of the biggest files were two dumps which I don’t recall ‘Blue Screens’ for. They are located in C:\Windows\ LiveKernelReports and are called:

PdcLockWatchdog-20170108-1525,dmp  (500k bytes) and

PdcLockWatchdog-20170316-1631.dmp (3.3Gb) and

PdcLockWatchdog-20170323-1913.dmp (3.3Gb)

I’ve googled Pdc Lock Watchdog and keep receiving results for Dpc.

I asociate Pdc with Primary Domain Controller but I can’t see that in this case.

I don’t have access to full dump analysis facilities so would like to ask anyone what the problem area may be?

Thanks in advance.

John

Dell Inspiron 16 Plus 7640 Core Ultra 7 155H 32GB Win 11 Pro 23H2 (22631.5189)
Dell Inspiron 15 7580 i7 16GB Win 11 pro 24H2 (26100.4061),
Microsoft 365 Version 2504 (18730.20122)
Location: UK

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S’mae, John.

Try a search for the phrase: “PdcLockWatchdog”

I suspect it’s power-related, if you could copy the smallest dump file to your Desktop, zip it and attach the zip here (assuming zip files are accepted) and i’ll take a look at it. Alt., upload the zip to a file hosting service (OneDrive?) and ensure it’s available for the public and post the URL back here.

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Only pics are allowed – except for MVPs

1 user thanked author for this post.

satrow

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Whenever Resplendence Software’s WhoCrashed & Nir’s Bluescreen & Appcrash view tools do not provide enough information, you can gain more precision if you care to install the Windows Debugging Tools.

You’ll have to download the Windows 10 SDK installer or search the download center to find if is offered as a separate installation file. The debugger can load and analyze those crash dumps in depth. I’ve used the Windows Debugger for the small & large dump files and the analyzer function displayed the same conclusions.

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The more dumps/details there are to analyse, the higher the chances of finding a resolution, a single dump is often too little to be sure.

Whatever software you use, interpretation is still required unless a 3rd party driver named in the Stack (or on the onscreen BSOD message) coincides with details of what was happening on the PC during the seconds leading up to the crash.

Sometimes there’s an old driver listed in the dump that ties in with the Windows routine that called the crash, that’s fairly easy to discover from basic Windbg output + the details from BlueScreenView/WhoCrashed.

Add in the WER output from MSInfo32 and an Autoruns.arn with a year or so of experience and you might get to grips with ~60-70% of BSODs.

To get a higher % requires some serious hardware and debugging knowledge as well but getting close to cracking the final ~10% of the most difficult crashes to interpret requires a real specialist, even then you’d be lucky to get a straight answer, it’s usually an educated guess.

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Diolch Satrow!

I was hoping not to have to download the Windows 10 debugger SDK, but I may have to.

Shan’t be able to do it for a couple of days as we’re away.

Dell Inspiron 16 Plus 7640 Core Ultra 7 155H 32GB Win 11 Pro 23H2 (22631.5189)
Dell Inspiron 15 7580 i7 16GB Win 11 pro 24H2 (26100.4061),
Microsoft 365 Version 2504 (18730.20122)
Location: UK

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Dim prob, Barcud.

Find a way to get the smallest dump to me and I’ll see what I can get from it, better still, use the Sysnative tool and let me have that zipped output, it will also contain MSInfo32 data and other useful logs: https://www.sysnative.com/forums/bsod-crashes-kernel-debugging/68-blue-screen-death-bsod-posting-instructions-windows-8-7-vista.html

The Sysnative BSOD Processing Apps is a useful set of scripts to extract more useful data from the dumps using Windbg (that you now seem to have installed), also plenty of tips generally and on specific BSOD types/3rd party drivers there, it’s a great resource, run by some very knowledgeable people.

If you don’t trust Cloud hosting with your data, you can email it to me @yahoo.co.uk/gmail or protonmail as the Lounge doesn’t accept zips, I’ll post a breakdown here for further discussion.

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True.

There were many mini memory dumps and a large memory dump to analyze. The Windows Debugger thought it could have been three different components. Microsoft patched one of the components last month.

I didn’t think about using any information from Msinfo32 or Autoruns for aiding in debugging the problem at the time, thanks for the tip.

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That anon poster is you, John?

If so, I forgot a URL, editing my previous post now.

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Dim fi satrow

 

…….Sysnative report done – Diolch

Dell Inspiron 16 Plus 7640 Core Ultra 7 155H 32GB Win 11 Pro 23H2 (22631.5189)
Dell Inspiron 15 7580 i7 16GB Win 11 pro 24H2 (26100.4061),
Microsoft 365 Version 2504 (18730.20122)
Location: UK

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Good work, John.

I see the topic, grabbed the dump data zip and will study it a little later on. Initial thoughts: could it be to do with switchable graphics, I see that Dell offers graphics drivers for the Intel graphics, as well as the Nvidia?

Catch up later.

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Okay, while we wait for an expert’s breakdown, here’s a few things that jumped out at me:

Both dumps seemed to indicate some kind of memory corruption, or corruption of some loaded data whilst held in memory, this is often indicative of a ‘bad’ 3rd party driver/filter loading where it shouldn’t.

Some potentially ‘bad’ drivers/software loaded:

RAPPORT: seeing that installed always makes me nervous, it would be the first thing to uninstall, esp. where there’s a 3rd party AV/security software (also where a non-mainstream/big 3 browser is the default). Can be prone to causing crashes in programs, also has been known to trigger BSODs in the past.

McAfee/Kaspersky (found in different dumps): see RAPPORT above but note also that either might not play well with Windows or your choice of application software, esp. non-Enterprise/mainstream, also relatively high rates of false positives with both, ime. Better to fully uninstall any 3rd party security software and drop back to the W10 firewall and Defender (+ Malwarebytes Free for occas. scans) during troubleshooting.

WinDivert64.sys (https://github.com/basil00/Divert or https://github.com/ffalcinelli/pydivert/commit/e5ffad3ce29d077d26799f8bffd979eecaea0eee ?): this is unknown to me, another on the list for being potentially problematic.

Your W10 is an upgrade, that can and does bring along all sorts of older drivers and software that might be less than stable in a later OS, a clean install would be a valid troubleshooting option – with a big caveat – the current (assuming it’s still working as originally intended) dual/switching graphics might not work with a clean install of W10. Even with the next update/upgrade of your current W10 install, it might break (though a driver rollback might still re-enable switching graphics).

This could lead to you having to try to force the Nvidia GPU into action to enable better 2D and esp. 3D graphics, which would lead to greater power consumption (+ heat) as well as lower battery life when unplugged, as it would lose the ability to auto-switch the graphics. Dell do not appear to support W10 on this notebook, probably at least in part for the above reasons:

“Your Inspiron 15R N5110 supports these operating systems:
Windows 8, 64-bit
BIOS
Windows 7, 64-bit

Note regarding operating systems not listed above:
Dell may not support an operating system for various reasons, including discontinued support from the software vendor or lack of availability with certain products.
For more information about an unsupported platform or operating system, please contact the software vendor.”
http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/Drivers/SupportedOS/inspiron-15r-n5110

1 user thanked author for this post.

John

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What did the expert find out from these dump files?

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See: https://www.sysnative.com/forums/bsod-crashes-kernel-debugging/22599-pdclockwatchdog-dump-how-why-post180007.html#post180007

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Thank you, that was informative. If there is another occurrence of a new problem I’ll have to go there for help.

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Apologies for not responding sooner, satrow! Been away.

Anyway, the dump analysis gives some confidence so I’m not over-concerned about that now.

However, I understand your concerns about the potential problems stored up when using an upgraded PC. I’ve reviewed the software you’re concerned about.

Rapport – can’t keep up with Firefox, and Kaspersky protects password entry – so remove it.

Kaspersky – (McAfee already ditched) – I’ll leave this one under review for now. (I keep Defender up-to-date anyway)

Github – Sourceforge is closing and Github seems to be the recommended replacement – I use a password manager from here.

Yes, the dual-switching graphics are still working but as you point out Dell doesn’t support the Inspiron N5110 on Windows 10 at all. In fact, it’s almost a veteran as it will be 6 years old in October! At home, I generally use my AOC 24″ monitor so the Nvidia graphics is on when the laptop is on – and it does generate some heat. I think it is possible in the BIOS to use only one graphics sub-system but I haven’t researched that yet.

I have thought about a fresh install but don’t know all the implications for the software I have loaded as I came from Win 7 Home to Win 7 Pro, and thence to Win 10 Pro.

Diolch am fawr eto for the effort and the observations – lots to think about – I’ve fancied an HP Spectre X360 but they are all a bit pricey!

John

 

Dell Inspiron 16 Plus 7640 Core Ultra 7 155H 32GB Win 11 Pro 23H2 (22631.5189)
Dell Inspiron 15 7580 i7 16GB Win 11 pro 24H2 (26100.4061),
Microsoft 365 Version 2504 (18730.20122)
Location: UK

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No worries, John

I’d avoid a clean install of W10 for as long as possible otherwise there’s a high risk that the dual graphics might become a big problem afterwards. For the heat issue, get the notebook raised, or buy a notebook cooler to fit under it to increase the amount of cooling – and plan on getting an internal dust/fluff clean out/checkup done soon.

For long uptimes (and to minimise the chances of a boot-time BSOD), keep the startups to a minimum and manually start/stop those former resident programs as and when needed. Try to minimise security software/add-ons overlaps; good system-wide security, active and passive, plus specific hardening/add-ons for the software installed/used (and regular checks for updates) would be my initial suggestions to keep safe and have a reasonably responsive computer.

Consider using Firefox ESR, it’s the stable version for Enterprise, no fluff added, I use it as a backup browser (to Pale Moon).

Yes, I bumped into a Spectre X360 web page a day or two ago, it does feel like it’s worth shortlisting should you be forced into a major hardware upgrade over the next year or two.

Keep safe!

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No, I was also having a memory corruption also but it seems to be fixed now.

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