thecomputerguy
Well-Known Member
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I replaced 7 Dell workstations and 1 Dell server at a clients office who works in Accounting. All of them were Vostro 3681's with either the following:
Core i7
512GB NVme SSD
8GB DDR4
or
Core i5
256GB NVme SSD
8GB DDR4
All of the computers we upgraded prior to install with an additional 8GB's of Crucial DDR4 and all were upgraded from Windows 10 to Windows 11.
All of the installs are nearly identical with typical accounting stuff. Lacerte, Thompson Reuters Software, Quickbooks, a couple of Network Printers, Office, and CFS Tax Tools, Syncro + BitDefender.
The main part of the installation took place in late December.
Some of the workstations have Dymo Label Printers, some do not.
Some of them have old Scansnaps like fi-5120 or fi-6120 which are technically not compatible with Windows 10/11 but I was able to get the x64 driver to work.
The day after I did the install the client sent me a picture of HIS workstation sitting at the Windows 11 Recovery screen. He was able to get past this by clicking Advanced options, then Continue. After that the computer boots up normally.
At this point I was like oh WTF, maybe he has a bad stick of RAM or something. Since he was able to boot up I called it a fluke and we moved on. Then a couple days later .. a different workstation had the same problem. They come in the next day and the computer is sitting at the Windows 11 Recovery. Same thing, advanced options, continue, and the computer boots.
I turned off auto-restart on system failure to get a picture of the blue screen and hit the logs. I do see in the logs unexpected shutdowns, and this blue screen does match the log error in the picture below.
Over the next couple of weeks all of the computers totally intermittent, sometimes it takes a day or two, sometimes several days, sometimes 7 or 8 days, the computers have all been blue screening with the same blue screen.
This issue does not just happen overnight, it will also intermittently blue screen in the middle of working on it. Some of the workstations will literally just be idle, and no one will use them for 4 or 5 days and they will blue screen all on their own.
I wakeup almost everyday with a text message from the client with one of the computers sitting at a blue screen. Thankfully he has been very patient as it is not tax season.
I have tried:
Full Windows updates
Full Driver updates
Full BIOS updates
Sitting and praying
Should I try doing an in-place upgrade of Windows 11 to see if that helps? (Installing Windows 11 on top of Windows 11, is that even an option anymore?)
Is it possible I got 7 bad sticks of DDR4?
Googling the blue screen hasn't been a whole lot of help, a lot of the same SFC /scannow crap.
I'm drowning in work right now and I can't have this on top of everything. I can't believe 7 different computers are all blue screening. I specifically went higher end with i7 + 16GB to avoid this.
I'm trying to avoid doing a Nuke & Pave and a FULL re-installation of the workstations because this install took me 3 days to do even though yes a lot of it was the Server.
The client spent about $24k on this setup and I'm starting to look like a fool.
Core i7
512GB NVme SSD
8GB DDR4
or
Core i5
256GB NVme SSD
8GB DDR4
All of the computers we upgraded prior to install with an additional 8GB's of Crucial DDR4 and all were upgraded from Windows 10 to Windows 11.
All of the installs are nearly identical with typical accounting stuff. Lacerte, Thompson Reuters Software, Quickbooks, a couple of Network Printers, Office, and CFS Tax Tools, Syncro + BitDefender.
The main part of the installation took place in late December.
Some of the workstations have Dymo Label Printers, some do not.
Some of them have old Scansnaps like fi-5120 or fi-6120 which are technically not compatible with Windows 10/11 but I was able to get the x64 driver to work.
The day after I did the install the client sent me a picture of HIS workstation sitting at the Windows 11 Recovery screen. He was able to get past this by clicking Advanced options, then Continue. After that the computer boots up normally.
At this point I was like oh WTF, maybe he has a bad stick of RAM or something. Since he was able to boot up I called it a fluke and we moved on. Then a couple days later .. a different workstation had the same problem. They come in the next day and the computer is sitting at the Windows 11 Recovery. Same thing, advanced options, continue, and the computer boots.
I turned off auto-restart on system failure to get a picture of the blue screen and hit the logs. I do see in the logs unexpected shutdowns, and this blue screen does match the log error in the picture below.
Over the next couple of weeks all of the computers totally intermittent, sometimes it takes a day or two, sometimes several days, sometimes 7 or 8 days, the computers have all been blue screening with the same blue screen.
This issue does not just happen overnight, it will also intermittently blue screen in the middle of working on it. Some of the workstations will literally just be idle, and no one will use them for 4 or 5 days and they will blue screen all on their own.
I wakeup almost everyday with a text message from the client with one of the computers sitting at a blue screen. Thankfully he has been very patient as it is not tax season.
I have tried:
Full Windows updates
Full Driver updates
Full BIOS updates
Sitting and praying
Should I try doing an in-place upgrade of Windows 11 to see if that helps? (Installing Windows 11 on top of Windows 11, is that even an option anymore?)
Is it possible I got 7 bad sticks of DDR4?
Googling the blue screen hasn't been a whole lot of help, a lot of the same SFC /scannow crap.
I'm drowning in work right now and I can't have this on top of everything. I can't believe 7 different computers are all blue screening. I specifically went higher end with i7 + 16GB to avoid this.
I'm trying to avoid doing a Nuke & Pave and a FULL re-installation of the workstations because this install took me 3 days to do even though yes a lot of it was the Server.
The client spent about $24k on this setup and I'm starting to look like a fool.
