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If I boot my new PC into Linux, it doesn't crash. Ever. I've left it running for days at a time.

If I then reboot from Linux into Windows 11, it still doesn't crash.

But if I put Windows to sleep and then resume it, it crashes.

And if I boot straight into Windows 11, without booting Linux first, it crashes after 5 minutes or so, and automatically reboots itself after briefly displaying a crash screen. If I do nothing, it will then repeatedly crash and reboot itself ad infinitum. I have not installed any applications or drivers.

Clearly, Windows is not configuring the hardware in a way suitable for it, but Linux is. And the way Linux configures the hardware is suitable for Windows, so Windows doesn't crash after that (until it's put to sleep and has to bring the hardware back up afterwards itself).

Could this be a BIOS issue? Windows is fully updated, but, following advice from the PC vendor, I have not yet tried to update the BIOS.

I have previously sent the PC back to the vendor for repair and the vendor says their extensive testing found no issues with the machine itself. I installed a temperature sensor utility (this is a fanless PC), but the temperature was not showing as particularly high before Windows crashed.

I tried viewing the crash log by opening Windows Logs -> System in Event Viewer, but Event Viewer itself also crashes.

After disabling the automatic restart on crash in Control Panel, I can see that the stop code is DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE, and Windows gets stuck at 0% complete, so it is not able to save a memory dump file.

How can I investigate this issue further?

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  • "Could this be a BIOS issue?" - Yes; Can you provide specifics about the crashes? Specifically WinDBG analysis logs?
    – Ramhound
    Commented Mar 17, 2022 at 9:03
  • @Ramhound I just updated the post. It is not able to write a memory dump file, so I can't do WinDBG analysis. The stop code is DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE.
    – Robin Green
    Commented Mar 17, 2022 at 11:18
  • If I were you, I'll just return it, or at least, ask the vendor to troubleshoot and repair it. Why even waste your own time on such a piece of junk, especially when the problem is so reproducible on Windows (in which case the vendor can't ignore their responsibility).
    – Tom Yan
    Commented Mar 17, 2022 at 11:30
  • Even brand new hardware needs firmware (uEFI) updates, SSDs also. And in order to properly troubleshoot this you could try disabling Fast Boot in uEFI settings. Disabling it consequently enables full hardware detecting on cold boot. The symptom points exactly to an issue with hardware detection from a cold boot only, in Windows. Disabling Fast Startup in Windows is also strongly recommended as this is one the problems it can cause with some flaky firmware.
    – ChanganAuto
    Commented Mar 17, 2022 at 12:33

1 Answer 1

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Updating the BIOS to the latest version on the motherboard manufacturer's website fixed the problem.

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