Windows 11 BSOD after installing Visual Studio - have bootable drive settings been changed somehow?

Question

I installed Visual Studio from Microsoft via this link. I was wanting to install qView (minimalist image viewer), and it requires Visual Studio, so I thought I would make sure that I have the latest version. I downloaded and installed it, and immediately upon restarting, I was hit with BSOD, with the error message "BAD_POOL_HEADER".

Looking this up, I found suggestions for it being a RAM problem. OK; so I removed and reinstalled the RAM. I ran Microsoft's memory check. I used diskpart and bcdboot to check the drives and repair the boot partition. I ran chkdsk, and found no errors. But I couldn't get past the BSOD with any suggestion I tried. I couldn't get in to Safe Mode or Recovery Mode. I did manage to do a system restore to a day before installing Visual Studio - no difference, no improvement, just the BSOD looping forever. Same when I did a restore point for another week earlier.

On another suggestion, I removed my additional storage drives (I have 2, drives D and F). Now, one of them does have a copy of an old Windows installation that I kept as a backup, just in case. But it's not bootable, and I've been using the hardware/software combination for months with no issues at all. I also removed a second SSD drive with an old Windows 10 installation on it that I was going to wipe and install Linux on at some point. That drive is bootable, but Windows was at no point trying to boot that drive. When I forced it to through UEFI settings, it booted into with no problems, albeit without the storage drives connected.

After removing the 3 drives, I was able to boot in to my system on the C drive as normal. So I went back and reattached the first storage drive; no good, back to BSOD. Same with the second storge drive, same with both at the same time. Remove them again, and my C drive works as normal. The second SSD with the old Windows installation was not involved, sat on the desk the whole time.

I did notice during all this that my C drive and F drive had been swapped when I look at them with diskpart. I couldn't find out if this was a feature of Windows 11 trying to go through some sort of error-checking off the back of the BSOD, or if something else had caused it.

I believe installing Visual Studio caused it. Nothing else on my system had changed, nothing else was running, nothing else was installed. After installing it and rebooting, the problems started. The joke was, I think I already had the latest Visual Studio installed. I just thought there would be no harm making sure I had the newest version...

So I went to Microsoft Support and explained it all to them. Of course, I was gaslit with the wonderful response that I "should have contacted customer support before installing Visual Studio to check that it was compatible with [my] hardware", and the even better "this is a hardware error, there is nothing wrong with Visual Studio" - with no further investigation whatsoever. No interest in doing anything except booting into Safe Mode, which I can only do with the storage drives removed. So now after escalating this, I'm waiting for an e-mail response from Microsoft that I already know will simply advise me to do a clean install of Windows. And of course, I could work this out for myself.

I really don't want to do a clean install, because my music software includes hundreds of VSTs and bit and pieces that will take days to reinstall. It will be incredibly painful. And also, I figured someone else might end up going through a similar dillema.

Windows 11 has been running fine since building the PC 6 months ago. No real problems at all, just the usual minor niggles and nuisances, mostly just frustrations with Windows 11. I'd installed a lot of software, from Ableton Live to Steam games, video editing, lots of professional audio software - all without a hitch. I've built about 6 PCs over the years. I'm not a professional, but I go heavily into research to make sure everything's compatible, I test my installation thoroughly before installing more programs, and I've never had a single problem with anything I've built. I'm certainly not flawless, but I am 100% confident that hardware is not the cause of this particular problem.

However, I'm not adamant that the problem is Visual Studio, either; there could be something else corrupted that installing Visual Studio merely set off, or it could be an amazing coincidence.

But here, finally, are my questions: is there some sort of setting that has been altered, somehow, that I can change? Where does Windows 11 put its information about bootable drives, and can this be altered?

I changed the motherboard's UEFI boot settings so that it would only boot into the correct Windows drive; Windows ignored this, and gave the BSOD whenever the storage drives were connected. How can the storage drives be affecting boot in this manner? What am I missing, other than the marbles that I started the day with?

Apologies for such a long post; I couldn't work out how to make it shorter without missing vital information. And I feel I've still not provided enough!

Answer 1

Finally worked out the answer myself! I hope this helps others:

The culprit was a faulty driver. I was able to trace it by going into Minidump (C:\Windows\Minidump) and reading the contents via Blue Screen View. The crash list that the program produced reported that the driver 'mrcbt.sys' was at fault. Googling "mrcbt.sys BSOD" led me to a forum for Macrium Reflect, which I had installed and hung on to in case I needed it. I uninstalled it through Control Panel, the driver was deleted, and the BSOD problems disappeared immediately after reboot! External USB drives work as normal, internal drives are fine.

I suggest that what happened to me was that Visual Studio's installation was corrupted by or somehow corrupted Macrium Reflect, and in turn the 'mrcbt.sys' driver became corrupted. Of course, it could be a coincidence, and Macrium Reflect's driver could have just happened to get corrupted at the same time.

Many thanks to the others here who offered help.

No thanks at all to Microsoft Support, who were utterly useless. I wasted an hour and 10 minutes in webchat to be gaslit and insulted and ignored. The person had no idea what they were talking about, and were clearly just repeating answers from a script or algorithm. At no point did the support agent suggest using Event Viewer, Reliability Monitor or accessing or uploading Minidump files or any other kind of logs - all tools that are part of a standard Windows 11 Pro installation (and probably Home as well, I presume). I have sent in a long e-mail of complaint...

My suggestion for anyone with similar BSOD errors where you are sure that it's not hardware is to check Minidump first. I don't know how you view the files without Blue Screen View, but I found that the program worked great, and was very simple to use. If the answers aren't obvious from there, I would use Event Viewer and Reliability Monitor next, to at least find error codes and information you can Google. If you can't log in to your PC/laptop, I would test it with a Live Linux USB if you can, as that helped me a lot (for one things it helps confirm if your hardware is at fault or not). From the live Linux USB, I would then also access Windows report logs like Minidump and see what you can find, then, armed with information, ask for help on a forum before bothering with Microsoft Support!

My difficulty was that, not having dealt with such a drastic system error before, I did not know where to look for answers. I thought I'd post as much information as possible here to help others in the similar situations!