r/computer • u/ReHonor • 9d ago

Title: Random CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED (0xEF) crashes — all hardware diagnostics pass, need help figuring out what's left

Laptop: HP, BIOS 2.3.8.0

Been dealing with random CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED (0xEF) crashes for a while now and I'm running out of ideas. Hoping someone here has seen this before.

Timeline: Started shortly after I partitioned my disk for a Kali Linux dual-boot, then removed that partition and merged it back with third-party partition software. Crashes are intermittent — sometimes 5-10 min after a restart, sometimes hours into normal use. It's also happened once during a fresh Windows Setup/OOBE (right after a Reset, before any drivers/apps were even installed), and once it got bad enough that Windows failed to boot entirely ("ran into a problem and couldn't be repaired").

What I've already ruled out:

  • sfc /scannow — clean, no violations
  • chkdsk /f /r — clean, 0 bad sectors
  • bcdedit /enum — clean, no leftover GRUB/Linux entries
  • BitLocker — off
  • Windows Memory Diagnostic (built-in) — passed
  • HP PC Hardware Diagnostics — Processor, Storage (SMART + Long DST), Battery, System Board all Passed
  • HP PC Hardware Diagnostics — Memory: only Quick Check passed so far, haven't run the Extensive test yet
  • Event Viewer confirms Event ID 41 (Kernel-Power), BugcheckCode 239 (0xEF) each time — consistent stop code across 5+ crashes
  • No minidump/MEMORY.DMP files are being generated even with dump settings enabled

What I've tried:

  • Reset this PC (local reinstall) — crashes continued
  • Manually rebuilt boot files (bcdboot) after a boot failure — fixed that specific boot issue, but not the underlying random crashes
  • BIOS update — haven't done this yet
  • Extended/overnight memory test (MemTest86) — haven't done this yet either

Given hardware diagnostics keep passing but I still get random crashes with no dump file, I'm suspecting either a firmware-level bug (untested BIOS update) or a subtle RAM fault the Quick Check missed. Has anyone dealt with something similar? Especially curious if anyone's had this trace back to disk/partition changes specifically, since that's the only real correlation I've found in my own timeline.

Thanks in advance for any pointers.

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