Well, from what I can tell, the problem is fixed. Here's to hoping I haven't jinxed it. Explanation follows.
When I said that I hadn't installed any other programs, I had forgotten about a disk burner program named Active@ ISO burner from a company called LSoft. From what I can tell, this program uses a driver named stpd.sys to interface with your optical drives in some manner. I originally downloaded and installed this program to write some Linux ISOs to disk, since I was having trouble with my installation media written in the conventional Windows burner. I installed it about 20 minutes before I had my first crash. After going through all of the troubleshooting steps, I determined that the USB-to-SATA/ATAPI bridge wasn't the problem, but apparently, some sort of issue had occurred with a USB device not properly being installed around the time of the crash as well. The drivers for this device (which I believe to be the bridge) were removed, but the crashes did not stop, continuing at approximately half-hour intervals.
As a part of the troubleshooting steps, I used Microsoft's driver verifier, which more or less looks through all of the selected drivers at boot and throws blue screens if there's any sort of problem with testing the driver. I selected all of the non-Microsoft drivers on the system that were loaded, but the stpd.sys driver was not selected, and blue screens were not being thrown at boot. They continued to be thrown during computer operation. I then looked to add more drivers, looking to see which ones had been loaded or modified right before my first crash.
This screenshot clearly shows stpd.sys as the most recent driver installed.
I then went to check out my system's event logs. Surprisingly, the driver in question had suffered an Event 4 occurrence, being explained as "Driver detected an internal error in its data structures for .". I'm not sure if this is a coincidence or not, but the errors received in the blue screens dealt with "CRITICAL_STRUCTURE_CORRUPTION".
After removal of the driver, the problem seems to have gone away. The machine has been on for the better part of three hours now without a critical failure. If this changes, I'll come back and fix this post. However, for now, it would seem that under certain circumstances (which I'm currently unable to accurately reproduce), the version of LSoft Active@ ISO burner available off of ntfs.com contains a driver named "stpd.sys" that will not work properly with Windows 8.1 Pro x64 RTM. I make no claims as to knowing whether an updated driver would work properly or not.
Thank you all for your help.
1can you share the .dmp files? – magicandre1981 – 2013-10-02T17:26:00.840
@magicandre1981, what would be involved in doing so?
I have class at 1:00PM CDT and get out around 1:50PM, so if I disappear in half an hour, it's not me ignoring everybody, just so everyone knows. – nerdenator – 2013-10-02T17:28:04.937
When I start debugging BSOD's I remove all possible causes, then I will slowly add functions back. I would start off with booting to safe boot (if still getting BSOD forget debugging and reinstall) and checking the events. Then I will use msconfig to selectively add services to boot. – Mark Lopez – 2013-10-02T17:28:58.893
1copy the folder C:\Windows\Minidump to your Desktop, zip the folder and uplaod the zip (skydrive, dropbox, google) and post a link. – magicandre1981 – 2013-10-02T17:31:27.073
@magicandre1981, first post updated to include the zip link. It's on my SkyDrive... let me know if you can't access it (that's a very real possibility). – nerdenator – 2013-10-02T17:35:48.197
I can't see a link. – magicandre1981 – 2013-10-02T17:36:20.287
1Have you removed the driver for this adapter? We are going to need specific information about the BSOD beyond what you have shared. Using a BSOD viewer will point toward the actual file responsible for the fault. – Ramhound – 2013-10-02T17:36:30.170
@Ramhound, there's now a link to a minidump .zip in the original comment. – nerdenator – 2013-10-02T17:37:50.000
1You say that you upgraded to 8.1. What was on the system before the upgrade? Any changes to the edition of Windows, language version, anything like that? It shouldn't matter but may provide clues. – a CVn – 2013-10-02T17:40:30.423
1It was Windows 8 Enterprise x64, US English. Upgraded to Windows 8.1 Pro x64 RTM, US English.
Another minidump is getting added to the original post. The system crashed literally right after I pressed "add comment" to reply to Ramhound. – nerdenator – 2013-10-02T17:43:44.173
1the dumps are not helpful. Check the RAM with memtest86+ and also run a diag tool of your HDD manufacture. – magicandre1981 – 2013-10-02T17:55:31.600
@magicandre1981 I'll make sure to do that. Any other suggestions? It did it again after I had locked the machine before leaving for class. I'll try to track down the driver for the bridge and uninstall it as well. It's one of those crashes that takes 30-35 minutes to occur, it seems, so updates will come only periodically. – nerdenator – 2013-10-02T18:09:26.413
Windows 8.1 will be released on October 17th and you will be forced to do a fresh install anyway, should you decide you want to buy it. What was your underlying Windows version? Windows 7? – Samir – 2013-10-02T18:33:34.423
@Sammy, I work at a research institution... somehow we get the stuff early. It's the RTM version, not the preview. – nerdenator – 2013-10-02T18:46:58.860
I see now that Windows 8 Enterprise x64 was the underlying system before the upgrade. And you upgraded to Windows 8.1 Pro x64. No Enterprise edition of Windows 8.1? Well in that case, can't you call Microsoft Support and ask for debugging help? If you really can't afford to do a fresh install. This user had the same error type and resolved it by removing a RAM module. I second what magicandre1981 said, do a memtest and disk diagnosis.
– Samir – 2013-10-02T20:45:09.093"That must be why we're not shipping Windows (8.1) yet!" I couldn't help it but LOL. :) What you can do is you can google those exact error messages and "windows 8.1".
– Samir – 2013-10-02T21:04:53.863You will find at least 97 web search results, including your own on various websites. Seems like many users, and different type of users (home vs. enterprise) are affected by this. If I know Microsoft it's probably a kernel memory leak and it will be patched in the coming months or so after users like yourself start complaining about it. So the best thing you can do is call Microsoft Support and complain, especially since you are working at an institution. Surely, you must have a professional/premiere support contract (given that you already have the RTM version of Win 8.1). – Samir – 2013-10-02T21:15:45.610
@Sammy Ran a memtest today... no errors. I'm running a driver verifier as per the instructions in this thread at Microsoft, where I submitted the same thing. link
– nerdenator – 2013-10-02T22:07:11.240