ROG Zephyrus M16, Browsers Crashing, BSOD's, Application Crashing

[Sam1990]

Hello,

Can somebody please check out my dumps or just help me to identity the cause of recent BSOD's and crashes, laptop:  ROG Zephyrus M16 (2023) GU604, 13th Gen Intel Core i9-13900H, RTX 4080, 32 gigs.

Basically, it all started with random Firefox crashes, checking other browsers, same issues, the crash reports show EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION_READ, week later apps started crashing, Premiere Pro and so on and few days later, I can't even unzip files properly due to random error too. Finally, I'm getting BSOD's, be it while browsing, or just checking Steam, or just idle tasks and not too demanding games, but proper games I can play for hours no issues. Temps are fine. Did memtest, did OCCT CPU and RAM tests for few hours, sfc scans, DISM''s, nothing to repair, everything is in working order.

Dumps:

https://www.mediafire.com/file/smhkwl8llpq1064/092225-16593-01.dmp/file

https://www.mediafire.com/file/od8duvhrxn7g0av/092525-15671-01.dmp/file

https://www.mediafire.com/file/fsiovyl67a96lsp/092525-20312-01.dmp/file

https://www.mediafire.com/file/u9dms3jdysaa54t/092625-15515-01.dmp/file

https://www.mediafire.com/file/n3879lwfj2s47q2/092625-16421-01.dmp/file

https://www.mediafire.com/file/wln7z3esbvxnugx/092725-17312-01.dmp/file

[Sam1990]

Update. One of the minidumps showed that at the time of another BSOD, my CPU's frequency was 2995 MHz. At that point I thought maybe it's Armory Crate, it was behaving weird, sometimes not switching profiles (for example, from Silent gaming mode to Performance etc), sometimes fans weren't spinning, so I thought perhaps CPU is getting unstable due to weird frequency jumps and so on, and I was right. After doing ASUS cloud restore, which also did clean Windows install, I immediately uninstalled Armory Crate and so far, 4 days later, system is stable again. Browser isn't crashing, high and low demanding tasks, no BSOD's. Either that, or perhaps it was some nasty driver conflict. Anyway for anybody finding this topic, I suggest doing cloud restore and getting rid of Armory Crate, because I was on the edge of replacing mobo and CPU and thank god it wasn't the case.

[Zalevskiy]

Try to install the recovery image/factory Windows 22H2 - 24H2/installation disk for Strix Scar 2023-2024. I accidentally found a solution. Strix was compatible with Windows from Zephyrus. The drivers are one-to-one. The registry entries in the Zephyrus iso contain the Realtek 0285 configuration, while my laptop has the 0294 chip. This means that the drivers are not blacklisted and work without freezes, crashes, etc.

I had a few ideas about the reason for this:

First, one of the developers mixed up the EC configurations of the Zephyrus and Strix/Scar, releasing a destructive firmware update.

Second, it was done intentionally to make you sell your laptop faster and buy a new model.

Thirdly, the Dolby/Cirrus license is expiring; after this period, your laptop will be severely degraded in audio quality due to the proprietary driver protection mechanism. You will need to replace them with MS/WHQL certificates.

Fourth version: hackers have flashed a corrupted BIOS through MyASUS vulnerabilities, and your device is malfunctioning due to a checksum error.

The most absurd thing is that Asus will not allow you to downgrade to the 100% correct BIOS version that was present at the time of purchase, according to these rules.

An exotic theory: your laptop contained gray components that, after flashing the BIOS, stopped working due to regional restrictions in the firmware rules. : )