Hey everyone,
I'm working on a Lenovo Laptop that was bought from eBay. It's quite new, and was working fine up until about two to three weeks ago. It's running Windows 10.
Long story short, the only place the laptop /doesn't/ crash, is the BIOS setup. I've tried booting Safe Mode, replacing RAM (A new stick of RAM improved it for a short time and the crashes didn't happen as frequently, but it didn't last), windows memory diagnostics (it went 80% through with no errors, then randomly restarted, no info shown on login), Ubuntu USB boots (restarts before I can even try ubuntu), and even removing the Hard drive and booting from the USB. The furthest it goes is to the desktop, and only when I start running programs, does it fail.
I'm stuck on whether this is a hardware or software issue. I checked the Windows Error Reporting on System Information, and it seems to say that there's an application, AutoKMS.exe, that fails, and then there's a fault bucket after that. However, whenever I go to Task Manager and end the process, it doesn't crash. I noticed that there are sometimes two of them, sometimes one, and sometimes none. There's also another KMS program called R@1n-KMS or the like. (I am aware that these are used for cracked Windows. I'll deal with that after; I'll either buy a genuine windows copy or install Linux on it. Right now, I just want to fix this problem.)
Although the Windows Error Reporting lists that program and it's showing up, I'm skeptical as to whether it's actually a software issue. After all, if it's a software issue, then how come it persists even after I remove the hard drive? It doesn't happen in the BIOS setup, which means it's not a BIOS firmware issue. The only other conclusion I can think of is that it's a UEFI issue, if that's even enabled. (In the BIOS setup, it says legacy is enabled, so not sure if that means no UEFI.)
So the main things I want to know are:
1) Is this a hardware or software issue? How can I find out?
2) If it is software, what would resolve it? I'm a bit hesitant to flash the BIOS or get rid of the UEFI firmware because this keeps restarting and I don't want to end up bricked. That said, if we could figure out a safe way, I'm all ears.
3) If I have to use Windows Driver Verifier, what's the best method available to make sure I'm still able to access safe mode and command prompt so that I can end it?
4) If it's hardware, what might potentially be the problem? Userbenchmark says that the CPU is fine but below expectations (Was able to get some tests run on the newer RAMs, but not anymore.)
Note: There are no BSOD's, and even though I changed settings so that the computer would stop automatically restarting on failure, it still does.
Edited by Reitex, 04 March 2017 - 11:34 PM.