Black screen on Surface Book

[Captain Chaos]

I'm getting frequent WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR blue screens on my Surface Book (1) so I would like to run memtest86 to check for memory errors. I downloaded the latest version and it appears to boot (I see it detecting various kinds of hardware), but then the screen goes black, with nothing but a mouse cursor and a keyboard icon. The test does appear to be running, as it does create a log file (which I shall attach) but without seeing what's going on I have no idea when it is done, or what kind of feedback or configuration options I might be missing.

Here is the hardware info from the Surface app:

• Surface model: Surface Book i7
• Version Information
  • Embedded controller: 90.2226.256.0
  • SAM: 90.1837.256.0
  • UEFI: 92.3192.768.0
  • Touch driver: 107.3.94.3
  • Wi-Fi driver: 15.68.17018.116

Let me know if you need more information.

Also, while I'm here, does anyone have some more technical detail about the WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR? It's impossible to find any decent information about it online; it's all people asking the same question, or scam tools promising to solve it magically, and all Microsoft itself says about it is that it indicates a "hardware error" and to install the latest updates... Is it plausible that a memory fault might cause it? What else could I check for?

[David (PassMark)]

WHEA (Windows Hardware Error Architecture) is a general operating system hardware error handling mechanism.

This page gives an overview of how it works
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/win...cture-overview

Errors can come from nearly any hardware component.

• CPU Processor machine check exception (for example, MC#)
• Chipset error signals (for example, SCI, SMI, SERR#, MCERR#)
• I/O bus error reporting (for example, PCI Express root port error interrupt)
• I/O device errors
• ECC RAM having multi-bit errors.

So in short you need more details from the Blue screen or Window event log to decode the meaning of your WHEA error
When you have more details see these pages to decode it.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/win...rectable-error
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/win.../error-records

But if the RAM is failing then no other software can work correctly and anything can happen.

The log from MemTest86 doesn't contain a complete pass. I assume you stopped it early. Maybe let it run for an hour or so.

We'll have a look at the log for the block screen later. It is probably a BIOS bug.

[keith]

I downloaded the latest version and it appears to boot (I see it detecting various kinds of hardware), but then the screen goes black, with nothing but a mouse cursor and a keyboard icon. The test does appear to be running, as it does create a log file (which I shall attach) but without seeing what's going on I have no idea when it is done, or what kind of feedback or configuration options I might be missing.

Can you add the following line to blacklist.cfg (under EFI\BOOT\ of USB flash drive)

"Surface Book",ALL,EXACT,FIXED_SCREENRES

This is a workaround for a UEFI BIOS issue with Microsoft Surface Book/Pro machines when attempting to adjust the screen resolution.

[Captain Chaos]

Thank you, keith ! That worked. The display was tiny, but at least I could see what was going on. I was able to let it do a a full test with four passes and it found no errors. So unfortunately I'm no closer to finding out why my laptop is crashing, but at least I now know it is not the RAM.

And thanks for the pointers, David (PassMark) I'll see if I can find some information in the system log. Unfortunately the blue screen is useless; all it says is that the stop code is WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR.

[Captain Chaos]

I found an event in the system log. Do you happen to know of any tools which can decode this for me? I'm a programmer, so if not I imagine I'll be able to cobble something together using the information from that Error Record page, but I'm hoping I won't have to...

<Event xmlns="[B]http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event[/B]">
  <System>
    <Provider Name="[B]Microsoft-Windows-WHEA-Logger[/B]" Guid="[B]{c26c4f3c-3f66-4e99-8f8a-39405cfed220}[/B]" />
    <EventID>1</EventID>
    <Version>0</Version>
    <Level>2</Level>
    <Task>0</Task>
    <Opcode>0</Opcode>
    <Keywords>0x8000000000000002</Keywords>
    <TimeCreated SystemTime="[B]2021-01-13T17:59:45.4053296Z[/B]" />
    <EventRecordID>17599</EventRecordID>
    <Correlation ActivityID="[B]{7804a11b-c890-4bfd-be8c-6e6750bcab9e}[/B]" />
    <Execution ProcessID="[B]4960[/B]" ThreadID="[B]5748[/B]" />
    <Channel>System</Channel>
    <Computer>ChaosBook</Computer>
    <Security UserID="[B]S-1-5-19[/B]" />
  </System>
  <EventData>
    <Data Name="[B]Length[/B]">298</Data>
    <Data Name="[B]RawData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ata>
  </EventData>
</Event>