WHEA - PCI/PCIe Bus Errors

[Antonton]

Hi all,

I was hoping someone could shed some light on the PCI/PCIe Bus Errors that are found at the bottom of the HWINFO Sensor Status on the Dell G3 gaming laptop I recently bought.

To give a bit more context, I bought the laptop c. 2 months ago (at the start of May). I use the laptop maybe 3/4 hours a day, with a bit of light gaming. Whilst playing a game (Valorant) I got a BSOD with the following error: " Stop code: MEMORY_MANAGEMENT.

It's not happened since, but I have had a few times when the computer has crashed. This again, only happened on Valorant. It's a new game so I'm conscious it could potentially be an issue with Valorant (although I'm even more mindful of it being a hardware issue.

In terms of specs:

• 9th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-9750H
• NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1660 Ti with Max-Q Design, 6GB GDDR6
• 16GB, 2x8GB, DDR4, 2666MHz
• 512GB M.2 PCIe NVMe Solid State Drive
  

Dell support has it's own diagnostics/full system scan for hardware issues. It scanned and flagged as no issues. I'm not sure how robust the scan is, so I thought I'd use other software to check. When I run the Hwinfo sensor status, I get WHEA errors. It's in relation to "PCI/PCIe Bus Errors". I've reproduced the summary below. I only ran it for 3/4 minutes for the purposes of the screenshot, but when I ran it for 3 hours or so last night it generally goes up in value by one/two every minute. I had over 400 towards the end of the night.

I just wanted to understand if there is any way to pin-point / understand in more detail what the WHEA errors relate to via HWINFO, or the BSOD I received... I'm not the most sophisticated person with computers. I'd like to understand if its worth returning to Dell for an exchange/repair. My preference is not but if it is a serious error I will. It'd also help if I could detail the error to Dell as part of requesting an exchange/repair (given their scan isn't showing any issues). Is there any possibility this is a minor error that I shouldn't worry about and won't impact the life span of my laptop? Other than the BSOD and a couple of crashes, the laptop is broadly fine. Again, I'm not sure if it's connected with the game or a hardware issue with my laptop.

Thanks!

 

[Martin]

Valorant is using an anti-cheat component (Vanguard) that goes pretty deep into the system and causes several issues. So it would be no surprise if it's causing that.
As first I'd recommend to check without it - you might need to uninstall Vanguard completely to get rid of it and its root-kit like components.

 

[Antonton]

Valorant is using an anti-cheat component (Vanguard) that goes pretty deep into the system and causes several issues. So it would be no surprise if it's causing that.
As first I'd recommend to check without it - you might need to uninstall Vanguard completely to get rid of it and its root-kit like components.

Thanks Martin. I'm glad I gave the info that I had been playing Valorant. I've heard a ton of issues with Vanguard!

I'll uninstall this weekend and perform a scan. Is there any way of checking what is potentially causing the issue via HWinfo in the meantime?

 

[Antonton]

Valorant is using an anti-cheat component (Vanguard) that goes pretty deep into the system and causes several issues. So it would be no surprise if it's causing that.
As first I'd recommend to check without it - you might need to uninstall Vanguard completely to get rid of it and its root-kit like components.

Hi Martin - update.

I uninstalled Valorant and Vanguard and no luck. Still getting the PCI/PCIE bus errors. It averages one per minute. Is there anyway of diagnosing this further using Hwinfo?

Your help is really appreciated!

 

[Martin]

Sorry, it's not possible to provide more clues about the problem.
But you already saw the difference when using RST drivers, so I'd suggest to pursue this path or contact DELL.

 

[falkentyne]

Hi Martin - update.

I uninstalled Valorant and Vanguard and no luck. Still getting the PCI/PCIE bus errors. It averages one per minute. Is there anyway of diagnosing this further using Hwinfo?

Your help is really appreciated!

Did you look in windows event viewer (System) and look at the actual text of the error? it will be logged there, with a bit more detail.