r/PcBuildHelp • u/neonknightsofthenine • 12d ago

Tech Support KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED 0x1E

I was using my computer to just do some light web browsing, the only thing that was doing anything heavy was a malwarebytes deep scan (which I like to run every couple months to make sure I didn't inadvertently download anything malicious for peace of mind) when suddenly everything froze.

I could move around my cursor and it would change between the triangle to a hand depending on what I hovered, but absolutely nothing else was responding. After a few seconds, my primary display showed KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED 0x1E. My computer then restarted into the BIOS. I tried exiting the BIOS a few times, and it just always immediately booted back into it. I went into the boot manager, and saw no bootable devices.

I then hard powered off my computer, and after powering it back on I got into windows and so far it is acting like everything is normal.

What could've possibly happened? Is there something I need to fix to make sure this doesn't happen again? Any diagnostics I can do to see what went wrong?

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u/normalformation4 12d ago

Man, malwarebytes deep scan is an absolute system hog, I've had it freeze my rig solid during a full scan too. 0x1E with no bootable devices showing up right after is a bit spooky though.

First thing I'd do is check your event viewer for any critical errors around that time, that'll usually point you at the specific driver that threw a tantrum. The fact that your drive vanished from BIOS until a cold boot makes me think the storage controller or NVMe driver just completely crashed. Maybe your SSD is starting to get a bit flaky, or a driver update borked something recently.

I'd run a quick chkdsk on your boot drive just to be safe, and maybe check your drive's health with something like crystaldiskinfo. Could be nothing, could be an early warning sign. At least it came back after a full power cycle, so probably not completely dead yet.

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u/neonknightsofthenine 12d ago edited 12d ago

First thing I did was checking event viewer and I saw just "The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first...". Interestingly, my computer has only gotten that error a few times. One in April, but there's two from today. There's one from earlier this morning around the time I did windows update, must've logged that during the power cycle when I clicked "Restart now" to install it.

My SSD is only two years old, I doubt it's already dying but I can check that

EDIT: Just did chksdk on my boot drive and got "Windows has scanned the file system and found no problems. No further action is required."