Solution to WHEA-Logger Event ID: 17 and Blue Screens

[vgiz]

In February, my trusty HP Spectre x360 13t-4200 (with the gorgeous OLED screen option) starting blue screening a lot.  As in 3 times a day.  The laptop is used for treatment plans and insurance documentation, so the interruptions and occasional document corruption was a huge problem.  I wanted to document what I tried and what proved to be the actual solution in case other folks are running into it.

Ironically, the blue screens started after I had completed a big maintenance update of Windows 10 and HP bios & drivers.   To this day, I can't tell you what individual update caused the problem.   At first, because the blue screens happened when using office, I thought it was a MS word problem.   Let me save a lot of words by taking you down the list of what I tried:

• Reinstalled office.  Didn't help
• Examined Windows logs - on a daily basis there were a *lot* of the following errors:

  • Event ID: 17
    Source: WHEA-Logger
    A corrected hardware error has occurred.
    Component: PCI Express Root Port

• Used Intel Drive Update utility to grab latest.  Didn't help
• Tried to return to previous Bios image - never could get that to work. 
• Tried to reimage laptop, but HP restore utility would fail at very end of windows 10 process
• Wiped all partitions, installed pristine Windows 10.  Kept HP software off.
  • Notebook for first day blue screened only once, but interestingly - it felt faster than before.
• Ran memory diagnostics.  A lot.  All passed.  Full system diagnostics ran fine too.

Ok, now to the solution. 

• On HP website, found & applied latest system firmware update that the HP update utility never raised on its own.
• WHEA errors continued.  But....
• Found a forum that said the WHEA-Logger error was caused by running WIFI on maximum power saving mode.  BINGO.  Edit the energy profile to set the WIFI Power Saving Mode to moderate or max performance and the WHEA errors completely dissappeared.
  
  
  
  
• Laptop has not blue screened in 3 days.  I have been stress testing system using benchmarking software and opening up a lot of Word documents.  Very stable.  

I hope that helps someone.  First thing I'd try is setting wifi radios to full power.  I know it sounds stupid, but the Windows System log will tell you quickly if that is the solution.  

[vgiz · Accepted solution]

Update:  laptop is on a business trip, stable, and feels more responsive.  It's true that many errors is Syslog are ignorable.  The PCI Express error is not.   Very simple to  address - do not operate wifi in maximum batter savings mode.