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Just in case it's of any help to others in a similar situation.
I have an oldish HP Spectre 13-2000ea which came with Win7 and (importantly) Adobe Premiere Elements and Photoshop Elements pre-loaded.
For many years it was my "main" PC. It successfully switched to Win8, Win 8.1 and eventually Win10 and was stable. All of these installed by upgrade; no fresh installs because I want to keep the Adobe stuff working.
However, that only went as far as v1809. The update to 1903 was never successful and I never bothered to work out why. I left it on 1809. Until 1909 came out and it started nagging me about my out of date OS........
As I have three PCs, to save time I had already downloaded the 1909 ISO and so I tried the ISO install (update) method. Again - not a clean install, because I wanted to keep that bundled software and I can't get a legitimate download any longer to keep separate.
And, long story short - it went unstable. BSODs usually on a restart (not a conventional shutdown and power on, which I know is less complete) but also sometimes during use. Most recently, a Win 10/1909 update sent it in to a BSOD/restart/BSOD loop, and the auto repair (etc) options didn't cure it. Unusable.
So, on another machine I went a-googling. Followed all the stock advice about sfc /scannow and so on. No help. At this point, the machine has no external USB peripherals attached; just what's in the case. Started it in Safe Mode OK, disabled most of the devices; retstarted; no help. BSOD loop again. So it seems that what is described as a driver conflict causing BSODs doesn't relate to any devices actually in use. Is my hardware actually unsuitable for Win10? Well - no; it worked with up to 1809 OK. So I was not yet convinced that hardware was the issue.
Fortunately I had a full system image of the 1809 install so I restored it to that and it was back up and running.
While it was doing all that I carried on googling and eventually found, way down the results, a reference to ArcSoft as a potential conflict. My oldish BD/DVD drive came with Arcsoft Total Media Theatre, which had been installed and later uninstalled. But apparently the uninstaller leaves behind a couple of drivers and three (in my case) registry entries referencing them.
So, under 1809 I removed the three registry entries and in Explorer deleted the two files: Arcsec.sys and ArcCtrl.sys.
Restarted. OK.
So now I took a fresh image and then installed 1909 again from the ISO download. Rebooted OK several times during setup. OK. When complete, I checked for updates. All installed and rebooted. Twice. Still all OK. I have since restarted it three times and each time it has come up perfectly.
So I conclude that the issue here was indeed the residual presence of Arcsec.sys and ArcCtrl.sys, which were the cause of the BSODs on restart.
I have an oldish HP Spectre 13-2000ea which came with Win7 and (importantly) Adobe Premiere Elements and Photoshop Elements pre-loaded.
For many years it was my "main" PC. It successfully switched to Win8, Win 8.1 and eventually Win10 and was stable. All of these installed by upgrade; no fresh installs because I want to keep the Adobe stuff working.
However, that only went as far as v1809. The update to 1903 was never successful and I never bothered to work out why. I left it on 1809. Until 1909 came out and it started nagging me about my out of date OS........
As I have three PCs, to save time I had already downloaded the 1909 ISO and so I tried the ISO install (update) method. Again - not a clean install, because I wanted to keep that bundled software and I can't get a legitimate download any longer to keep separate.
And, long story short - it went unstable. BSODs usually on a restart (not a conventional shutdown and power on, which I know is less complete) but also sometimes during use. Most recently, a Win 10/1909 update sent it in to a BSOD/restart/BSOD loop, and the auto repair (etc) options didn't cure it. Unusable.
So, on another machine I went a-googling. Followed all the stock advice about sfc /scannow and so on. No help. At this point, the machine has no external USB peripherals attached; just what's in the case. Started it in Safe Mode OK, disabled most of the devices; retstarted; no help. BSOD loop again. So it seems that what is described as a driver conflict causing BSODs doesn't relate to any devices actually in use. Is my hardware actually unsuitable for Win10? Well - no; it worked with up to 1809 OK. So I was not yet convinced that hardware was the issue.
Fortunately I had a full system image of the 1809 install so I restored it to that and it was back up and running.
While it was doing all that I carried on googling and eventually found, way down the results, a reference to ArcSoft as a potential conflict. My oldish BD/DVD drive came with Arcsoft Total Media Theatre, which had been installed and later uninstalled. But apparently the uninstaller leaves behind a couple of drivers and three (in my case) registry entries referencing them.
So, under 1809 I removed the three registry entries and in Explorer deleted the two files: Arcsec.sys and ArcCtrl.sys.
Restarted. OK.
So now I took a fresh image and then installed 1909 again from the ISO download. Rebooted OK several times during setup. OK. When complete, I checked for updates. All installed and rebooted. Twice. Still all OK. I have since restarted it three times and each time it has come up perfectly.
So I conclude that the issue here was indeed the residual presence of Arcsec.sys and ArcCtrl.sys, which were the cause of the BSODs on restart.