Here’s something nobody wants to see on a Windows PC. The lead-in graphic shows a Windows crash screen. Because this one is green, it’s sometimes called a GSOD (“Green Screen of Death”). The error message it carries is one I’ve not seen before — namely: secure_pci_config_space_access_violation. A bit of online research, and some inspection of reliability monitor’s copious error output tells me this new GSOD implicates Intel firmware.

Why Say: New GSOD Implicates Intel Firmware?

It’s not like I didn’t have plenty of potential issues from which to choose. Relimon pointed to Windows stop errors, improper shutdowns, unexepected shutdowns, and hardware errors. Indeed the actual BlueScreen error that provoked the GSOD refers to (and depicts) a CPU-Z .sys file. So again: why point at Intel firmware?

Online research (Reddit, Lenovo forums, and more) all report this very same error code after Intel firmware updates. And indeed WU itself delivered a — you guessed it — Intel Firmware update just before I upgraded to the most recent version of the DevChannel Insider Preview on this test PC.

One More Thing:

After I removed the program that caused the GSOD: Piriform Speccy, the problems have completely ceased and desisted. I imagine this program attempted to check the firmware during its scans, and that’s what threw the error. I’m guessing that a fix will come along in a future update. As long as my system stays stable otherwise, I’ll leave it alone and hope it does the same for me.

Stay tuned: I’ll keep you posted…