Solved Blue Screen Crash on 5 Ghz Wi-Fi

Had an issue where a laptop was randomly getting blue screen crash (BSOD) that was displaying the following information. It started when the laptop was put onto a 5 Ghz Wi-Fi network, but it took me quite some time to notice.

Symptoms

  • An Asus Q504UAK laptop running Windows 10 on 5 Ghz Wi-Fi randomly blue screens every 10 minutes to 1 hour.
  • “Your PC ran into a problem and needs to restart”
  • “Stop code: PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA”
  • “What failed: Netwtw06.sys”

Workaround

  1. Connect to a 2.4 Ghz wireless network instead of 5 Ghz. Issue only occurs when connected to a 5 Ghz Wi-Fi network.

Yes this actually worked. I suspect updating the wireless drivers could resolve the issue completely, but I haven’t had the opportunity to test it yet. Updating the drivers labeled “Wireless” did not work. And the BIOS is already up to date. So far the only solution I’ve found is to avoid 5g networks. Please note that reinstalling Windows 10 Pro, keeping neither programs nor files, did not resolve this issue.

Update 2020-03-31: Asus support declined to look into the issue. I offered to give their engineers remote access to the laptop to gather any logged information on why their driver may be causing blue screen crashes, to hopefully help other Asus customers. It is my personal opinion that they could investigate the crash dumps and produce a driver update to prevent the laptop from crashing, but they didn’t seem that interested. They instead focused on sending me through standard repair channels and advised I send the laptop in to repair and pay for it myself. Since I have a workaround I’m not going to be paying out of pocket to address this issue. I did my part to try to help and I consider the matter closed.

My laptop was struck by lightning! LOL

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