Windows – Installing Windows 7 on an m.2 NVMe drive

I've solved the problem with the help of some experts in another forum. I wanted to leave this answer here in case it helps any of you with your random crashes.

This litany of crashes was, in fact, caused by incorrect memory timings in the PC's BIOS. The big tip off happened after we scanned memory for the Nth time, it came back with no issues, and then we investigated the Windows Event Logs. We found that even standard system services and user applications were crashing (the SuperFetch service, for instance) at random intervals.

The solution was resetting the BIOS to factory settings (had to adjust a jumper on the motherboard to clear settings). Once the BIOS reset was complete, the system rechecked the memory timings automatically and loaded up the appropriate defaults.

I can only assume the timings were off because the system used to have 2 sticks of RAM from another mfg, and then I adjusted the BIOS to overclock the CPU and memory. I removed the original 2 sticks and installed 4 brand-new ones without checking the memory timings or BIOS settings.

If you're interested in following along with the steps that we took to get to the bottom of this issue, you can read all about it here:

http://www.overclock.net/t/1339557/a-year-of-bsods-mostly-ntoskrnl-exe

Thanks to all for the suggestions!

This is a known issue with Windows Update. Microsoft fixed this issue with the update KB3050265 in June 2015:

Windows Update Client for Windows 7: June 2015
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3050265

Fixes included in this update

This update addresses an issue in which system performance can be decreased during scans. This issue has the greatest effect on computers that have a small amount of physical memory.

Download and install the update Windows6.1-KB3050265-x64.msu.

Windows 8 also suffers this issue, but here the fix is to update to Windows 8.1, where the issue was first fixed before back porting the fix to Windows 7.

Microsoft released a new WindowsUpdate Client Update to fix the slow Update searching/Installation.

Installing and searching for updates is slow and high CPU usage occurs in Windows 7
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3102810

Download:
32Bit: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=fcd6bf5d-f004-4ca3-aa7e-1de462b91dd0

64Bit: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=4fe566bd-31b1-4413-8c4c-412b52533669

Try this new Update and look if it speeds up the installation of Updates.