BSOD's - help please

SylverFyre

SylverFyre

SylverFyre

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Joined
15 Jun 2010
Posts
53
Hi all

I've got a problem that I'm now convinced is hardware related (or maybe BIOS?) but I need some knowledgeable peoples ideas as to where the problem lies please.

PC specs are:
i7 920 (standard clocks and voltages - HT currently enabled but have tried with disabled too)
Gigabyte X58A-UD3R rev1.0 (F6 BIOS)
Patriot Viper 3x2GB 1600Mhz DDR3 RAM (currently running at 1066Mhz)
Sapphire ATi 5850 1GB (standard clocks)
Creative XFi Fatal1ty PCI (currently disabled - running with on-board audio)
WD Caviar Black 1TB
WD Caviar 320GB
Samsung SATA DVD-RW
Corsair TX750w PSU

I'm running Windows 7 Home Premium x64, but also have Ubuntu 11.04 on a USB stick.

Basically what happens is that when the PC is switched on after not having been used for a few hours, Windows will load but will ALWAYS hit a BSOD within the first few minutes of use. Hitting the reset switch (or restarting immediately from within Windows before it BSODs) doesn't seem to help reliability and applications will fail to run properly etc.

After powering down the PC for a few seconds and then powering back on everything is then perfect and the PC will run reliably for hours on end with no issues at all.

I've tried running the Prime95 stress tests overnight and running Memtest86 overnight on several occasions with no signs of problems. Memtest has also been run with individual stick of RAM, again no issues. I've dismantled the whole PC and rebuilt from scratch looking for anything that would be an issue, and done testing with just the most basic set-up - the crashes still happen.

I've enabled driver verifier but no driver is ever identified as causing the problem by WhoCrashed and WinDbg. I've even tried cold booting to Ubuntu on a USB stick - Ubuntu doesn't blackscreen, but applications fail to work and the sytem won't do much until it's switched off and then back on again. Voltages have been tweaked and powersaving options enabled/disabled in the BIOS, without helping. All this leads me to think that I have a hardware problem somewhere.

Has anyone else had a similar problem and managed to track down the cause?

I don't think it's the PSU since it ran my previous build with no problems at all.
Could it be something strange on the motherboard? Is the RAM in some way faulty despite Memtest86 indicating otherwise?

Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks :)
 
Have tried a fresh install of windows or do you still get problem running Ubuntu.

Also tried any software testing the Hard drives like HD TUne or HD TACH which can check for bad sectors.
 
Thanks for replying :)

I did a clean install after I rebuilt the PC back in March. At that time I used Western Digitals drive tools to do a full scan of both hard drives. The 1TB black came back 100% clean, the 320GB has a few bad sectors but otherwise fine - it's only used as a drive to store music and downloads now anyway, the 1TB is the system drive (BSODs still happen, even without the 320GB connected).

Ubuntu suffers the same problems and since it's running from a USB stick it doesn't even need a HDD. This is what leads me to believe that it's hardware and not actually a driver or Windows problem.
 
try running something like bluescreenview, what does the bsod screen actually say? I usually use a mobile to take a picture of the monitor with the error on it if the computer cann't get far enough to run something like bluescreenview.
 
Are you voltages setup right? For instance, are you pumping the correct amount of voltage into your RAM?

My brother couldnt get his machine stable, and it turned out his auto setting on his motherboard was .2 short on his RAM, and that was his problem.
 
You say you don't think it is your PSU as it was ok in you last build but things can go faulty at anytime. It wouldn't hurt to try a different PSU. You seem to have done pretty much everything else as far as testing components.
 
Of the 15 most recent crashes I'm getting the following bugcheck codes:
0x50 - Page fault in non-pages area x 2
0x1A - Memory Management x 6
007E - System Thread Exception not handled x 2
0x3B - System Service Exception x 3
0x24 - NTFS File System x 2

WhoCrashed can't identify a driver and WinDbg doesn't help any more. The fact it's also misbehaving from first cold boot in Ubuntu tends to lead me away from drivers being the reason.

I've cleared the BIOS settings and started from scratch just in case, and tried RAM voltages at stock and at the XMP profile - both with the same results. 1.66v on the RAM, 1.36v on QPI, with standard timings doesn't help either :(

I don't have a PSU spare thats pokey enough to run this rig, is there any way to test this without doing a swap-out (don't fancy spending 70ish notes on something that if it is faulty should be under warranty anyway :S )? If that's the only way I'll have to consider it, but could the motherboard also cause this problem, or an over tight cooler or something?

Thanks for all your replies by the way :) keep the ideas/suggestions coming
 
you could try with 1 stick of ram in a few different slots. Also take out everything not needed to boot, ie sound card and all the hard drives except the boot one.
 
Well, having spent the last 2 weeks ensuring my system software is stable I did what I should have done weeks ago. Ran Memtest again from a cold boot and this time it was flooded with errors.

So I guess for the next week or so I'll be testing ram sticks in different slots to try to isolate the problem :(
 
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