Hourly Crash after upgrading Avast

Ozbaldbiscuits · 24 Feb 2017 at 10:36

Hi there. I made the mistake of upgrading to Avast Pro and now have an hourly crash. I uninstalled Avast and went back to the free version, but the crash still happened. Got the cleanup tools for Avast and run them in safe mode, but still no good. Have run the repair from the startup disk and have reinstalled the OS, but still getting the crash. Gone back and formatted all drives and then installed again, but its still there. Thinking now that this may be BIOS related, I've flashed this to the latest version, but it still does it. The PC will just hang for about 2-3 minutes and then blue screen.

Have checked the errors in the event log and the two that keep coming up are WMI and Kernel-EventTracing, although these are not timed with the crash. Usually for the cold reset I have to do afterwards. Although I'm now working round the issue by hard booting before the hour and these errors are still coming up, so they may not be related. Have to shutdown and power up each time to work round this, a restart doesn't work.

OS Win 7 Ultimate 64-bit
MB Asus P8Z68-VLX
8 GB RAM
AMD Radeon 6900

I'm feeling this is more BIOS related as it crashed with a fresh copy of windows with no other software installed. Does anyone have a list of settings that I can check against in the BIOS to see if something has been changed that may be causing the crash?

Many thanks, Oz

jpaul · 24 Feb 2017 at 12:14

have you enabled/obtained a mini-dump from the blue-screen death, and then reviewed it (with something like nirsoft'sblue screen view)

KIA · 24 Feb 2017 at 15:30

Ditch Avast and use Defender/Security Essentials.

Orcvader · 24 Feb 2017 at 17:12

So you did a fresh install and it's still crashing even if nothing else installed, including Avast? Just basic Windows?

Ozbaldbiscuits · 25 Feb 2017 at 19:44

Yeah, just basic windows, nothing else on.

And I have gone back to security essentials.

I downloaded Nirsoft and have enabled the OS (in System) to save a minidump file and let it crash. Got the BSOD and it said it was creating a minidump file. However when I rebooted and then run Nirsoft it says there's no crash or minidump file. Have searched the C drive and there's nothing there???

Have let it crash 3 times now and no dump files each time.

Is there something else I need to set in Nirsoft, or the OS here?

smogsy · 25 Feb 2017 at 20:30

check c:\windows\minidump

jpaul · 25 Feb 2017 at 20:33

afaik this info listing these locations is correct

Complete/kernel dumps are written to C:\Windows\Memory.dmp by default, overwriting the previous file (if any). Small dumps are stored in the C:\Windows\Minidump folder, and since each dump is given a different name, previous ones are preserved.

It could take a few say 8GB of space .. do not remember my last one

Orcvader · 25 Feb 2017 at 22:04

Any overclocks? You didn't state your CPU

. Move everything back to stock and see if it stops crashing. Maybe do a mem test as well if possible.

Ozbaldbiscuits · 26 Feb 2017 at 22:06

i7-2600K CPU @ 3.40Ghz - Did request a mid overclock from ocuk when I bought it, but I have gone through the BIOS and loaded the defaults and saved it, but it still stops on the hour every hour :mad:

. Have run a memory test and all came back ok. Have crashed it a number of times now and no minidump data is stored after each one. I'll try the kernel dump next.