STUMPED - Any more suggestions?

Onlyusemeisaac · Jun 23, 2013

Hey all, I've been having troubles for over a week now with BSODs and crashes. I'll list the information I have, and hopefully someone out there will be able to point out a new line of investigation.

First of all, my system:
Mobo: Asus M4A79XTD EVO
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE @ Stock
Gfx: AMD 7950, with a cooler, @ Stock
Storage: 128GB M4 SSD for Win 7
2 x 300GB HDDs in RAID 0 for files
1 x 1TB HDD for files

Once I managed to catch the BSOD error it was "0x00000f4".

I have 2 minidump files, I opened them with BSOD viewer, but I couldn't discern any specific information (probably because I'm inexperienced). I have uploaded them to SkyDrive here

I ran an 8 hour memtest, no errors found.

I've ran CHKDSK on all drives, no errors.

I ran a SFC scan, no errors.

I checked temperatures, all below 50C at the time of crash. (Mobo, CPU and GFX)

If anyone could provide me with some assistance that would AMAZING. I've been struggling so much with this.

Many thanks,
Isaac.

abekl · Jun 23, 2013

Have you updated any drivers recently, or installed any new software? I'd eliminate those first.

Onlyusemeisaac · Jun 23, 2013

abekl :

Oh, thats something I forgot to mention! I completely reinstalled Win 7 a couple days ago. As I thought it may have been a driver issue. The crashes persisted after the reinstall.

abekl · Jun 23, 2013

If you haven't yet installed the AMD chipset driver from http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/M4A79XTD_EVO/#support_Download_30 yet, I would do that first, as it tends to straighten out any hardware shenanigans.

Second thing I would check in Control Panel is in the section where the windows updates are listed. If any hotfixes are listed (they will say hotfix), I owuld right click and uninstall those, as hotfixes are usually not tested on many systems. I recently had to uninstall a USB related hotfix on my system - instead of fixing any problems, it create a blue screen problem for me.

Try these two suggestions first and report back.

swifty_morgan · Jun 23, 2013

what happens if you only boot with the SSD?

what raid drivers are you using?

13thmonkey · Jun 23, 2013

Hi Isaac, how big an OC did you used to run and at what voltage? could you bump the cpu voltage up little? what PSU do you have?

I've two theories, either your PSU is weak, or a previous OC has damaged the CPU and now it needs more voltage that it should do at stock and hence default settings do not work.

Onlyusemeisaac · Jun 23, 2013

abekl :

There weren't any hotfixes listed, I had also already installed the chipset driver. Good suggestions though. I'll keep that hotfix one in mind for the future!

Onlyusemeisaac · Jun 23, 2013

13thmonkey :

Haha, surprised to see your name pop up, Monkey! Good to see you again.

I used to run around 3.8GHz @ 1.45V. Using PC Probe (ASUS software), when on default settings the CPU is pulling 1.45V now. Even with it set at 3.4GHz. 1.40 is the default voltage for this CPU. So that's a bit of an anomaly. In BIOS I had the setting at [AUTO], I would have thought it would pull enough voltage to stabilize itself? I tried setting it as 1.40V in BIOS, but it still goes ahead and takes 1.45V.

Onlyusemeisaac · Jun 23, 2013

swifty_morgan :

I did the RAID through Win 7 software. I just chose default settings and let it go. I've had this RAID setup for over 2 years now. Never had issues with it before. Every time I've reinstalled windows it automatically detects what used to be a RAID setup, and reconnects them.

13thmonkey · Jun 23, 2013

Onlyusemeisaac :

It'll pull the voltage that the cpu coding tells it to pull so if the CPU believes that 1.45 is enough then it will ask for 1.45, if you had overvolted to increase the OC then this may no longer be true.

What PSU?

Onlyusemeisaac · Jun 23, 2013

13thmonkey :

Onlyusemeisaac :

It'll pull the voltage that the cpu coding tells it to pull so if the CPU believes that 1.45 is enough then it will ask for 1.45, if you had overvolted to increase the OC then this may no longer be true.

What PSU?

It's an Arctic 700, so 700W. It's a bit of a banger though, been in several different PCs.

Onlyusemeisaac · Jun 23, 2013

13thmonkey :

Onlyusemeisaac :

It'll pull the voltage that the cpu coding tells it to pull so if the CPU believes that 1.45 is enough then it will ask for 1.45, if you had overvolted to increase the OC then this may no longer be true.

What PSU?

I don't know if you saw, but 1.40V is the default for the CPU.

cliffro · Jun 23, 2013

From Overclock.net regarding your f4 error

F4 bugcheck, culprit is a core MS file so it's likely a 3rd party driver that needs assistance in being caught, or hardware. I notice you have an SSD and there have been a few F4 BSODs related to SSDs specifically and especially Crucial drives (even though you don't have one), so I would recommend updating your SSD firmware to the latest version.

The OP in the thread I quote went and edited ALL of his posts to show nothing, so I don't know if this solved his issue or not.

But I've been reading the Crucial forums just now, and there is a pretty big thread on "0x00000f4 error on M4 64GB" there are reports of all sizes doing it.
There are 21 pages of posts......
http://forum.crucial.com/t5/Solid-State-Drives-SSD/0x00000f4-error-on-M4-64GB/td-p/76392

The problem could very well be your SSD.

swifty_morgan · Jun 23, 2013

I asked above to only boot with SSD hooked up but got no reply to that...............?????????

Onlyusemeisaac · Jun 23, 2013

swifty_morgan :

Hey sorry about that. I unplugged the other three drives. It ran for an unusually long time, about 40 mins. Then crashed. So it doesn't seem to solve the problem :/

Onlyusemeisaac · Jun 23, 2013

cliffro :

This sounds like it may exactly be the same issue! A guy there mentions that he has to power cycle for it to boot. Exact same for me. Did you manage to spot a solution in there at all? I'll sift through it all, but you may be able to point me in the right direction..

EDIT: Wow, looks like I'm pretty far back on firmware. Sounds like thats the best place to start. I'm running 0009 atm, there's like 5 versions after that.

Onlyusemeisaac · Jun 23, 2013

Okay, so firmware is updated to latest version. We'll see how this goes.

Onlyusemeisaac · Jun 23, 2013

Just crashed in a game. Could be a different issue though, the displays just blanked out. Monitors stopped receiving a signal.

cliffro · Jun 23, 2013

The only common solution I saw was to RMA the drive, the new ones weren't crashing, not to say they are "fixed" but for the time being they stopped getting the BSOD.

Personally, I don't trust many SSD makers out there, the only ones I do slightly trust are Samsung, and maybe Plextor. I might even use an Intel SSD(330/520 series) but I'd keep back ups.

swifty_morgan · Jun 24, 2013

after the firmware upgrade, did you leave the platter drives disconnected?

did you bother to scan your HD's for errors?

I had a few "odd sized" HD's over the span of 6-12 month's go bad on me a while back. They were all WD's. Doesn't mean they couldn't happen to other drive makers. Then we had that "great flood" and HD's were hard to get and sky rocketed in price because parts were scarce............. then things dried out and you can bet those salt water and chemical soaked parts were cleaned off and reused. ????

Onlyusemeisaac · Jun 26, 2013

cancioc :

I actually already had the latest BIOS

Onlyusemeisaac · Jun 26, 2013

Okay, so I think I figured out the crashes. I'll post here the solution and credit Cliffro as he had the most helpful solution, but thanks to every one else.

Original BSODs were from Crucial M4 128GB SSD firmware being outdated, updating to the latest version solved this. No more BSODs for me.

Then came the crashing during games, I theorise this was due to overheating in the graphics card, as turning all fans to 100% stopped it.

So there you go. Thanks Cliffro!

cliffro · Jun 26, 2013

you welcome.

STUMPED - Any more suggestions?

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