Memory possibly faulty

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
S

saka-rauka1

Distinguished
Dec 29, 2009
86
0
18,630
Hi guys, just today I had a BSOD occur on my main PC. I can't remember this ever happening before and I've had this system for about a year now. The screen didn't last very long so I couldn't take down any info but I did see the word memory stand out amongst the rest of it. For a while there before the blue screen Firefox crashed multiple times as did Mumble.

I wanted to rule out malware so I ran a malwarebytes anti malware quick scan and it found 5 items listed as PUP. I removed them all and followed the prompt to restart.

A little while later the same thing happened again as I was running a full scan. This time I wanted to rule out memory so I found an old USB stick with memtest x86+ on it. The problem was that I couldn't enter UEFI upon restarting my PC. Every time the screen would just go black and no keys I pressed would change that.

I then tried to enter safe mode and run a full malware scan but that led to the same issue as above: a black screen.

My specs are the following: http://www.overclock.net/t/1306921/i5-3570k-build

So I'm not sure what the problem is as I've had bad RAM in the past but never been unable to enter BIOS or safe mode


Thanks for your help.
 
Sort by date Sort by votes
gigoe

gigoe

Honorable
Jun 2, 2013
254
0
10,790


dude try this
Remove your RAM and rub the lower part of the RAM with eraser so that some dust will be removed and reinstall
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
ingtar33

ingtar33

Glorious
Dec 17, 2012
9,024
213
46,040
your symptoms could be bad ram... but i don't think so. those symptoms are almost identical to what happens when overclocking and you undervolt a cpu. Since you only had the system for a short time i doubt its from a cpu that's dying, however, a dying psu can cause this as well. and junky psus die all the time.

what's your psu, do you have an overclock on the system, how dusty is the inside of the case (do you clean it often?) what case do you have? how is the airflow. If it's not a bad psu, it could be temps, power shorts caused by dust or debris, a dying video card or a virus. Lets take this apart one at a time. I'm not saying don't run memtest86... just because i don't think it sounds like bad ram doesn't mean i'm right. I'm just saying it's behaving like a power issue not a faulty ram issue.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
S

saka-rauka1

Distinguished
Dec 29, 2009
86
0
18,630


PSU is a Seasonic X660W
No overclock on my system
Very dusty, only cleaned it today.
Case is a HAF X
Airflow is pretty bad I'm guessing since my GPU temps are way too high I reckon.

I used an air compressor to clean out the inside of dust today. I haven't plugged it back in to test if it works yet, since I noticed some white residue inside the PSU. I've never noticed that before and am not sure if it is supposed to be there. It almost looks like something has melted in there.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
ingtar33

ingtar33

Glorious
Dec 17, 2012
9,024
213
46,040
might have... what i suggest you do is get a Dr.Power II, they cost $20, it's best to safeguard your computer from a possibly dying psu, use it to test the power on your psu... make sure it's giving good and solid power. after that, make sure the inside of your system is sparkling clean and new, if anything still looks dusty (heatsinks/fans/boards) clean them with rubbing alcohol (90%) and qtips... wait 40 minutes to make sure it's dry, plug everything in and start it up.

see if you can replicate the problem. only do that if it passes the dr.power test. if it fails that test, try another psu.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
S

saka-rauka1

Distinguished
Dec 29, 2009
86
0
18,630
I came across a picture of the internals of the seasonic 660. It's not the greatest picture but I can see the residue from my PSU in that picture also which is leading me to believe that this isn't anything out of the ordinary.

This is the picture: http://www.epartsandmore.com/seasonic-x-660-atx12v-eps12v-17704-prd1.htm

As you can see, there is something connecting the copper looking thing with some blue coloured part right next to the power switch. That is what I'm seeing on my PSU albeit the power switch and Seasonic badge are on the left rather than the right of mine. I'm just wondering what you opinion on this might be.

One thing I forgot to mention earlier was that before I cleaned my PC I tried to boot it up again, and this time it wouldn't even show me the motherboard splash screen; it would just produce a black screen immediately and I couldn't turn the thing off using the power switch at the front, having instead to use the PSU's power switch.

Do you still recommend checking the power first? I'm tempted to just plug the thing in and see if it works.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
ingtar33

ingtar33

Glorious
Dec 17, 2012
9,024
213
46,040
sounds like the motherboard itself is burning out. take the whole motherboard out of the case, disconnect everything, take everything out, and clean it thoroughly front and back with rubbing alcohol and qtips. reassemble, and try again, only this time with just 1 stick of ram, no hard drives or disk drives plugged in, no pci cards (use the onboard graphics) see if your system will POST. if it doesn't then your motherboard has burnt itself out. if it does, then by blowing dust around you created a bigger short, and ground the board out (it happens sometimes)
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
S

saka-rauka1

Distinguished
Dec 29, 2009
86
0
18,630
I'm not sure I understand. That last sentence would imply that I plugged it in after cleaning it of dust, which I haven't done yet. The last time I tried turning it on was the day following my initial post. I waited a while then to clean it. I'm just wondering if there is much risk in trying it again now that I've cleared most of the dust. Taking things apart and trying it in stages will take a lot longer, and it could be that I plug it in today and it works...

Possibly, maybe...
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
S

saka-rauka1

Distinguished
Dec 29, 2009
86
0
18,630
I finally ran out of patience and plugged the damned thing in and tried to boot it up. It worked this time, I could see a display on my screen. It stopped at the POST screen and said that my overclocking had failed; which is odd, as I've never even attempted to overclock this system. Maybe it means RAM? I remember setting my RAM to XMP back when I was first building this thing. Anyways it prompted me to enter setup by pressing F1.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
ingtar33

ingtar33

Glorious
Dec 17, 2012
9,024
213
46,040
ok. unplug your psu (just pull the plug from the back of the case), pull the bios battery out of the motherboard, and set the clr_cmos jumper... wait a few minutes, put the battery back in, set the jumper back to its origional position, and plug the psu back into the wall.

turn the pc back on with all the ram and hard drives plugged in. if it was working fine with the gpu leave the gpu in too... if you had it started up without the gpu leave it out for now. if it wants you to go into the bios, do so, and let it set itself up in default settings.

try to load your system and see what happens.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
S

saka-rauka1

Distinguished
Dec 29, 2009
86
0
18,630
The battery is in a weird place on my motherboard requiring me to remove some components to get at it. So I decided to see if I could enter UEFI and restore defaults from there. However this time when I plugged it in I managed to boot up windows no problem. Then I decided to run memtest, to see if my initial suspicions of bad memory were justified or not. However I still couldn't enter UEFI, it just gave me the same black screen. When I restarted I went to my windows desktop again, only for whatever reason it wasn't using aero; the taskbar looked reminiscent of windows 2000.

I've disconnected the PC again, I'm really not sure what's going on at the moment. Should I try and reset the BIOS this time? The message about overclocking settings doesn't show anymore. Oh, and it seems there's a switch near the I/O area of the motherboard that could also server to clear CMOS. Is that a viable alternative to reseating the battery?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
S

saka-rauka1

Distinguished
Dec 29, 2009
86
0
18,630
I'm not sure how to do that. I've done some reading on the topic and it seems in order to do that I would have to use something called Winflash(?). The first google search I did on that sent me to forum with a guy warning people away saying it was unreliable.

Can you guide me through the process?

I've already found my current BIOS info: American Megatrends Inc P01-A2 21|04|2010
And I've got the link to the latest BIOS version for my motherboard: http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P8Z77V_PRO/#support

But the download only gives me a .cap file; whereas the other threads that talk about this topic mention a ROM file that goes along with it. So I'm stuck currently. I'd rather not go through this procedure blind and possibly make a bad situation much worse.

EDIT: You mentioned a possibly bad GPU as the source of these problems, which made me remember a similar incident that occurred when I was putting this PC together over a year ago. It is detailed here: http://www.overclock.net/t/1309448/black-screen-when-using-2-560s

Do you think that it is the same problem I am having now? Regardless, I'm going to try removing/reconfiguring one or both of the gfx cards later today to see if that makes a difference.

EDIT 2: I tried each of the four DVI ports, they all work; but it was removing the SLI bridge that actually produced some results. Now instead of a black screen I can see "BIOS Advanced Utility" and some empty blue and grey space. Pressing any keys or moving the mouse does nothing though, so it's stuck on that screen.

I can still try removing cards as soon as I find the anti-static bags the cards were shipped in, but I don't think this is a solution.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
S

saka-rauka1

Distinguished
Dec 29, 2009
86
0
18,630
I removed one of the gfx cards and the problem has gone, I can now enter UEFI with no problems. I'm going to run both a malware scan and memtest simply because it's been a while since I last performed any of those. I don't expect them to be the cause of the problem though. If there are any BSODs in the next 24 hours I'll post again but for now it looks like the problem has been fixed.

EDIT: That hasn't appeared to have solved the problem. I restarted in safe mode and started a scan. The scan didn't run for more than 3 mins without problems. I received the following message:

"WerFault.exe - Application Error

The instruction at 0x72041cb0 referenced memory at 0x00007ff0. The memory could not be read.

Click on OK to terminate the program"

I then wanted to run memtest, as soon as I plugged in the USB stick, the PC suffered a BSOD, the same "memory management" screen I received last week.

EDIT 2: I formatted the USB key and installed memtest again. I made sure it was the only bootable device in UEFI and I tried again. It wouldn't boot up.

EDIT 3: I disabled automatic reboot on BSOD and booted up again. Everything was running fine as I ran HWmonitor to check temps. The temps were fine and it had been running for about 10 mins with no problem so I restarted in safe mode and ran another scan. The scan ended again at around 3 mins and 40 secs and gave the following blue screen:

PFN_LIST_CORRUPT

STOP: 0x0000004e (0x0000000000000002, 0x00000000000CD1D3, 0x0000000041EFFF, 0x0000000000000001)

EDIT 4: I'm running memtest now off a DVD. It's discovered over 10,000 errors within minutes of starting. I think it's safe to say the memory is at fault. So should I wait for a few more passes or just cancel it and start testing the RAM sticks individually?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom