Wierd crashes and boot problems, only "old" component is a SSD

LortFengerN · Mar 18, 2014

Hello, i've been having some wierd problems with my computer, it first started with some bluescreens, and by googling, i noticed that it might be my gpu or psu, so i switched out both, and it became better, until the computer started crashing, without any bluescreens(either franticly flashing screen with small colored squares, screen freezes to a solid color, or the screens loosing signal). When this happens, i can still hear sounds from the computer, but it's crackling alot. In the beggining, it usually happened during loading(f.ex teleporting to new zones on wow, and when alt-tabbing) but lately it happens even when the computer is idle, and ALWAYS occurs when: Alt-tabbing and loading sites, while a game is running in the background, opening my counter-strike: Global offensive inventory / shut down the game after i've played a game, loading in diablo 3, and entering big cities in DayZ. Sometimes the computer refuses to boot, even to BIOS. As mentioned, the entire computer is completely new, except of the SSD and the two hard drives( i've tested a run without the oldest one connected, without success). All drivers and OS is up to date. So i wonder, where does the problem most likely originate from?

Specs:
Asus GTX 770
XFX proseries 650w
Asus ROG maximus VI Hero
Intel i7 4770
Kingstone hyperX 3k 248gb(boot drive)
2 older HDD's
Corsair Vengeance Pro DDR3 1600MHz 8G

the only thing i might be is my inline power in my apartment, it's a quite old house, and i'm going to test it with a voltometer, once i can get a hold of one

jbseven · Mar 19, 2014

blue screens may suggest a problem with ram, and your alt-tab experiences seem to confirm this. try one stick of ram at a time and see if the problem occurs while testing both sticks of ram individually. it would be very unlikely that both sticks are corrupt so ram could be ruled out till a later time.

since you have several hard drives, it would help to rule out software/driver issues with a clean install of windows to a separate hard drive for testing. no format necessary unless you have other os's on each of the drives. install the mb and vga drivers and directx and test.

LortFengerN · Mar 20, 2014

i took out one of the RAM chips, and it became significantly better, and i have not crashed when i switched RAM ports on the mobo, but im not 100% sure it's fixed yet. But i find it weird that it's caused by the RAM alone, because this happened on both my old RAM(the ones im using now is brand new), and a new mobo(couple of days since i put it in).
might it be that my old mobo broke my new RAM chips ?

jbseven · Mar 21, 2014

its unlikely the fault of the motherboard. more likely a defective product (ram or motherboard) was sent to you but that's what warranties are for.

since we can confirm that there seems to be a ram issue, it would be a good idea to estimate the extent of the problem ie which sticks and which ram slots are affected.

take one stick of ram and place it in slot 1.
run a memory tester like memtest or even prime95's memory intensive benchmarks.
do this for all 4 ram slots first. note down the slots in which errors occured and repeat using the 2nd stick of ram.

this will give you a good idea about which ram/ram slot is affected.

LortFengerN · Mar 30, 2014

I've now run memtest on my computer, no fails and i've formatted all hard drives, but the problem is still here. i really don't know what to do now, the only reason i can think of now is either a semi-broken SSD, or i had a faulty motherboard, which i switched out to another faulty motherboard. Anyone that might have any last resort test i can run to figure this out ? im hopelessly confused now, and i have no evidence of error on anything that can relate to this.

jbseven · Mar 31, 2014

Can you confirm whether you are testing on a reinstalled os?

i took out one of the RAM chips, and it became significantly better, and i have not crashed when i switched RAM ports on the mobo, but im not 100% sure it's fixed yet.

can you also confirm whether the improvement is still there when doing this?

something to try would be to go into bios and manually set the timings, frequency and voltage to those specified on the ram itself.

LortFengerN · Apr 27, 2014

Sorry for late answers etc. But i've been on a easter holiday, and frankly, been annoyed to no end by this, but i've been working on fixing this the last days, this is what i've done:
Formatted all my HD's, reinstalled and run windows off of 2 different HDD and reinstalled drivers on both test, still the same, i

Dont know if the ram test improved it, probably not as i look at it in retrospective.

UPDATE: Now everything has gone to s**t. now it crashes whenever i do anything after i reinstalled windows, and when i start my computer, it detects 2 different OS (both windows 8.1) and it refuses to launch an OS directly, so i need to manually select which OS to run every time i start my computer.

i think all this above happened after i crashed, and got a bluescreen with the message looking like this(didn't have time to write it all down): (something with less or equal) ia-storA.exe(or.sys)

jbseven · Apr 27, 2014

Lortfengern,
- you get bluescreens
- computer sometimes does not post
- alt-tabbing almost always results in blue screen

this is indicative of a ram issue imho and we need to comprehensively rule it out as the most likely cause before we move to the other components.

1. take out your ram and read the timings, frequency and voltage on the label- typically something like 8-8-8-24 1600 Mhz at 1.50v. note it down. instal a SINGLE stick of ram.

power on into bios by tapping F2, find and set these options manually. for example, set dram frequency to 1600Mhz, timings to 8-8-8-24-2t, and set the dram voltage to 1.50V. exchange these number for what is actually described on the ram label. don't use xmp profile.

2. we need to fortify our test procedure to be certain that it is not the ram or anything else we test.

go to the asus website and download all of the latest motherboard drivers from there rather than installing from the supplied cd (if that is what you're doing).

download the latest video card drivers from nvidia.com (and not asus.com).

Now do a clean install of windows on the drive of your choice. disconnect all other drives. during setup, make sure to go into drive options, delete partition, create partition and then format. you will lose all data on the drive.

once setup is complete, do not install all of your favourite applications. install the latest downloaded drivers, then install and run a game during which you were getting blue screens before, or a stress test like prime95(30 minutes min) and 3dmark to test that it is stable.

if it is stable, proceed to install applications one at a time and make a note of when and if the blue screen appears.

3. if it is stable until you install a certain driver/application, report which driver/application caused the problem here. if it starts bluescreening almost immediately, exchange with the second stick of ram and try again.

4. if the second stick of ram makes no difference, install it to a different ram slot and test again. so if you have slots a1, a2, b1, b2, and ram was initially installed to a1, you want to install to b1.

5. if a different ram slot makes no difference, install windows to another hard drive- delete/create partition and format, install latest drivers and test.

post your results here. this should help us narrow it down a little bit better.

please be clear about which steps were followed and if there were any steps that you were unable to follow completely. help us help you

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Wierd crashes and boot problems, only "old" component is a SSD

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