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Consistent freezing after installing new components

Tags:
  • GPUs
  • Blue Screen
  • Components
  • Nvidia
Last response: in Components
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August 17, 2014 7:54:43 AM

Last week I upgraded my GPU to a Nvidia GTX 760, and while it ran well for a few days, I encountered a blue screen once that kicked off all of my problems the are persisting now. In both Windows 7 and Linux Mint 17 (both on the same HDD) I began encountering Blue Screens and system freezes, respectively, after a short period of use (ten minutes or so). I updated my drivers and BIOS to no avail and soon found out after going over the new GPU's specs that I was operating at 70 W below the recommended system power of 500 W. I went to the hardware store and got a 1000 W PSU but nothing was fixed; even after putting the old GPU back in, I continued to have freezes and Blue Screens. Suspecting overheating I re-positioned my case fans (5 case fans in addition to the PSU, CPU and 2 GPU fans) and reapplying the thermal compound on my CPU and heat sink. What happened next, I still do not fully understand: I booted into Windows 7 and immediately (within the blink of an eye) got a Blue Screen; I went into denial over it right away and rebooted into Linux acting as if it didn't happen, and was able to login and remain active for an extensive period of time. I assumed I had possibly fixed it and set about making sure everything was sound, but things were very strange for a while. I had no audio and checked my mixer, finding that the only output channel available was 'dummy output' and that I had no input channel despite having my mic plugged in. My display drivers had also been reverted from the proprietary Nvidia drivers but I set them back without thinking much of them. I tried starting Firefox but it kept crashing upon launch. I tried running Steam but it encountered an error while unpacking the runtime, but when I tried running it again to read the error message more closely, it worked without me installing or updating anything. I ran 'sudo apt-get update' and 'upgrade' after that and assumed that during all of the crashing and possible overheating, my HDD might have taken a few hits and I was 'filling in the holes' so to speak, but after a reboot, I froze within 20 minutes again.

It became a bit of a guessing game at this point, for me: I reasoned that while operating below the recommended wattage, my fans went underpowered causing for more rapid overheating which might have damaged something. I was still able to boot up and go past BIOS, and remain idle on a login screen for a while, and even start up and run various types of software without issue until a crash came along, so I have assumed that nothing like the CPU or motherboard itself has sustained critical damage. I put in an old HDD and formatted it to a fresh install of Mint 16 that I had the disk for, and it sat idle for well over an hour without issue. I formatted the allegedly damaged HDD with proper funeral fanfare and updated the fresh Mint 16 install to Mint 17. I had some problems at first as far as displays go: it took some extra work to get it to accept the proprietary Nvidia drivers, and without them, my desktop environment kept crashing because I use Cinnamon which relies on 3D rendering and the default drivers seem to take issue with that sometimes. Not much else went wrong. I installed Steam, and played Civilization V for a few hours to drink away the regrets, as it were, and took comfort believing it was at least finally over, and yet two days later, it was back, freezing again, with no improvement as of this morning.

At this point I am all out of answers: I tried following my intuition all of this and am now just asking anyone for a suggestion of what to try or check. I am moving for university in 6 days and am hoping to settle this while I am still at home and am on holiday, and not when I am busying myself with school again, so any response is greatly welcomed.

More about : consistent freezing installing components

a b Î Nvidia
August 17, 2014 8:38:50 AM

What is your PC specifications? What is your old GPU?
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a b Î Nvidia
August 17, 2014 8:41:44 AM

Have you tried the basic stuff, like unhooking everything and hooking it back up, removing the memory and cleaning it, reinserting, and running memtest?
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August 17, 2014 8:50:04 AM

cin19 said:
What is your PC specifications? What is your old GPU?


Offhand I know the GPU is an Nvidia GTX 760 and the PSU is a Coolmax ZU-1000B, on a Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3 motherboard. I don't know the CPU model off the top of my head and when i booted up hoping to be able to check quickly before a freeze, I found I am not getting hung up on BIOS, unable to choose an operating system. I am going to try a couple of boot options and then put the formatted HDD on instead to see if it will boot from that, will report back soon.

Okay, on the old HDD now: processor is AMD FX(tm)-6100 Six-Core Processor x3 [sic]
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a b Î Nvidia
August 17, 2014 9:08:14 AM

Now you can try to clean the CMOS by removing the CMOS battery, also remove other add on card or device if you had, only one stick RAM, HDD, and GX760, when you boot the PC, then press the F8 key to enter the safe mode. In the safe mode there are some of options in the menu, you can try use the " last known good configuration' to boot the PC.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/advanced-sta...

Also what is the other GPU before you upgrade to gtx760?

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August 17, 2014 9:17:47 AM

cin19 said:
... then press the F8 key to enter the safe mode. In the safe mode there are some of options in the menu, you can try use the " last known good configuration' to boot the PC.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/advanced-sta...

Also what is the other GPU before you upgrade to gtx760?



Sorry for forgetting to mention it: the previous GPU was an Nvidia GeForce 510, significantly smaller than what it's running now.
As for booting into safe mode, I had formatted the disk previously and have only re-installed my Linux distribution on it, I have not re-installed Windows 7, so I don't have the Windows Safe Boot at my disposal.
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August 17, 2014 9:27:18 AM

jitpublisher said:
... removing the memory and cleaning it, reinserting, and running memtest?


Alright, made a boot image of memtest86+ so I will give that a shot now.
I am about 10% through with the pass and it has already returned 37 errors. I have never used this tool before so i am not yet entirely sure how to interpret the results but I'll give it a quick look online.

edit: I did not know entirely how to run the test, so I did not just run it on a single stick (my current arrangement is 2 sticks carrying 4GB each), so I do not know if the problem lies in one, the other or both, but at 30% it has returned 57 errors so there is at least something there.

edit 2: 53% done with my first sweep on one stick and I have got 159 errors already, so ... problem detected there eh.

edit 3: So the first stick had no doubt gone to hell--returning hundreds of errors by the time I questioned why I was even running the test on it still. I have been testing the second stick, and it seems to be fine. The heavily erogenous stick was located right next to my CPU and had a fair bit of dust and such on the outside no doubt blown over from the heat sink. Would that have anything to do with it, in your opinion? That is, if there were cooling problems in the CPU, could that have affected the nearby RAM?
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a b Î Nvidia
August 17, 2014 9:33:23 AM

So I think when you change the GPU from 510 to gtx760 ( in win7), if you don't clean uninstall the GPU driver, sometime it will cause the BSOD, also the PSU is common problem too but the Coolmax ZU-1000B is good enough to power the GTX760, even it is not the good one.

You can try use the " Display Driver Uninstaller Download version 12.9.9.0 " in safe mode to uninstall the driver, then install the GPU driver again first. If you still have problem, then it may be the PSU. http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/display-driver-unin...

Here is PSU tier list, if you can return the Coolmax ZU-1000B then try to get the good one from the list. http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1804779/power-su...
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August 17, 2014 9:42:24 AM

cin19 said:
Here is PSU tier list, if you can return the Coolmax ZU-1000B then try to get the good one from the list. http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1804779/power-su...


Ooft, I had something else in mind when I went to the store, but the Coolmax was on sale and I couldn't help myself and got it on impulse--thanks for reminding me of the list, I will look into replacing it soon, before I move. At any rate, I went for the high wattage because prior to this I was trying to power the GTX 760 with a Corsair CX 430.

As far as the drivers are concerned, I did uninstall the previous version and update them afterwards on both operating systems.

While I had the errors before I ever got the Coolmax PSU, could the underpowering from the CX 430 be related to the multiple errors I am being returned in the memtest?
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August 17, 2014 10:47:52 AM

you can post a current memory .dmp file on a cloud server and we can take a quick look
edit: sorry, no need to post the .dmp file if your memory tests fail.
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August 17, 2014 10:53:59 AM

I am going to order in a replacement for the damaged RAM, and we'll see how that goes eh. c:
I've never had problems with memory before, so I did not know to run a memtest, so it has been a helpful experience at least, and hopefully I'll be able to 'pick as the solution' in a few days, thank you both for the help.
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a b Î Nvidia
August 19, 2014 6:45:18 AM

Being close to your CPU would not make any difference, it shouldn't get hot enough to be a problem for the memory, but if it does, that is a problem in its self that needs attention. Just happens though, occasionally you pick up a bad stick.
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