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windows 8.1 random crash and reboot to windows, no error codes or reasons given.

Tags:
  • Asus
  • Directx
  • Windows 8
  • Operating Systems
  • Software
Last response: in Windows 8
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September 18, 2014 12:17:46 PM

Hi guys/gals!

Thanks in advance for any possible help. I'm pulling my hair out over here. :) 

I have a new windows 8.1 build that crashes and reboots to windows randomly. sometimes while browsing the web (IE 11), sometimes when playing games. It never gives me an error code or reason why it's doing this.
Doesn't crash if it just sits in windows on the desktop, basically doing nothing. and has never crashed playing BF4 (Battlefield 4). for some reason BF4 (my most system demanding game) runs fine for hours. fyi, I run BF4 with the Mantle API if that would make a difference, all other games are either direct x 9, or 11. Sometimes games crash when I pause the game, or walk away from the pc. Quite interesting. Games almost never crash while I'm actively playing them, except for one, an older game called Titan Quest Gold.
A quite curious situation.

The system:
Motherboard: Asus M5A78L-M/USB3 1801 bios (newest bios was factory installed) no new versions were available the last time I checked)
CPU: AMD FX-8350 (stock clock)
COOLER: ACETEK Closed loop liquid cooler with 92mm radiator and two 92mm fans in push/pull (fyi, runs quite cool)
RAM: 16gb g.skill TridentX @ 1867mhz in bios (937.5 MHz in cpu-z obviously X 2) (two 8gb modules) both in the blue memory ports per the motherboard's instruction manual recommendations
ram timings 8,9,9,24, bank cycle 33, command rate 2T, Voltage 1.6v everything else set to auto
GPU: ASUS Radeon R9 290x latest 14.7 beta drivers
PSU: EVGA SUPERNOVA 850 G2 (850 watts)
CASE: INWIN Dragon slayer

SOME SOFTWARE INFO:
I have a black widow keyboard and a death adder mouse, so I have Razor Synapse 2.0 running in the background, as well as the windows cloud, and AMD CCC ( catalyst control center).
...if that helps...

Troubleshooting so far:
Did a circuit test on the power outlet, passed.
Did a voltage test on the power outlet, passed stable 120 volts
Disabled ASUS anti-surge, still crashes, so enabled again, knowing it wasn't the issue.
Disabled unused audio drivers. (hdmi audio drivers were being used, but I bought a 5.1 speaker system, so I now just run audio out via "speakers") disabling unused audio drivers seemingly worked better at first, but still experienced a crash/reboot to windows.
It just seemed that the system "hung in there" longer... made me feel that I might have been on the right track.
sometimes after it crashes and reboots, if I shut down the pc, flip the power switch on the psu off and then on, and then turn the pc back on it seems to be much more stable. It still sometimes crashes, but I have gone a whole day without a crash using this method..

I feel it's an audio driver issue, although I'm not an omnipotent god. :) 
I might try getting a sound card, thinking that might alleviate the problem
Any thoughts? I've only experienced one crash where no audio was being played and I was just scrolling reading a web page. This one crash makes me think it might not be an audio driver issue...
99.9% of all the crashes have resulted in a reboot to windows, with no error codes or warnings.

Thanks again!

other thoughts:
I have a green led light strip in the case on molex
I also have 2 140mm fans one sucking in the front of the case, one blowing out the top.
I have 4 120mm Scythe slip-stream fans on the side of the case. 3 blowing in, one blowing out. two on the gpu, one blowing on the ram.
the scythe fans were picked because there quite skinny and the added clearance let me put all four on the case door
If you think I have too many fans on the Molex cable, let me know. I don't think I do though. this issue was happening before I installed the extra fans and light strip..

More about : windows random crash reboot windows error codes reasons

September 18, 2014 12:19:54 PM

I'm not entirely sure but I dont know if audio can cause OS crashing or not. Did you try checking your RAM sticks? Making sure they were all fine and dandy?
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September 18, 2014 12:29:08 PM

I haven't ran memtest86 or what have you, but I did run the built in ram test in windows, and it passed.
The sticks look fine to the naked eye.
I also want to add that Titanfall, BF3 and BF4 have all run for hours with no crashes. All newer games...
So weird...
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Related resources
September 18, 2014 12:29:40 PM

Thanks for the quick reply btw..
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September 18, 2014 12:37:58 PM

Windows memory program isnt as good as memtest. Memtest does a more thorough job

If you can find the dmp files zip them and upload them somewhere. Post the link here
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September 18, 2014 12:42:51 PM

I'm not an expert but are the dmp files like a crash report? Maybe a text file that I can read? I've heard about dmp files before. never thought of checking them.
I'll try memtest, but can you tell me where I can find these dmp files?
Thanks for your help Paul.
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September 18, 2014 12:44:01 PM

I'm running a search for *.dmp to try and find them.
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September 18, 2014 12:51:10 PM

Look in C:\windows\minidump folder.

You cant read them in a program like notepad, theyre not txt files. You could use something like bluescreenview if you can get to the site. Just tried its dead
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September 18, 2014 1:02:40 PM

Paul NZ said:
Look in C:\windows\minidump folder.

You cant read them in a program like notepad, theyre not txt files. You could use something like bluescreenview if you can get to the site. Just tried its dead


Thanks Paul,
when I searched for *.dmp files I only found three.

WudfHost_ext__3036.dmp
assert_ut3.exe_20140912163415_1.dmp
and SupremeCommanderCVEP2UG0.dmp
two of those are in game files, one for unreal tournament 3, and one for supreme commander.

the first one was in windows\system32\logfiles\wudf
again not sure what that is. I couldn't find any other .dmp files on my hard drive.

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September 18, 2014 1:03:53 PM

oh wow, had to click admin.. Yeah there is a ton of .dmp files. Where should I zip and upload them to?
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September 18, 2014 1:08:46 PM

Got a Skydrive / hotmail addy?? Upload them there post the link https://onedrive.live.com/about/en-us/

I havent used it myself, but I think theres some kind of permission option you have to tick / select so others can get the files

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September 18, 2014 1:23:46 PM

OK. Got them. it's a 0x124 stop error which is CPU related. Umm this can be caused by

1. Overheating / The CPU is overheating . If this is a desktop open the case, if it's full of dust etc give it a clean. Whats the temp of the CPU?? Look in the BIOS

2. Overclocking. If you're overclocking, change it back to stock speed

3. This 0x124 stop error can also happen on CPU's that are faulty. In some cases, it can happen if the CPU has faulty cache

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September 18, 2014 1:31:35 PM

Paul NZ said:
OK. Got them. it's a 0x124 stop error which is CPU related. Umm this can be caused by

1. Overheating / The CPU is overheating . If this is a desktop open the case, if it's full of dust etc give it a clean. Whats the temp of the CPU?? Look in the BIOS

2. Overclocking. If you're overclocking, change it back to stock speed

3. This 0x124 stop error can also happen on CPU's that are faulty. In some cases, it can happen if the CPU has faulty cache



Thanks,
The CPU is quite cool. The highest temps I've found in cupid hwmonitor were 60c under prime95 load. The system is clean, and has a liquid cooler like I mentioned before. BF4 gets the cpu to 50-52c, unless it's a hot day, then 55c... in bios it's 32c-35c idle right now looking at HWMonitor it's 34 centigrade (chip) 30c motherboard
my gpu is 39c fyi
The cpu is at the stock clock, but I have Turbo Core in bios set as auto, so I've noticed it run at more than 4.0ghz in cpu-z sometimes it's at 4117mhz, sometimes @ 4.2ghz and some change.. when I ran prime95 it never got higher than 4117.
Should I disable turbo core?
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September 18, 2014 1:39:20 PM

You could disable turbo core, see if it helps.

I saw from the dmp files (using bluescreenview there's not a lot of programs on the hdd at the mo). But, I'll ask this anyway. Aicharger isnt on this is it?? Because this MAY cause this stop error, or AMD overdrive?

Did you install any utils off the ASUS cd, or site for this mobo?


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September 18, 2014 1:48:47 PM

Paul NZ said:
You could disable turbo core, see if it helps.

I saw from the dmp files (using bluescreenview there's not a lot of programs on the hdd at the mo). But, I'll ask this anyway. Aicharger isnt on this is it?? Because this MAY cause this stop error, or AMD overdrive?

Did you install any utils off the ASUS cd, or site for this mobo?




Great question. I didn't install aicharger but I'll check for it anyways. No AMD overdrive
Isn't installed, however catalyst control center has an AMD overdrive section and cpu overdrive is gray and disabled.
Graphics overdrive is enabled in ccc. The GPU was factory overclocked. I will see what happens with turbo core. But these chips can be overclocked to 5ghz or more and run stable. I just have a hard time with thinking turbo core which should go no higher than 4.2 would cause this.. Could be it though.
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September 18, 2014 1:55:16 PM

Yup disable turbo core for now and see how it goes. If it still crashes let us know
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September 18, 2014 1:58:53 PM

Update

I want to share some bios settings incase they're set incorrectly.

Cpu over clocking: auto
Cpu ratio: auto
AMD turbo core technology: auto
Cpu over voltage: auto
Vddnb over voltage: auto
Loadline calibration: auto
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September 18, 2014 2:02:45 PM

I'm not that familiar with AMD systems. I've never had one, only Intel. What options are there for the 1st one?

Maybe it OC's when it feels like it lol
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September 18, 2014 2:10:17 PM

Paul NZ said:
I'm not that familiar with AMD systems. I've never had one, only Intel. What options are there for the 1st one?

Maybe it OC's when it feels like it lol


Lol.. my thoughts exactly. Options are auto, manual. .

You've been awesome but I hope some AMD people jump on and help. Lol.. I didn't even know about the dump files. . Turbo core is just what it sounds like. I'd the system finds the need, it bumps to 4.2ghz.. However under moderate load it jumps to 4117mhz which I think is a result of auto overclock. Sometimes 4212 or something like that. It should run at 4.0ghz moderate load and 4.2ghz high load.
Not sure where this 4117 or 4212 is coming from.

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Best solution

September 18, 2014 2:23:56 PM

I would just disable Turbo core for now, but I'm pretty sure the stop errors have something to do with the settings for the CPU.

From most of the searches I've done on this stop error, it seems to affect AMD systems more than Intel systems.

Unless someone is overclocking on an Intel system, which is easier to fix. (ie: Dont overclock it lol)

But programs like AMD overdrive, AIcharger. Gigabyte easytune, programs that make USB 3 ports charge devices faster (like Ipods), can also cause this stop error.

They're mucking around with USB port voltages. And probably trying to do something the USB ports weren't made to do. It'd be like a power surge

And programs you install / use to change the voltage etc of the CPU from within windows can also cause this stop error. I dont know why people like ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte make these programs

They should know by now that these programs can crash systems
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September 18, 2014 6:02:23 PM

Paul you've been great. I've been doing some more research on my own and I found the 0x124 stop error just means it's likely hardware. Doesn't have to be cpu. Could be my GPU or Ram.
I am running prime95 torture test and maxed out at 54c with no errors. Tests are still underway... A lot of other 124 stop threads I read sound awful. Some guys can't even get into windows with out safe mode etc. Mine is working. Just crashes in IE11 and some games, only when I pause them. It could be a lot worse but it is so frustrating when it works 50 percent of the time, why not all the time..
Thanks again for your help. Where are the AMD gurus?? Lol
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September 25, 2014 9:57:39 PM

Issue Solved...

It was turbo core. I turned it off, and no problems. runs great. hasn't crashed since. Turbo core just over clocks all 8 cores to 4.1ghz and then just 4 cores to 4.2ghz if needed. Steady 4.0ghz is just fine. if I want I can overclock with my water cooler. I could just set the cpu to 4.2, 4.4 .4.5 if I ever find the need. I just ordered some heatsinks for my budget board. As to why it was crashing with turbo core I don't know. When turbo core kicked in to 4.2ghz vcore would jump to 1.45v or higher (stock is 1.344v I think). I think the vcore jumping around caused the instability. Thanks PaulNZ
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September 25, 2014 10:09:17 PM

Excellent !
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