Computer Crashing After Hardware Change

HappyKnight

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Mar 1, 2017
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Hello everyone.
Just last night I finally got the last piece needed to upgrade my Pc. I changed the motherboard (to an MSI H110M Gaming), CPU (to an Intel i5 6500) and RAM (to 2X4GB DDR4 2133Mhz G-Skills). For Christmas, I got a GeForce GTX 1060 which is what I built these components around. The graphics card worked perfectly fine, so I don't believe it is the problem. But after taking my PC apart, switching the parts, reinstalling the OS, and activating it it began crashing. These were typically blue screens. I attributed it to the drivers not being updated so I quickly did those. Once that was done, it still crashed but it was further in between. After leaving it for the night, I came back and it seemed fine. I also checked and the PC does in fact recognize all the new parts and says they're working fine. But after playing games for about 15 to 20 minutes it again stopped working, but these few times it was either freezing or just rebooting without the blue screen. I then double checked to make sure if I had enough watts in my PSU, and I did (as apparently a 500 watt PSU is alright for what I have). I've made sure windows (10 home edition if that helps) and my drivers were all up to date, and that there were no loose cables, so now I'm dumbfounded. Does anyone know what the issue might be and any potential fixes? Thank you very much.
 
Solution
I had these blue screen of death problems forever when windows 10 first came out, on two identical laptops.

one of the laptops got progressively worse about it and eventually the hard drive was proven to be the problem, as it died.

the other one mysteriously just stopped doing it one day after a clean install of windows, meaning it was either a corrupted install disk(like weber said) or a driver issue that was resolved upon the fresh install.

I say try his advice on a clean download and install of windows installation tool... and if problem persists, try using another hard drive if you have one. good luck

HappyKnight

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Mar 1, 2017
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Yup! I got the MSI ones from a disc that came with the motherboard, and the graphics card one from Nvidia's website. The other drives windows installed after boot.
 


Nope. Never use the disk. Those drivers are completely outdated as they're only as new as the disk. It's not like they make a disk every time a board is ordered, you don't know how long that model sat in storage before you got it.

Always download drivers off of the manufacturer's website. Windows 10 is able to get online without the drivers for most boards so there's really no need to use the disk. The websites offer the most recent drivers, which may contain fixes for some of your issues. Remember that there was an anniversary update to Windows 10 between when your board was made and when you installed the drivers (now). Whether this will affect driver stability, IDK. I do know that it's a good idea to check for updated drivers when there's a major update to Windows like that, just in case the old drivers may have issues with the new version of Windows.
 

HappyKnight

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Mar 1, 2017
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Huh, I never considered that. Thank you, I'll be sure to try that as soon as I get home. Do I need to uninstall the drivers I got from the disc or just go to the MSI website and get them right away?
 


As long as you don't get any weird errors during install, the new drivers will replace the old ones.

Windows will remember the old ones, but will not try to use them.
 

HappyKnight

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Mar 1, 2017
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Alright I did what you suggested and a few drivers did actually need some updating. I installed those updates and also performed a disk check as well as a memory check and found out both my HDD and RAM are fine. But when I went into a game, unfortunately after a short period I got a blue screen again. I'm really hoping not, but could it be a problem with the motherboard itself?
 


1) What was the blue screen error? Here are a few of the common ones: IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL or WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR or CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT
2) Hardware issue? Possible.
 
I'd like to test the temperatures across your system.

Please download AIDA64 Extreme. https://www.aida64.com/downloads/latesta64xe Use the download.aida64.com location for security sake.

1) Open the application
2) Drop down Tools, select System Stability Test.
3) Open Preferences. Make sure the Temperatures tab is selected across the top. Drop down whatever color you wish and select GPU diode. Press OK. This will make your GPU show its temperatures on the graphs within the test window.
4) Select CPU, FPU, Cache, System Memory, and GPU. Basically, select everything except for local disk.
5) Run the test for at least ten minutes. Watch the graphs carefully. CPU and GPU temperatures should not exceed 85 Celsius. CPU Usage (bottom graph) should be at least 99% during the test. CPU throttling (bottom graph) should never go above 0%.
 

HappyKnight

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Mar 1, 2017
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Not sure if this is relevant or not, but upon opening the application I was told it did not recognize my motherboard.
But apart from that, I did what you said and ran the test, getting good results :). The temperatures never went further than about 55, and the CPU usage was always at 99% or more. I screenshotted the results, if that helps: http://oi63.tinypic.com/24bn82h.jpg
I was quite surprised my PC did not shut down though, I would have thought the stress this test put on was if anything worse than that of gaming.
 


That is one smooth graph. Temperatures are not your issue. I doubt your issue is power delivery either, since that would cause the CPU to throttle, which didn't happen.

Here's my next recommended steps:
1) Open Device Manager. (Search "device manager" or launch "devmgmt.msc")
2) Is there an "Other" category?
3) Are there "Unknown Device" listings within the "Other" category?

Sorry for so many edits... I can't grammar today for some reason.
 

HappyKnight

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Mar 1, 2017
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I had to a couple of times when my PC froze in a game. I tried waiting some time, but it never recovered so I had to force it to shut down.
EDIT: Upon looking closer it seems it happened a lot more than I caused. I remember doing it perhaps twice, while there are a good 20 instances logged in here.
 


That's what created that kernel-power log.

Got any application errors? If so, do any of them involve Nvidia or Intel files? (often within C:\Windows\system32\drivers or C:\Program Files (x86)\[program name])
 

HappyKnight

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Mar 1, 2017
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UPDATE: So I decided to reinstall windows again. It seemed to work fine for a couple of hours until, again, I booted a game and played it for a bit. This time there was a blue screen and it came with the error code UNEXPECTED KERNEL MODE TRAP. Looking this up it seems either RAM or driver related. Any ideas where to go from here?
 


What are you using to install Window? Flash drive, disc, network connected device? Although rare, it is possible for install media to become corrupt. I recommend making another copy of your install media.

You'll need an empty flash drive and this link here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10/
 

user11464

Notable
Feb 25, 2017
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1,160
I had these blue screen of death problems forever when windows 10 first came out, on two identical laptops.

one of the laptops got progressively worse about it and eventually the hard drive was proven to be the problem, as it died.

the other one mysteriously just stopped doing it one day after a clean install of windows, meaning it was either a corrupted install disk(like weber said) or a driver issue that was resolved upon the fresh install.

I say try his advice on a clean download and install of windows installation tool... and if problem persists, try using another hard drive if you have one. good luck
 
Solution