I give up... Someone please help with my BSODs.

[mars128]

A few years back I built my buddy and his family all mid end gaming rigs. Heres the specs on his rig.

MOBO: ASUS M2N68-AM
CPU: AMD Phenom 9850 BLACK EDITION
Mem: Kingston HyperX 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066
GPU: EVGA 512-P3-N863-TR GeForce 9600 GT 512MB
HDD: Western Digital Caviar Black WD5001AALS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s
SND: Creative Audigy SE
OS: Vista 64-bit

About 6 months after I built the rig he had bluescreens, which I pinned on overheating due to this being built into a cube case and his room being as overly hot. So I moved him into a new case all was fine and dandy til the blue screen came back intermittently, updated his bios, it was good for a year or so...

And then Battlefield 3 happened.

Initially, BF3 bluescreen sporadically. We decided a lot of people were having the same problem and waited for a patch, which resolved the bluescreen. Until the next patch which brought it back. At the time we had moved his computer from his house to mine when the bluescreens started. So I thought perhaps it was the cheap LCD tv he was using as a monitor at my house because the audio on it was shabby. So we moved him to a USB headset and it seemed to resolve his issue for a while. Then another patch came out, blue screens resumed again. So this time I went all out. But his computer through a few different bench marks, ran all the manufacturers diagnostics I could find. Ran burn in tests from in and out side of windows to test the hardware stability. All the hardware passed, no blue screens burning in from windows. Meanwhile he could still play Warcraft, Skyrim, BF2142 and other games just fine. His temps were hot, but nothing critical. I physically cleaned out his computer, put fresh thermal paste on his cpu, chipset, and gpu and added a few fans to bring the temp down. Verified his bios wasn't set to overclock anything. Updated his bios again. Reinstalled Windows Vista 64-bit, installed all the latest drivers, all windows updates. Re-downloaded BF3, played just fine... And then another patch came out. Bsods started again. They occur every 20 minutes or so while playing Battlefield 3, sometimes it would lock up and stay on an infinite loop of sound and nothing would respond. More often it will full on bsod reporting either IRQL errors, system service exceptions, or sometimes no exact messages. It normally references Direct X files. We swapped his video card with mine (identical EVGA 9600gt) same issue on his, never bluescreens on my pc playing the same games. We installed a new sound card after hearing it could be an incompatibility with DX11 and his onboard sound. And even tried putting in a cheap EVGA Gefore 200(something). With the newer Geforce the blue screens may have stopped, but it wouldn't render his gun, enemies, and team members all at the same time, so he only tested Battlefield 3 that time for like 30 or so minutes, switched to the 9600 and had the bluescreen again, switched back for another half hour with no issue other than the non rendering. Which after trying that card in 3 other computers with rendering issue we sent the newer Geforce in for RMA. So we are back on the 9600. This was just occuring on Battlefield 3 up until now. Now it will also blue screen randomly in skyrim (normally after at least an hour of game play) and League of Legends (also randomly) and Battlefield 2142. I recently wipe and reloaded him again, no avail. Going to try putting 7 on it later tonight. But in my opinion, if the hardware tests fine in his system, work fine in mine, it has to be some kind of incompatibility between that exact set-up and Direct X.

Anyone mind think tanking with me? I honestly am out of fresh ideas on why this rig is giving so much issue over Battlefield 3, and now everything. I can post minidumps and such if need be.

Thanks a ton
-Mars

 

[AntiZig]

well, my first guess would be that the GPU is not able to fully support dx11, since it is a dx10 GPU. but if you say it works fine in your rig, then it must be something else...

just to compare, what OS is your rig running? vista or win7?

 

[mars128]

I run a multi-boot off my rig. I work in the I.T. field and have a setup to streamline troubleshooting until this came along. I don't have issues with any games in XP (other than DX10 and DX11 games that don't support DX9) . I have vista boot that everything works fine on, and 7 which also runs fine. I haven't tried it on Linux w/ Wine. >_<

I was just think tanking with another I.T. buddy. I'm going to try loading 7 on the rig when I leave the office. He also suggested trying a fresh install again without installed 3d or physics portions of the Geforce drivers. Said he had a similar issue when running on Vista.

 

[mars128]

I guess I should also mention my rig is different from his. I run a weird setup.

Pentium D 3.0Ghz
Asrock mobo (forgot the model off the top of my head)
2gb of corsair DDR3 Value ram (I think its either 1066 or 1333)
Same EVGA 9600GT
2x Seagate 250gb in Raid 0
1x Western Digital 2TB
Creative X-Fi

His mom's rig is the EXACT same other than case / psu / sound card / bios version. I could try swapping his hard drive into her rig, but I doubt it makes any difference as I'm pretty sure its not the hardware.

 

[Gman450]

Patching the game brought the BSODS right?
Don't patch it.

 

[poweruser_24]

"IRQL not less than or equal to" tend to be driver errors. Interrupt errors are kernel errors where an interrupt is being requested that cannot be handled due to the current interrupt level of the CPU.

The Creative Audigy and XiFi drivers have been known to have issues with various games where it would work initially for a while, and then fault with a BSOD or instant reboot, hang, replayed sound bite, etc.

Recent updates (like Nov/Dec 2011) are supposed to have corrected that for some of the XiFi cards, although the Audigy drivers probably haven't changed.

Try removing the sound card and using the onboard sound or adjusting the game sound to use Software Sound setting (if it has one) rather than the Audigy.

 

[mars128]

Patching the game brought the BSODS right?
Don't patch it.

Pretty sure he can't play with his friends online if he doesn't patch.

"IRQL not less than or equal to" tend to be driver errors. Interrupt errors are kernel errors where an interrupt is being requested that cannot be handled due to the current interrupt level of the CPU.

The Creative Audigy and XiFi drivers have been known to have issues with various games where it would work initially for a while, and then fault with a BSOD or instant reboot, hang, replayed sound bite, etc.

Recent updates (like Nov/Dec 2011) are supposed to have corrected that for some of the XiFi cards, although the Audigy drivers probably haven't changed.

Try removing the sound card and using the onboard sound or adjusting the game sound to use Software Sound setting (if it has one) rather than the Audigy.

I think you're confused. The X-Fi is in my computer where BF3 runs fine. My friend who has the BSODs is running a realtek onboard and audigy via pci expansion.

And his BSODs started occurring during League of Legends and Skyrim more often.

Either way, I am near resolving it. My hacker buddy pointed me in the right direction. After tweaking nvidia settings to as application controlled as possibly, the BSODs would only occur every hour or so. After turning Phsyics to CPU, its been even less often. Still every once in awhile, but no where near as annoying as every 20 mins. I figure I just need to tweak it a little more and it should be set. He said hes had this issue before on Vista64 systems. >_< Go figure.

 

[AntiZig]

have you tried installing win7?

 

[mars128]

have you tried installing win7?

I have a feeling that will be a solution. As much as I hate aspects of 7 more than vista...

But bad news to report. BSoDs came back in full force. What I had tried earlier brought the BSoDs down to every few hours or even longer. He even played LoL for near an entire day, worst temps were about 65C. Then he shut it down, went to bed. Next day BF3 would BSoD 5-10 mins in. LoL lasts hours still. Random BSoD browseing the net twice. This time one of the BSoDs reported win32.sys.

He is installing windows 7 right now. Hopefully that puts in end to it.

 

[mars128]

No difference in Windows 7. Same issues. Windows 7 seems to crash more with Aero enabled.

 

[mars128]

Changed around some bios settings for his memory. Cut back the frequency of blue screens again. Started having BSoD referring to filtermgr.sys rather than the IRQ & System service exceptions. A day later, went back to the old BSoD....

I officially want to office space his rig.

 

[Falzone]

those 65C are from the GPU temp? my best guess is that your GPU is overheating.

 

[cm0scm0s]

ram reccomendations are lies,

u need 8 gb ram to play trust me .

bf3 takes up too much resources for windows and bf3.exe at the same time.

if your motherboard has a glitch or conflict that makes it not shut down bf3.exe due to lack of resouces it will cause bsod (been there)

try 8 gb ram im sure it will work then if not, faulty hardware

 

[mars128]

those 65C are from the GPU temp? my best guess is that your GPU is overheating.

Cpu is 65c
GPUs worst is around 50c I believe

ram reccomendations are lies,

u need 8 gb ram to play trust me .

bf3 takes up too much resources for windows and bf3.exe at the same time.

if your motherboard has a glitch or conflict that makes it not shut down bf3.exe due to lack of resouces it will cause bsod (been there)

try 8 gb ram im sure it will work then if not, faulty hardware

True, but his computer is now BSoDing on League of Legends, Skyrim, and a few other games that don't seem like they use too much ram. I think a ram upgrade maybe in order either way.

 

[cm0scm0s]

Cpu is 65c
GPUs worst is around 50c I believe




True, but his computer is now BSoDing on League of Legends, Skyrim, and a few other games that don't seem like they use too much ram. I think a ram upgrade maybe in order either way.

Ur graphic card is defenitly not overheating, and ur cpu is fine.

ur ram might be overheating . altho that i rare.

have you tried another motherboard it might be faulty/defect

 

[mars128]

Ur graphic card is defenitly not overheating, and ur cpu is fine.

ur ram might be overheating . altho that i rare.

have you tried another motherboard it might be faulty/defect

Solved...ish

As I said before my buddy's system is the exact same build as his moms. So, I finally got time to swap out components. I put his HDD in her rig, hers in his. He stopped getting blue screens on her motherboard cpu and processor. She gets blue screens on his. So I guess its hardware after all. Thank for the suggestions guys, you input was a big help it tracking it down. Luckly she doesn't do anything that stresses direct x so this works as a fix

See you all on the battlefield.

 

[HEXiT]

get bluescreen viewer... this will help point you in the right direction and give us propper infor to work on... you can allso trouble shoot bsods via the 0x0000000 number and the error text... just google the 0x0000 number and find the topic that matches the error text. hopefully it will be an m.s knowledge base web page.

some basic tips for system stability:
make sure your system settings are correct in bios... for instance make sure the ram is running at the correct speed, latency and voltage recommended by the parts manufacturer. asus systems often set the ram voltage to minimum recommended in bios as a default regardless of what the ram actualy needs to run to be stable. often the ram needs 0.1-0.2 of a volt more to run at its rated speed and be stable...

*Due to AMD CPU limitation, DDR2 1066 is supported by AM2+ CPU for one DIMM per channel only.

that means if you have 2 1066 memory modules you will only be able to run in single channel mode and loose any performance gains you may have gotten by getting faster ram....
if you had of gotten ddr2 800 you could run in dual channel mode and get a substantial increase in memory bandwidth and performance. way more than your 1066 will ever give ram...

ram voltage can vary per make and model between 1.8v-2.2v yours by the looks of it, yours needs to run at 2.0v if its set to 1.8 it can cause instability... as i said bios will set it to 1.8 as a default so you will have to manually change it.

next make sure the ram cas timings are set correctly... just manually set each of the 4 main timings manually the rest you can ignore for now as thy have little impact on ram performance or stability
if its 777-20 timings then its really poor cheap ram and you should consider replacing it with slower ddr2. this may sound counter intuative but it really will give better overall system performance, if you get something like pc2 6400 ram with 555-15 latency. which is about average for ddr2.

as your on an older board and probably running win 7. make sure hpet(high precision event timer) is enabled and matches your o.s bit rate... 32 for 32bit and 64 for 64 bit... you will also have to set this if you use vista. but it should always be disabled for xp. (tip you cannot dual boot different bitrates of o.s unless you use xp as the other o.s as hpet is ignored by xp)

check your temps... amd cpus on asus boards tend to run a little hotter as asus are overly generous with the cpu auto settings and cpu voltage settings.
i found my old amd 6000 x2 was more stable on my asus board if i removed all the auto settings for cpu timings and just set them to the default manually... so if the cpu has a base clock of 200 i would take it off auto and manually set it to 200. then go into voltage control and turn down the voltage from 1.4 to 1.35 this should have no impact on performance but will reduce the cpu temps by as much as 5'c... (you can leave the power management settings alone for now, in fact its better if you turn off cool and quiet and c1 halt (if available))... as they may increase instability as the cpu down shifts to save power...

anyway try what i have suggested and see what happens...
start with the ram first then move on to the cpu if you ge another bsod...