My computer has a demon and it makes me blue screen

[Dakonaz]

hiya. so I'm pretty sure My system has a demon. not sure it its lesser or whatever, but its definitely in this to screw my life.

ok so I get sporadic BSod. usually during either starcraft 2 (only in the menu) or boot. often its ntfs.sys, but others its just a 025 stop error or something similar.

i've tried: switching antivirus to MSE, chkdsk, memtest (20 passes), smart, sfc(which just gives an error cant repair and the text log cant find "cannt repair lol"), reinstalling various drivers (audio, video, network), prime95, turning off OC, resetting cmos, minidump, and write caching.

my system (pertinent)

phenomII 950
4gb ddr3 1600 adata
60gb RealSSD c300
asrock 890gx extreme4
wd cav black 640gb


i can send a minidump, maybe Im missing the elephant in the room there but i don't see anything.


if anyone has any ideas/the number of a good excorcist, I'd greatly appreciate it.

 

[Dakonaz]

oh, obv i use win 7 64bit

 

[Dakonaz]

thnx for the reply, I've tried the previous point restore. this is a problem thats been comming and going for some time, so it seems i just repair to a time when it was still possessed. i'd love if windows 7 could do a good ole disc repair. but no.

I'd assume its an issue with the ssd or controller, but it passes all those tests

edit: oh, and it may be just me but I think my ssd performance is miserable. (4k writes around 4.5 mb/s). possibly related? is there any other way to test the thing? i cant really just put a different $200 ssd in and reinstall just for diagnostic kicks.

 

[Supermuncher85]

Did you read the S.M.A.R.T. data? There's a lot of utilities if you google for this, might give more insight into a problem if it is the harddrive or not (faulty cable?). Also use the windows error correction: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Check-your-hard-disk-for-errors

Furthermore if all these fail, and you have the windows 7 recovery cd, put that in and run a repair from that. As a final drastic measure, if all else fails, I would try a full reinstall. Rather have a clean running system than BSODs all the time.

 

[Dakonaz]

@supermuncher

thnx for the help, I got called away from the dos error scan so iunno if it found anything, ima run it again. it seems to just run chkdsk which didnt find any issues when run in windows.

as for the smart data, Im not too familiar with what any of the messages mean, I ran a diagnostic through speedfan and it seemed to imply it couldnt find any issues.

I didnt make a recovery cd (doh), just the install which being an oem copy (im cheap) wont do a repair.


if I decide to go nuclear should I 0 write? and if so, can a zero fill screw with an SSD? should I ask that in a different forum?lol

thanks for the help guys, I really appreciate it, especially cuz I've lost all hope of figuring it out.

 

[Dakonaz]

update!

so after trying everything listed, I gave up and wiped both SSD and HDD and stated over.

it still bsod's, which means (dun dun dun!) HW fail.

it seems to happen almost exclusively in the starcraft II menu (not in a game but the menu itself).

after which it bsod multiple times during reboot.

if I leave it shut down for long periods it will often give me trouble on boot, but a warm reboot never gives me trouble.


I have a minidump, but am unsure of how to best share it here (host where ect.).

I believe it may be the SSD or the GPU, but am unsure of how to be sure which part needs a replacement. and being on a budget without any spares I cant just replace both.

if anyone has any ideas on how to figure it out I'd love the help before I end up in a clock tower thanks


EDIT: oh and on occasion it seems like the display wont initialize during post, the system seems to be running but the screen is blank.

 

[KazumaCTHDWE]

hmm, sounds like the videocard, if the display wont init during post.

Do you hear the POST beep?

 

[Dakonaz]

hmm, sounds like the videocard, if the display wont init during post.

Do you hear the POST beep?

I dont have the speaker connected, however the board (asrock) as an led code flasher that is cycling. if i hit reset on the tower the problem goes away.

also if I BSOD while in game sometimes I bsod continually when rebootin windows, but if i hit reset it goes away.

a bad mosfet on the gpu?

 

[Dakonaz]

hmm, sounds like the videocard, if the display wont init during post.

Do you hear the POST beep?

I dont have the speaker connected, however the board (asrock) as an led code flasher that is cycling. if i hit reset on the tower the problem goes away.

also if I BSOD while in game sometimes I bsod continually when rebootin windows, but if i hit reset it goes away.

a bad mosfet on the gpu?

 

[Dakonaz]

update: I ran memtest86+ for 17 passes. and ran memory diagnostic.

when trying to run occt in either gpu or psu test it BSOD's within 3 1/2 minutes fairly reliably.

I turned on driver verifier, and bsod's before windows can boot every time. that is the last of the memory dumps in the zip I included. (mediafire, not sure if there a better hosting option).

I included a few dumps, if anyone has any ideas lemme know.





memory dump files: http://www.mediafire.com/?6c45s7rt22ppv25

 

[Dakonaz]

ok, so update!

i angered the demon, and he has extracted his dark toll for it.

windows 7 wouldnt boot all of a sudden. so I wiped the drive again to start over (third time)

installed windows xp perfectly fine, but when I attempt to install windows 7 (upgrade), it bsod's literally from the disk. my disk is blue screening, which I didnt assume was possible.

so I replaced my ram with a friends, the problems actually got slightly worse. so i replaced my GPU with a backup 9800gtx+, issues continued to get worse.

then the system began sporadically hanging during post, (i know this because asrock has a code flasher for all the bios processes and it gets stuck on random ones.)

now, it wont even post at all. this is with 2 seperate sets of memory and 2 GPU's. oh and even before this the integrated GPU wouldnt display. ever.

am i safe to assume its the actually been the mobo slowly taking a giant ***?

 

[Dakonaz]

updating from the demon system.

it started working fine. I swapped my ram for my friends for a third time, (we were swapping ram cuz his Mobo doesnt like to register his ram in bios properly (works and tests fine just annoying)

so I have his ram in again. it just came to life. I honestly dont know, lol.

it hasnt given me a single issue so far, or even hinted at an issue. im really confused.

 

[arson94]

Does your board have an option in BIOS to set memory in Unganged or Ganged mode? I have a phenom II 940 (AM2+), Foxconn A79A-S mobo, 4x2GB OCZ Platinum 1066Mhz DDR2 and before I understood what Ganged and Unganged meant I put my RAM in Ganged mode cause I thought it meant Dual-Channel and I would get random a$$ BSOD's all the time.

Usually it only did it when I started a game and it hit the menus, never BSOD'd booting Windows or anything but always passed any RAM diagnostic or CPU stress test I tried. The BSOD's were always different codes too. I would get codes I've never seen before and I work in an IT department supporting thousands of machines for many years now. Seriously, it seemed like Windows just made sh*t up to blue-screen my a$$ and it took me days to figure it out. My computer never knew whether to sh*t itself or go blind and it would usually just do both. Must have gotten 30+ different BSOD errors.

I just mention it because my situation seemed very much like your's and when the RAM is sh*tting itself, it can make the issue look like many problems like your HDD/SSD, CD/DVD install discs, CD/DVD drives... It was driving me nuts also. One more BSOD and I was contemplating setting the filthy wh0re on fire and shooting it with my .45 just to make a point. But, I figured it out finally and it saved me a $1,000. I'm not exaggerating, I had a magazine full of hollow points and some lighter fluid ready to go...

If you're lucky and that's the case, then I'll let you know that phenom x4's don't like Ganged mode, at all. At least mine doesn't. If this isn't your case, then my little story was for entertainment purposes I guess. Also, my board coudln't use my RAM set to SPD in BIOS to read the DIMM's data to auto set the memory speed and timings. I had to set speed, timings and voltages manually. Otherwise I couldn't boot usually. I'm not sure if any of this even applies to you, but figured I'd mention it just in case.

 

[Dakonaz]

Does your board have an option in BIOS to set memory in Unganged or Ganged mode? I have a phenom II 940 (AM2+), Foxconn A79A-S mobo, 4x2GB OCZ Platinum 1066Mhz DDR2 and before I understood what Ganged and Unganged meant I put my RAM in Ganged mode cause I thought it meant Dual-Channel and I would get random a$$ BSOD's all the time.

Usually it only did it when I started a game and it hit the menus, never BSOD'd booting Windows or anything but always passed any RAM diagnostic or CPU stress test I tried. The BSOD's were always different codes too. I would get codes I've never seen before and I work in an IT department supporting thousands of machines for many years now. Seriously, it seemed like Windows just made sh*t up to blue-screen my a$$ and it took me days to figure it out. My computer never knew whether to sh*t itself or go blind and it would usually just do both. Must have gotten 30+ different BSOD errors.

I just mention it because my situation seemed very much like your's and when the RAM is sh*tting itself, it can make the issue look like many problems like your HDD/SSD, CD/DVD install discs, CD/DVD drives... It was driving me nuts also. One more BSOD and I was contemplating setting the filthy wh0re on fire and shooting it with my .45 just to make a point. But, I figured it out finally and it saved me a $1,000. I'm not exaggerating, I had a magazine full of hollow points and some lighter fluid ready to go...

If you're lucky and that's the case, then I'll let you know that phenom x4's don't like Ganged mode, at all. At least mine doesn't. If this isn't your case, then my little story was for entertainment purposes I guess. Also, my board coudln't use my RAM set to SPD in BIOS to read the DIMM's data to auto set the memory speed and timings. I had to set speed, timings and voltages manually. Otherwise I couldn't boot usually. I'm not sure if any of this even applies to you, but figured I'd mention it just in case.

i know my board has that option but Im unsure if it was set improperly. I may have accidentally touched it.

I switched gcards and did a hard cmos reset (jumpers not the button, which doesnt seem to do crap), because it wouldnt post with the new card. this card works fine and im goin on a week without bsod.

I have 2 theories. 1 my fried card somehow messed with my bios settings sdo the system was screwed even when i took it out. and 2, i screwed up a setting i didnt notice which created a second issue in addition to the card which i fixed by accident when i reset. when I add the old card to my system it immediately goes demonic, so its definately a source of the issue ewither way

 

[Dakonaz]

also, thats the best response so far in terma of both substance and tone, lol.

I was schemeing similar vengence against my system lol. I had actually seriously considered parting it out on CL just to make it go away.

 

[arson94]

Lol thanks. It does seem to point to a f*cked up GPU though. You could try to get a friend to try your card in their machine and see if it goes apesh*t on them too. If so, then yea it's just a GPU gone bad. Also, it would be a slim chance to trash your GPU via most BIOS settings unless those settings overclocked or overvoltaged the card. And I think that itself would be a slim chance without you realizing you did it. I think you were just unlucky and the GPU was a dud. Any chance of return if it's definitely broken or have you had it for too long?

 

[Dakonaz]

Ya, the only thing i couldve done is create a second issue trying to fix the gpu, as the first time i swapped gpus it was still angry, after i switched back an again (and was forced to reset cmos) did it go away.

But wen i sweep drivers an plop old gpu back in it flips its ***. Lol.

Ya its bout 5-6 months old, ima have to rma through gigabyte. But i got my friends old 9800+, so im fine inthe shortterm.

Shoulda rma'd card wen i got it. Day 1 it would explode in my face if i even thought about overclocking it. But i didnt wanna wait for an rma lol. Oh well. Thnx

 

[arson94]

No problem. And yea if it can be RMA'd still then do that. Good luck with whatever card you get to replace it though.

 

[Hawkeye22]

You can use blue screen view to look at your minidump file. It might provide some info for you to go on.

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/blue_screen_view.html

 

[Dakonaz]

yea, I was using that, but it throws random causes out. the only thing I noticed was the time stamp usually listed the ati drivers in close proximity with the Ntoskrnl.sys file, which it always claim was the cause. (which is physically impossible)

 

[Dakonaz]

Ya this isnt software related. It persisted through a psuedorandom 7 pass wipe (dod std.) and then prevented the system from posting consistantly, and wen it did win 7 would bsod during install. Lol.

 

[Dakonaz]

I think i had corrupt gddr on the card. Just got my rma # from gigabyte. So ima send it off. Still no bsod (over a week). So i think i fixed it by pulling the card an resetting the cmos.