Getting BSOD's - different error messages every time

Hey eggsodus,

I've got a few questions for you:

1) What's you power supply, and how old is it? I'm not sure if this is the issue in your case but your PS information is always a good thing to know - but that's because I am in the camp that believes that (at least for a gaming/high-performance machine) your power supply is the most important part of your system.

2) What brand of memory and model number do you have? Is it overclocked (doesn't look like it, but more information is better).

3) What is your CPU's temperature when this happens? Have you monitored it under load? How's your case ventalation?

4) (Not applicable if you have not overclocked your processor) - The maximum CPU power supported by your MB is 140 W. Now I might be wrong here as I've never worked w/overclocking a Phenom x6. I hope that someone w/real world experience will chime in if I am incorrect about this:

I believe that the increase in power consumed by your processor is linear - ie if you increase the speed by 20% then you increase the power by 20%, and if you increase voltage on the processor then that also would linearally increase your power consumption. If so then if your processor uses 125 watts @stock speed and voltage, an increase to 3.6 Ghz (w/stock voltage) would increase your power consumption above 140 watts. I think - hopefully someone can confirm or correct this.

So, here are the troubleshooting steps that I would try:

A) If your case doesn't have good airflow, open it up (and test)! Also, this is a good time to make sure that your CPU cooler is not chocked with dust - if so, clean it up!

B) Disconnect any HDD's that you don't need to run these games and test. This is a step that is primarily testing the power supply more than the HDD's themselves...

C) Run the system @stock speeds and voltages for all devices and see if the errors still occur. If you still get an error, then any processor overclock (if you use one) is most likely not an issue, so the next step I'd take is:

D) Run w/one ram module at a time (best way) and see if the error occurs, though you could also just swap the positions of your RAM modules (weaker way).

E) If you have one, put in a low(er) power video card and test (one that doesn't require a direct connection to the PS would be best). I am pretty sure that you would need to lower game video resolutions and settings when testing, but I'm sure that you'll live through it! BTW, this step is really for helping to determine if you have power issues on your 12V rail(s) as opposed to a faulty video card. It's just a lot easier if you have another video card than pulling and replacing the power supply to test).


If the error still occurs at this point then I'd say that your problem is most likely either your Power Supply, or you have a motherboard issue. For your motherboard you could google/search for overheating issues (or anything else) w/one of the on-board chips (sorry, I'm not doing that right now).

For the power supply, that's usually my first suspect when I get inconsistent error messages like this - something happens where the power supply can no longer supply the required power on one of the rails - it's just often so much easier to test the other items first. IF you have another power supply of sufficient rated power, this would be the time to replace and test. BTW, even if a PS tester shows that it's voltage levels are correct, most PS test units just test voltage output because they are not capable of putting a load on the power supply to test the amperage output for each rail.

I have had rare instances where I'd get random error messages and BSOD's where a Power Supply's 3.3V and/or 5V rails were not able to supply sufficient power for a HDD, though if this is the case then there would be a good chance of having issues booting (HDD doesn't always spin up properly).


Eggsodus, I hope that this helps! Let us know what happens - hopefully it'll work out quickly, easily and cheaply for you!

Hey Eggsodus!!

Read a couple of reviews on your power supply - I certainly doubt that that's the issue! It gets very good reviews, and it supplies much more power than your current system needs (thumbs up to that). Efficient and some headroom for the future!

Likewise, you also are using RAM that should not be a problem - at least not from the standpoint of it's specs. It seems that you have gone out of your way to get components that won't be stressed by your configuration. My complements. QUESTION: in your last note you said that you had 2x2Gb modules - did you mean 2x4? Your first note said that you had 8Gb. I would still recommend testing by running tests w/ one module removed at a time - hove you tried this?

Also, you may want to test w/PRIME95 - it allows you to stress your CPU constantly, though I honestly don't know how it stresses RAM (if at all).

RE. your pagefile - I've removed mine (and replaced it) before w/o a problem. Removing it can speed things up but there would be a real problem if you ran out of RAM resources (but I've never done that, so I don't know exactly what would happen). Does it reside on a secondary HDD? If so you might want to try

to put it back onto your main hdd if you unplug the HDD's that you don't need attached for this test. When I troubleshoot a difficult-to-diagnose PC (which yours has become) I always try to run with as few components as possible - 1 hdd, no optical drives, etc.

Are your two samsungs in a RAID array for booting? I just noticed that they're the same...

RE: this being a S/W issue - It's plausible, but I doubt it. I'll try to look at your dump files later (I need to get some actual work for money done today) though. My experience with S/W issues has shown that the errors are more consistant - I think that "IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL" is actually a CPU (or at least a systemboard) error, but I need to do some research on your errors before I can make an exact statement. Also, the spontaneous re-boots don't bode well, but I saved the important part for last.

Your CPU power is exceeding the SPECS of your motherboard. This is not good. Although your CPU is rated at 1.4V I have an idea that it's running at a voltage of ~1.485-1.5V. My 3Ghz Athlon II X4 does the same in my msi MB - taking it all the way down to 1.4v did seem to cause some problems (as I recall). I don't know if the voltage is somehow set by AMD of if it's a BIOS issue for your MB. You COULD try updating your MB's BIOS - there's always some risk w/doing that as you never know if doing so will create new problems, so I'd leave that as a last option. I did a search on your MB and found nothing to worry about,

though it seems that I've read people talking about ASUS MB's and how some users have complained about voltage stepping issues - then again, MY human RAM may be faulty here...

So, here's the only really important part of my note:

1) I'd recommend going into BIOS and lowering CPU voltage by ~.02V (to ~1.47V if your CPU is currently ~1.49V) and then testing. This would lower your CPU's total WATTS consumed at MAX load by ~3.5 WATTS which would bring your CPU's wattage below your MB's max CPU power rating. This may cause a problem for your CPU but I'd doubt it (though going down to 1.40V may not work). Another possibility would be to disable a couple of cores of your CPU - if Crysis stresses all 6 cores to near of fully 100% usage this would lower power consumption (and unfortunately, performance, but that's what testing is all about).

2) If you haven't tested your RAM modules individually, please do so (unless you lower your voltage on your CPU first and that gets rid of your errors). Your RAM has great SPECS but bad RAM is bad RAM, and the more components that you can eliminate from the "potential problems", the easier it is to isolate the problem.

Let me know how it goes - I should have time later to research your dump files and see if there's any indication of S/W problems.

Paul

Good idea to try reinstall. I've never had problems like that w/avast - ran it on XP Pro & Win7 ultimate, but that's just me...

I'll try taking a look at those dump files and see if I can figure anything out - I sure wish that there was someone who was better at deciphering those things than me trying to help out - perhaps someone bored @work this week will do so...

Ah, sorry for being unclear. I have bought two 2x2Gb kits, so I do have four 2Gb modules. I have also ran memtest only with all the modules attached. Just to be clear, did you mean I should run the test so that I start with all and then remove one at a time, or start with one and add the rest.

The pagefile was always on the same HDD as the OS, and the two drives aren't set up for RAID at the moment, though I did have that in mind when I bought them.

I've already updated my BIOS to the newest version.

Will try these, but maybe even starting with the RAM, as I have in fact bought the other 2x2Gb kit after the initial components (though the crashes didn't start to occur immediately after installing the two new modules).

I moved on win7 about 6mo. ago or so. I did not like it much at first , when I tried the RTM version.

But I never had BSOD on 7 so I don't know if it runs it, but it makes sense if it does.

Ah, thank you again for a quick and in-depth response Paul. It's definitely starting to look like one of the RAM-modules might in fact be bad. Going to test them one by one as soon as I get home from work. That would even be kind of the best case, as those are easy to replace both by warranty or by just purchasing new ones.

Update.

After testing the RAM-modules in pairs with 0 errors, I noticed I had messed up my fresh installation as the bootloader was still on the old HDD. XD

I did a new install and completely removed the old HDD, hoping it was the culprit - no crashes so far, but I really need to have an uptime of at least a week before I am convinced.

Also, regarding the CPU voltage setting you suggested Paul: I set the CPU and RAM clocking to manual instead of auto. Now HWMonitor shows the CPU power usage as a steady ~141W, and no problems, so I guess we can rule that out?

- Jani

Sigh. Here I am again. After weeks of everything working just fine my computer crashed with a BSOD while being idle. I was watching Dexter while it happened, but If I saw correctly the error message was about the pfile being corrupt. Minidump here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/198284/minidump.zip

EDIT: Another dump here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/198284/100711-21902-01.zip - this time it was something about VIDEO_MEMORY_MANAGER..