BSOD help needed

Forum Homebuilt Systems : General Homebuilt - BSOD help needed

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I have a 1 year old machine I built that has operated flawlessly until the last few weeks. Now I'm getting BSOD at random times, sometimes after a few minutes of use, sometimes hours. This is a Vista 32 Home premium OS. I get messages about unexpected shutdowns listing dump files, but I don't know what to do with them. If I look at the event viewer, there are several errors listed with different sources, again, I don' t know what to do with them. I don't think its an overheating problem. All fans are working, and the Asus board monitors show cpu temp 27C, system temp 36C. When I touch various components, they are just barely warm. All trouble seemed to start after we added a wireless printer as a network printer. It occasionally seemed to cause an IP address conflict message to pop up. I changed the IP address and have not received any more of those complaints, but maybe it did something? I've also received an occasional message from Trend anti-virus saying that unexpected shutdowns could be caused by a bad update and that it has reverted to an earlier versions to control that. So if anyone has any good ideas about how to investigate this I would appreciate the help. I do have snapshot jpeg's of some of the error messages I can email. I've tried to run memtest, but it blue screened after 1.5 cycles, although no problems were noted up to then. I also ran chkdsk, but it blue screened just before completion (92% into step 5 of 5), no errors had been reported up to that point.

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Welcome to the forums!

Tell us about your power supply.

Reply to evongugg

It sounds like a RAM issue to me. RAM problems are the most common cause of BSOD's. What are your complete system specs?

Reply to shortstuff_mt

ASUS P5QE mb;
Corsair 2X2Gb DDR2-800 dual channel
Evga GeForce 8500GT video
Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 3.16 chip
Antec case/ps

Reply to skatz

evongugg wrote :

Welcome to the forums!

Tell us about your power supply.


Antec case -- Sonata II if I remember with their 500W earthworks supply

Reply to skatz

Which "Corsair 2x2Gb DDR2-800 dual channel" kit do you have? All these match that description:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] x%202GB%29

Reply to shortstuff_mt

Run memtest86+ with one stick at a time, alternating memory slots.
Make sure your memory voltage in the bios is correct.

Reply to evongugg

shortstuff_mt wrote :

Which "Corsair 2x2Gb DDR2-800 dual channel" kit do you have? All these match that description:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] x%202GB%29




Corsair 4GB (2X2GB) 240 pin DDR2-800 SDRAM DDR2 800 Dual channel Twin2X4096-6400CS
New Egg item N82E16820145484

I made a mistake; the case is a Sonata III, 500W power supply, and the video is an 8800GT card

Reply to skatz

evongugg wrote :

Run memtest86+ with one stick at a time, alternating memory slots.
Make sure your memory voltage in the bios is correct.




I can do this; last time I tried was with both sticks and it blue screened after 1.5 passes. Do you mean something like slot 1, stick A then Stick B, then slot 3, A then B?

Reply to skatz

evongugg wrote :

Run memtest86+ with one stick at a time, alternating memory slots.
Make sure your memory voltage in the bios is correct.



Naive question. How is the correct voltage determined? I'm not overclocking or doing anything else to soup up performance. But, its been running fine for a year.

Reply to skatz

Check the memory voltage on Newegg and put it in the bios.
I am not getting the right part on Newegg.com.
It may be the cause of your BSOD.
Rerun memtest86+ with the correct voltage.


Message edited by evongugg on 10-13-2009 at 07:38:40 PM
Reply to evongugg

Is that Twin2X4096-6400C5?
Is this the correct model?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820145184

The voltage for this is 1.8v. You don't need to make any changes.

Reply to evongugg

evongugg wrote :

Is that Twin2X4096-6400C5?
Is this the correct model?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820145184

The voltage for this is 1.8v. You don't need to make any changes.



Yes this is the correct one. I think I read it as a CS and its really C5 but I will check the voltage. This is on my home machine, I'm at work now so it will be later this evening. I'm also going out of town on Thursday for several days, so it may take a while if I don't find the problem by Wednesday.
Thanks for the help.

Steve

Reply to skatz

Okay, I've done some testing.
Memory stick A was tested in slot 1 for ~3.5 hours, 0 errors reported, 662%
Memory stick B was tested in slot 1 for ~9 hours, 0 errors, 2220%, but then it blue screened
Memory stick A is now in slot 3 for 5 hours, 0 errors, 1243%
I'll swap in stick B shortly

Is this enough to tell us anything? Is stick B suspect?

Reply to skatz

Try running the computer with only stick A.
See if there are any more problems.

Reply to evongugg

remove the most recent hardware ( the printer )
remove the most recent comp drivers (the printer)
remove the most recently installed software (most recently installed game, software, driver so on)
set the pc to advanced system setting > system > starup and recover > settings > no kernal dump

all this should be done in safe mode

i hope this helps

ps why do you think its ram bsod will shut you down as is anyway .....

Reply to Animosity07

evongugg wrote :

Try running the computer with only stick A.
See if there are any more problems.


Hi again, I've been away for a few days.

When I returned the computer was still running, hadn't rebooted like it does when there's been a bsod. I put both sticks back in and also ran registry mechanic, which found some errors. Has been running for a couple of days now without crashing, thats something of a record recently. I'm just going to watch it and see if it misbehaves again, but so far looks good.

Reply to skatz

Animosity07 wrote :

remove the most recent hardware ( the printer )
remove the most recent comp drivers (the printer)
remove the most recently installed software (most recently installed game, software, driver so on)
set the pc to advanced system setting > system > starup and recover > settings > no kernal dump

all this should be done in safe mode

i hope this helps

ps why do you think its ram bsod will shut you down as is anyway .....



It was suggested on this forum that it was probably a ram issue. At this point I'm just going to watch and see what it does. If I have more problems I'll follow your suggestions, but tell me what happens if "no kernel dump" is selected?

Reply to skatz
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