New PC Random BSOD

[mistaninja]

I'm going to be quick because I don't know when I will get another BSOD.

I setup a new computer with an Asus P8P67 EVO motherboard and a 2600K sandy bridge CPU and have been getting BSODS randomly. I've also noticed random lag spikes that freeze certain programs or my entire computer for 1-2 minutes.

As far as I can tell it's either a hardware issue or a voltage issue. I thought it may be something with the "auto overclock" feature my motherboard comes with, so I cleared my CMOS and went into bios and loaded the optimal settings. I enabled "High performance" for power settings in the control panel. In the "ASUS AI Suite II" I believe my other hooked up drives are turned off whenever they aren't in use.

I "IntelBurnTestV2" last night and used up my entire allocation of ram w/o a BSOD so I'm going to rull that out. My CPU/Motherboard/SSD are new. I feel it may have something to do with my HD's, video cards or case. HDS: randomly whenever I do decide to copy files from my backup hard drive to my new one, I occasionally get a BSOD. Also, the Marvell SATA3 ports were giving me a BSOD w/ mv91xx.sys so I quit using them and uninstalled the application the cd came with (not sure about the drivers). I also switched the SSD port to my intel SATA3 ports although I've read not to use them). Video Card: I was getting a BSOD at the start with them in SLI and not having them hooked up. Case: I used some brass standoffs to keep my hard drive away from my case, but I didn't use a rubber stopper or paper insulator in between.

Computer Specs:
Intel 2600k
Asus P8P67 evo rev 3
16 G SKill DDR3
2x 460 SLI
C300 256 GB SSD

I will attach an image of my BSOD once I get my phone's drivers installed.

 

[mistaninja]

Here is a picture of the BSOD.

 

[DXRick]

The memory dump failed. I suspect the hard drive.

 

[mistaninja]

Perhaps because it is a SSD hd?

 

[DXRick]

Did you set the SATA controller in the BIOS to AHCI mode? Did you do a fresh install of Windows onto the SSD? Did you run MEMTEST on your memory?

 

[Wamphryi]

Make sure that your SSD has the latest firmware. Some SSD's seem to require this. I assume it is because the technology is still maturing.

 

[Noworldorder]

I suspect your PSU is overtaxed. What is it?

 

[mistaninja]

Did you set the SATA controller in the BIOS to AHCI mode? Did you do a fresh install of Windows onto the SSD? Did you run MEMTEST on your memory?

Yes. Yes. No.

Make sure that your SSD has the latest firmware. Some SSD's seem to require this. I assume it is because the technology is still maturing.

I got my hard drive around Dec/Jan, so I assume it has the latest FW. Not sure how to check it, spent some time googling it yesterday with no success.

I suspect your PSU is overtaxed. What is it?

An 850W XFX PSU.

 

[Noworldorder]

(Credit jsc):
Work systematically through our standard checklist and troubleshooting thread:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/ [...] t-problems
I mean work through, not just read over it. We spent a lot of time on this. It should find most of the problems.

If not, continue.
The following is an expansion of my troubleshooting tips in the breadboarding link in the "Cannot boot" thread.

I have tested the following beep patterns on Gigabyte, eVGA, and ECS motherboards. Other BIOS' may be different, but they all use a single short beep for a successful POST.

Breadboard - that will help isolate any kind of case problem you might have.
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/ [...] adboarding

Breadboard with just motherboard, CPU & HSF, case speaker, and PSU.

Make sure you plug the CPU power cable in. The system will not boot without it.

I always breadboard a new build. It takes only a few minutes, and you know you are putting good parts in the case once you are finished.

You can turn on the PC by momentarily shorting the two pins that the case power switch goes to. You should hear a series of long, single beeps indicating memory problems. Silence indicates a problem with (in most likely order) the PSU, motherboard, or CPU. Remember, at this time, you do not have a graphics card installed so the load on your PSU will be reduced.

If no beeps:
Running fans and drives and motherboard LED's do not necessarily indicate a good PSU. In the absence of a single short beep, they also do not indicate that the system is booting.

At this point, you can sort of check the PSU. Try to borrow a known good PSU of around 550 - 600 watts. That will power just about any system with a single GPU. If you cannot do that, use a DMM to measure the voltages. Measure between the colored wires and either chassis ground or the black wires. Yellow wires should be 12 volts. Red wires: +5 volts, orange wires: +3.3 volts, blue wire : -12 volts, violet wire: 5 volts always on. Tolerances are +/- 5% except for the -12 volts which is +/- 10%.

The gray wire is really important. It should go from 0 to +5 volts when you turn the PSU on with the case switch. CPU needs this signal to boot.

You can turn on the PSU by completely disconnecting the PSU and using a paperclip or jumper wire to short the green wire to one of the neighboring black wires.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FW [...] tube_gdata

A way that might be easier is to use the main power plug. Working from the back of the plug where the wires come out, use a bare paperclip to short between the green wire and one of the neighboring black wires. That will do the same thing with an installed PSU. It is also an easy way to bypass a questionable case power switch.

This checks the PSU under no load conditions, so it is not completely reliable. But if it can not pass this, it is dead. Then repeat the checks with the PSU plugged into the computer to put a load on the PSU.

If the system beeps:
If it looks like the PSU is good, install a memory stick. Boot. Beep pattern should change to one long and several short beeps indicating a missing graphics card.

Silence, long single beeps, or series of short beeps indicate a problem with the memory. If you get short beeps verify that the memory is in the appropriate motherboard slots.

Insert the video card and connect any necessary PCIe power connectors. Boot. At this point, the system should POST successfully (a single short beep). Notice that you do not need keyboard, mouse, monitor, or drives to successfully POST.
At this point, if the system doesn't work, it's either the video card or an inadequate PSU. Or rarely - the motherboard's PCIe interface.

Now start connecting the rest of the devices starting with the monitor, then keyboard and mouse, then the rest of the devices, testing after each step. It's possible that you can pass the POST with a defective video card. The POST routines can only check the video interface. It cannot check the internal parts of the video card.

 

[mistaninja]

Pretty sure it is the drive now. Did some Googling and the C300 has a ton of trouble with LPM: http://forum.crucial.com/t5/Solid-State-Drives-SSD/Solution-C300-Disk-Freeze-ups-in-Windows-7-solved-for-me/td-p/38766

The Intel SATA 3 ports are a lagfest, the Marvell drivers lag out randomly, but with that hopefully it will be fixed.

 

[Guest]

Hi it sounds like to me faulty ram or corrupted drivers try updating all drivers with new ones then the last thing check for a new bios update for your board and following that download memtest86 diagnostic tool and check your memory for faults hope this helps

 

[pkincy]

I don't know if this is the problem (actually I suspect it is not) but you need to upgrade the C300 firmware. If bought in Jan you are on FW 002. 006 came out in the spring and 007 about 6 weeks ago. Don't stop at 006 as it is crap but 007 will fix a ton of your problems with the new chipset.

I have the Z68 chipset and my very similar problems I have isolated to the video card.

Do remember you can run the computer without a video card is your mobo has a vga or DVD out on it. My Z68-v does.

That is how I have isolated the problem to the video card. Simply pull it and go into BIOS and select the iGPU and if your computer runs stabley you can start working on the video card. If it doesn't you can forget about the video card and look elsewhere.

Another thing I would do is clone the OS/boot disk to a hdd and see what that does. If stable than you know you need the 007 firmware. Crucial Forum for SSDs is your friend there.

Perry

 

[mistaninja]

It turns out I had a faulty mobo, that may have been caused by one of my video cards being bad. I was having cooling problems while gaming, so I switched the video cards (I have two in SLI). When I switched the order, I kept having BSODs. Removing it, the BSDOs stopped. I am RMA'ing it and running off of one GTX 460.