Windows Crashing help

[Vasai]

Hi, I put together a new build about 2 weeks ago and within the last two days it has been giving random BSODs. I haven't been able to write down error codes fast enough but I was wondering if anyone had some general advice as to how to pinpoint the problem. I have all the latest drivers and windows 7 updates so this is really puzzling me. It has usually been doing it when I am online, although it did it once while I was in the Starcraft 2 main menu. After the latest crash it restarted with a weird gray bar with a multicolored border at the bottom of the main screen that disappeared after a few minutes. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Here are my specs:

CPU-AMD Phenom II 955 quad-core
GPU-HIS Radeon 6870
RAM-4 GB G Skill Ripjaws 1333mHz
PSU-OCZ ModXStream 600w
HDD: Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB

 

[WR2]

Hello Vasai;
First thing to check is the RAM.
Run MemTest86+ http://www.memtest.org/

 

[Vasai]

Hi WR2, thanks for your response. At the risk of looking like a total idiot I have to ask which file I download from that website. I have 7-zip for the .zip files but when I tried to extract the file it wouldn't work. Sorry for my ignorance.

 

[lowjack989]

extract---> open folder--->click the .exe app

 

[lowjack989]

make sure to only test like 512MB per instance as I would run four instances at 512MB each as you have a quad core...it just functions better this way for me

 

[Vasai]

Okay, thanks for the advice. But which file do I download, the binary or ISO?

 

[lowjack989]

binary

 

[killersquirel11]

You should also check the event viewer (Control Panel>administrative tools>event viewer), and check what was written to the logs when the computer crashed.

 

[Vasai]

Okay I feel totally inept but when I download the file and try to extract it something is going wrong. The file extracts and then when I try to run it I get an error message saying that the file could not be opened as an archive? Any help would be awesome. This is confusing because I played Starcraft 2 with my friend for about 5 hours last night and about 5 hours today and there were no problems. Then when I tried to run a virus scan from avast antivirus it crashed twice. Could it be a problem with avast? This might make sense because it runs automatic scans and could crash during those. Any thoughts?

 

[lowjack989]

Hmmmm....now that my friend smells of a virus...try Super Anti-Spyware or another virus/spyware program to see what they find...make sure to update the database before scanning with any virus scanner...take it off auto scan also as this will do nothing for while connected to the internet or with programs running....Do a boot-time scan also

 

[lowjack989]

Could also be a bad install of avast try doing an uninstall/reinstall with it

 

[Vasai]

I ran a boot time scan and it didn't come up with anything. I will try doing a reinstall when I get home today, thanks for the help.

 

[lowjack989]

Have you tried more than one anti-virus scanner....AVG, Norton,Super-Anti-Spyware.....Also, you can try this program I use when things get bad its called Glary Utilities..It works so try it out, one click maintenance

 

[Vasai]

I used to have AVG on my laptop but it just seemed to slow it down too much. I read good reviews about avast so I tried it on my laptop and it worked great, I guess not so much this time. I was thinking of trying AVG again or maybe going with a paid solution this time if I really have to. I do have Glary installed, what feature would come into play in this situation?

 

[lowjack989]

AVG does slow you down if your running it active...You can only run one active anti-virus...yet you can run scans from numerous anti-virus programs as you will need to to find all of your viruses...Now, this could just be a bad install try to reinstall Avast and install Glary Utility and run the one click maintenance, before doing all those virus scans

 

[lowjack989]

Hey just thought of something..It may possibly be a corrupted file on your Starcraft 2 install....I am reaching here I know...

 

[lowjack989]

Hey just thought of something..It may possibly be a corrupted file on your Starcraft 2 install....I am reaching here I know...

 

[Vasai]

Yeah my first install of Starcraft didn't work correctly and wouldn't let me update it, so I reinstalled it and it works fine now. So if I'm understanding you correctly about the antivirus, it's good to have more than one program and run scans periodically but have one main one that runs actively all the time? I'm still concerned about the memory too, any advice on my previous problem trying to unzip the file?

 

[lowjack989]

Well as far as the memory goes memtest86 is the way to go as far as testing it goes....Does your MOBO have a MemOK button on it

 

[lowjack989]

http://hcidesign.com/memtest/download.html

Download the zip......extract file with 7-zip.....open the extracted folder--->click the memtest icon under the manual there you go....

 

[Vasai]

Okay cool, I will try that when I get home. As far as the antivirus, are there any others you recommend beyond Super Anti-Spyware? I read that Ad-Aware was really good as well. Would it be beneficial to have all of these on my system or just a couple?

 

[lowjack989]

beneificial yes, cumbersome though as they have to be updated frequently, and you have make sure that you only have one active at a time,avast and anti-spyware play well together, there are others like AVG, Norton, Spybot S&D, Symantec. Did the reinstall of Avast help the crashing? Also, in hind sight is your Video card Overheating? Should have asked this first.

 

[lowjack989]

I should have thought of the Video Card before....

 

[Vasai]

How would I be able to track the video card temps to check?

 

[Vasai]

I got memtest to run finally, it came up with 10 errors immediately so I'll be RMAing them back. Hopefully that will solve everything. Thanks so much for your help lowjack, I'll repost when I get new RAM to test, should have done that first.