Freezing/rebooting problems

[ram1979]

Hi everyone,

I built my own pc about 3 month ago and now I'm am faced with this annoying problem and I hope someone can help me. I'll start off with the components within:

CPU: AMD A8-3850
MOB: Biostar TA75M+ ver. 5.5
RAM: G. Skill F3-10666CL9D-8GBRL 2 x4 GB
PSU: CoolMaster GX 450 Watt
Case: Silverstone Milo ML03B
OS: Windows 7 x64 Ultimate
Monitor: Sony Bravia 42"

Everything worked fine for about a month or two but now I get these random freezes/reboots and every once in a while I get a BSOD. I can't seem to be able to pin point why I'm getting these issues. I updated the BIOS using the bios updater software provided by biostar, I updated the network and chipset drivers from biostar website as well. I even went to the AMD website and ran the driver check tool and updated the drivers that way. I reinstalled the OS over the weekend thinking it might be compatibility issues. I removed one of the memory cards last night thinking it might be a timing issue but no mattter what I do I still get the problems. Sometimes the reboots/freezed appear more often that other times. I noticed that everytime I have utorrent and windows media player open at the same time the reboot appears. I also noticed that when I try to scan for hardware problems the computer freezes. The only theory I have left is that the CPU is not able to handle the video output to an hdtv monitor, so I'm thinking of buying a video card to help out with it, but not very sure if this is going to help.

Can anyone help out and recommend anything else I can try?

Thanks

 

[scout_03]

did you get a error code on bsod

 

[ram1979]

yes I noticed there was a memory.dmp and a mini dump file after and they both pointed to netio.sys, I'll get the network card updated ageain when I get home.

 

[ram1979]

Hi

Thank you very much for replying. The error code I got from the bsod points me towards the network driver netio.sys

012312-13915-01.dmp 23/01/2012 9:51:44 PM SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED 0x1000007e ffffffff`c0000005 fffff880`01401723 fffff880`031bd8d8 fffff880`031bd130 tcpip.sys tcpip.sys+180200 x64 NETIO.SYS+1723 C:\Windows\Minidump\012312-13915-01.dmp 4 15 7601 274,584)

I tried updated the driver through windows and it tells me that it up to date. I'm going to continue swapping the RAM to see if it's a memory issue.

 

[pjmelect]

A freezing computer is nearly always caused by failing memory, BSOD are nearly always caused by Failing memory or bad drivers, Random reboots are nearly always caused by failing memory or a bad power supply. I think that you see the common cause.
Test the memory by downloading and running memtest86 4.0a for a few hours to confirm.

 

[scout_03]

do a memtest could be defective memory http://www.memtest.org/

 

[ram1979]

You guys seem to be right on that matter ... I removed one of the memory sticks when I got home this afternoon and removed the case cover and I haven't had any problems so far. I think I might of done a stupid mistake of installing the PSU with the fan facing downwards which might be the cause of the issue.

Hopefully I didn't burn the memory. Although I ran the windows version of the memory test and it told me that nothing is wrong but I will try memtest the next couple of days. Here's a dumb question will there be any problems if I run memorytest86+ on a 64 bit OS?

 

[scout_03]

no it should work

 

[pjmelect]

Make sure that you run memtest86 version 4.0a, I have found that it is much better at detecting memory errors than version 3.5. It doesn't matter what operating system you are running as memtest86 loads before the operating system on a bootable CD.

 

[ram1979]

Alright so I just finished running the memtest. I downloaded the latest version 4.20 and ran it from usb.

When I had both RAM sticks in memtest froze at Test#5 (Moving blocks). So I decided to run the test one stick at a time and when I ran it against the suspicious defective stick it failed at the exact same spot. When I ran memtest on the other stick the test passed with no errors.

I also tried to use the windows memory test when I had both memory sticks in and the pc froze.

Shouldn't memetest display and error when it encounters it instead of freezing?

Thanks for all the help everyone I think i might contact G. Skill and see if they can replace or repair the stick.

 

[scout_03]

then rma the memory sticks since they are dual kit set

 

[pjmelect]

Memtest86 uses a small amount of memory for itself that can't be tested, and if in the process of testing the memory, the memory memtest86 is using becomes corrupted then the program will freeze or do other unpredictable actions.
I am glad that you have found the cause of your problems.

 

[ram1979]

Best answer selected by ram1979.