Hey guys, wonder if you can help me out.
I'll try to keep this detailed but concise, having been at it for the better part of two days trying to figure out what's happened to my pc.
Long story short, built my pc nearly 3 years ago (specs at end of post) and has pretty worked fine all the way through until now.
The main problem is that it now crashes every time I use it - usually (but not limited to) when I'm gaming.
At first I thought it was my GPU, but the drivers are all up to date, plus it only crashes on very specific games.
Crash Scenarios
Starcraft 2 - never crashed once during my 5 month hardcore gaming spree.
Borderlands - again never crashed
Deus Ex Human Revolution - never crashed
Skyrim - occasional crashes
Diablo 3 - occasional crashes
However, it now crashes every single time I play League of Legends. There's no particular time frame in which it'll crash. Early as 10 mins or as late as 2 hours in.
Now, I've also crashed while streaming videos online (e.g Youtube) or worst of all, even while copying files onto my portable hard drive (without any other tasks running in background). The latter made me suspect it's not a GPU problem...
The crashes all involve the same symptoms:
Crash Symptoms
Screen freezes up; image on screen distorted.
If sound was playing, the sound becomes distorted too.
Sometimes this will then be followed by BSOD, other times it won't.
Finally, upon reboot, it'll either boot up fine asking if I want to start Windows normally etc, or it'll not boot up at all. When it doesn't boot up, all fans (including CPU fans) are working fine, the motherboard doesn't beep, there's no signal on monitor and peripherals aren't recognised.
Suspecting the RAM may be the cause I have ran several tests using Memtest86+ during the last 2 days.
If you haven't checked out my specs below, I have 2x2gb sticks of RAM and 4 slots on my motherboard.
From what I've read online, I am to believe that if a stick passes the memtest 100% in a given slot, then it is working fine. However, the results I've had are far from clear...
I've just noticed while typing this, that I may have had the 2 sticks sitting in the wrong pair of slots all this time, but I'll let you guys decide whether this has had any effect the crashes.
Basically, on my motherboard the DIMM sockets are positioned as such:
http://benchmarkreviews.com/images/reviews/motherboards/M4A785TD-M/ASUS_M4A785TDM_DIMM_Slots.jpg
The two black slots are, from left to right, A2 and B2, and the blue slots are A1 and B1. I've always had the RAM sticks in the 2 black slots which I now know are A2 and B2. Nevertheless, below are the test results I've had to date.
Memtest86+ Results
Sticks in both A2 and B2 = Last night, I had 1 pass (all 11 tests), then a second test straight after produced a fail. The failure consisted of an endless stream of red error lines rising by the hundred-thousands in mere seconds until I powered down at near a MILLION errors. Today, 2 tests resulted in no errors but simply crashed/froze during the test, and would not boot up like I mentioned earlier in the symptoms sections
1 stick in A2 = DIMM1 & DIMM2 4xpasses each
1 stick in B2 = DIMM1 & DIMM2 both had 2xfails each last night, but 2xpasses each today. Strangley, whenever I got the stream of red error lines during the failed tests last night, if I moved the mouse the PC would instantly crash/freeze.
Sticks in both A1 and B1 = 2xpasses last night.
I don't understand why I keep getting different results each time I run the tests. Can anyone shed some light into this matter?
Overheating?
I don't suspect overheating to be an issue as all fans work just fine and the few times I've managed to reboot successfully after a crash, I've checked the temperature monitor in BIOS which has the temps for both CPU and GPU to be around 40 degrees celcius.
Faulty Motherboard?
Because of the horrifically inconsistent memtest results, I cannot determine whether the motherboard is faulty, or the DIMM(s). What I can say is that, if I take all the RAM sticks out and try to boot up the PC, I get the same results 100% of the time.... It doesn't boot up, all fans (including CPU fans) are working fine, the motherboard doesn't beep, there's no signal on monitor and peripherals aren't recognised - identical to what sometimes happens after a crash. I don't know if this meant to happen or if this is a vital piece of evidence - I have read from several sources that your motherboard is meant to beep if there is no RAM present.
PC Specs
- AMD Phenom II X2 Dual Core 550 3.10 GHz Black Edition (Socket AM3)
- Saffire ATI Radeon HD 4770 512MB GDDR5 PCI-Express
- Asus M4A785TD-M Evo AMD 785G (Socket AM3) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard
- OCS Reaper 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C6 1333MHz Dual Channel
- Coolmaster eXtreme Power 650W Power Supply
- Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA-II 16 MB Cache-OEM
- Samsung SH-S223BBEBE 22x DVD+RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter - OEM
Sorry for the long post, but I'm starting to run out of ideas, so wanted to give you guys as much information to work with.
Hope the info is sufficient, feel free to ask me to elaborate further on any part.
Thanks in advance,
Dave.
I'll try to keep this detailed but concise, having been at it for the better part of two days trying to figure out what's happened to my pc.
Long story short, built my pc nearly 3 years ago (specs at end of post) and has pretty worked fine all the way through until now.
The main problem is that it now crashes every time I use it - usually (but not limited to) when I'm gaming.
At first I thought it was my GPU, but the drivers are all up to date, plus it only crashes on very specific games.
Crash Scenarios
Starcraft 2 - never crashed once during my 5 month hardcore gaming spree.
Borderlands - again never crashed
Deus Ex Human Revolution - never crashed
Skyrim - occasional crashes
Diablo 3 - occasional crashes
However, it now crashes every single time I play League of Legends. There's no particular time frame in which it'll crash. Early as 10 mins or as late as 2 hours in.
Now, I've also crashed while streaming videos online (e.g Youtube) or worst of all, even while copying files onto my portable hard drive (without any other tasks running in background). The latter made me suspect it's not a GPU problem...
The crashes all involve the same symptoms:
Crash Symptoms
Screen freezes up; image on screen distorted.
If sound was playing, the sound becomes distorted too.
Sometimes this will then be followed by BSOD, other times it won't.
Finally, upon reboot, it'll either boot up fine asking if I want to start Windows normally etc, or it'll not boot up at all. When it doesn't boot up, all fans (including CPU fans) are working fine, the motherboard doesn't beep, there's no signal on monitor and peripherals aren't recognised.
Suspecting the RAM may be the cause I have ran several tests using Memtest86+ during the last 2 days.
If you haven't checked out my specs below, I have 2x2gb sticks of RAM and 4 slots on my motherboard.
From what I've read online, I am to believe that if a stick passes the memtest 100% in a given slot, then it is working fine. However, the results I've had are far from clear...
I've just noticed while typing this, that I may have had the 2 sticks sitting in the wrong pair of slots all this time, but I'll let you guys decide whether this has had any effect the crashes.
Basically, on my motherboard the DIMM sockets are positioned as such:
http://benchmarkreviews.com/images/reviews/motherboards/M4A785TD-M/ASUS_M4A785TDM_DIMM_Slots.jpg
The two black slots are, from left to right, A2 and B2, and the blue slots are A1 and B1. I've always had the RAM sticks in the 2 black slots which I now know are A2 and B2. Nevertheless, below are the test results I've had to date.
Memtest86+ Results
Sticks in both A2 and B2 = Last night, I had 1 pass (all 11 tests), then a second test straight after produced a fail. The failure consisted of an endless stream of red error lines rising by the hundred-thousands in mere seconds until I powered down at near a MILLION errors. Today, 2 tests resulted in no errors but simply crashed/froze during the test, and would not boot up like I mentioned earlier in the symptoms sections
1 stick in A2 = DIMM1 & DIMM2 4xpasses each
1 stick in B2 = DIMM1 & DIMM2 both had 2xfails each last night, but 2xpasses each today. Strangley, whenever I got the stream of red error lines during the failed tests last night, if I moved the mouse the PC would instantly crash/freeze.
Sticks in both A1 and B1 = 2xpasses last night.
I don't understand why I keep getting different results each time I run the tests. Can anyone shed some light into this matter?
Overheating?
I don't suspect overheating to be an issue as all fans work just fine and the few times I've managed to reboot successfully after a crash, I've checked the temperature monitor in BIOS which has the temps for both CPU and GPU to be around 40 degrees celcius.
Faulty Motherboard?
Because of the horrifically inconsistent memtest results, I cannot determine whether the motherboard is faulty, or the DIMM(s). What I can say is that, if I take all the RAM sticks out and try to boot up the PC, I get the same results 100% of the time.... It doesn't boot up, all fans (including CPU fans) are working fine, the motherboard doesn't beep, there's no signal on monitor and peripherals aren't recognised - identical to what sometimes happens after a crash. I don't know if this meant to happen or if this is a vital piece of evidence - I have read from several sources that your motherboard is meant to beep if there is no RAM present.
PC Specs
- AMD Phenom II X2 Dual Core 550 3.10 GHz Black Edition (Socket AM3)
- Saffire ATI Radeon HD 4770 512MB GDDR5 PCI-Express
- Asus M4A785TD-M Evo AMD 785G (Socket AM3) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard
- OCS Reaper 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C6 1333MHz Dual Channel
- Coolmaster eXtreme Power 650W Power Supply
- Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA-II 16 MB Cache-OEM
- Samsung SH-S223BBEBE 22x DVD+RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter - OEM
Sorry for the long post, but I'm starting to run out of ideas, so wanted to give you guys as much information to work with.
Hope the info is sufficient, feel free to ask me to elaborate further on any part.
Thanks in advance,
Dave.