Keep getting BSOD - Help!

[Ben Greensill]

Right guys. First of all, I just wanted to say how helpful everyone on these forums is! Thanks a lot for helping those of us who are less savvy with computers.

So about a week ago I started getting BSOD. I downloaded a program called "BlueScreenView" which helped me find out the cause of my Blue Screen. Turned out it was something to do with my OS. So I immediately purchased a new Windows 7 Home Premium, completely formatted both of my Hard Drives (I have a 120GB SSD and a 2TB HDD). I then installed the new OS. One thing I should note here is that the OS took about 6 attempts before it would install as I kept getting an error saying that it couldn't complete the installation because of missing data.

Then I left my PC on all day (about 8/9 hours) whilst downloading all of my Steam games onto my SSD. I get home, and everything is fine. Then a couple of hours ago I got another blue screen.

I checked the event log and it said BugCheckCode 0x80 which I googled and found out to be something to do with the Hardware. I should point out that I got this error around 5 minutes after installing the drivers for my AMD Radeon 6770 Graphics Card. I had also just begun downloading another game which I was saving to my HDD, rather than my SSD.

After checking the Event Log, I quickly downloaded Blue Screen View again to look at the cause of my blue screen, but for some reason, the Blue screen wasn't being displayed, which I think means that there was no "Memory Dump" when my PC crashed.

Another issue which may be related is that after my Blue Screen, I restarted my PC to let Windows update. It got to update 36 of 47 before freezing. I left it half an hour to see if it would carry on, but it didn't so I restarted my PC.


I really am at the limits of my PC knowledge now, does anyone know of anything else I can do to help me find the cause of my BSOD so I can put a stop to it?

 

[clutchc]

The first thing to suspect with BSOD issues is memory errors. Why not run memtest for at least one full pass on each stick separately to eliminate that possibility. Make a bootable CD from the .ISO file and boot to memtest.
http://www.memtest.org/

Then take a look at this Win7 installation guide for SSDs. See if anything you forgot to do would make a difference. There are a few things you need to do when installing Win7 to a SSD that are different from a HDD. You may want to start over with a fresh OS install following the guide once you prove out the memory.
http://www.computing.net/howtos/show/solid-state-drive-ssd-tweaks-for-windows-7/552.html

 

[Ben Greensill]

The first thing to suspect with BSOD issues is memory errors. Why not run memtest for at least one full pass on each stick separately to eliminate that possibility. Make a bootable CD from the .ISO file and boot to memtest.
http://www.memtest.org/

Then take a look at this Win7 installation guide for SSDs. See if anything you forgot to do would make a difference. There are a few things you need to do when installing Win7 to a SSD that are different from a HDD. You may want to start over with a fresh OS install following the guide once you prove out the memory.
http://www.computing.net/howtos/show/solid-state-drive-ssd-tweaks-for-windows-7/552.html

Thanks so much for your help. I've managed to run the memtest. Pardon my lack of knowledge but how do I know whether or not my RAM is the cause of my Blue Screens from the test? I ran the test and the error counter topped 100,000 errors (which sounds pretty bad to me).

I've also removed my SSD for now and reinstalled my OS on my HDD. I've had 1 blue screen since then, so it seems my SSD isn't to blame.

 

[clutchc]

Memtest should complete at least one full pass with NO errors. Any errors at all indicate a defective memory stick. That's why it's best to run it with only one stick at a time in the PC... so you can determine which stick(s) is bad. As soon as you see it display even a single memory error, you don't need to go any further. the RAM stick is defective.

Btw, if only one stick is defective, you may still want to buy a new matched pair to replace it and its mate in the same channel. The reason is because dual channel memory systems require the pairs of sticks in the matching color slots be IDENTICAL in timings, speed, etc. So if one stick is bad, replace both together.