Random Freeze / Crash!

[Brutusguy]

Hi all,

Well i hope i can get some answer or tips here as i ran out of options to why my system keep hanging / freezing / crashing at Random!


But before i begin here is my system specs :

Compiled2-2.jpg picture by BrutusKiddo - Photobucket

- Intel Core i5 2500K
- MSI P67A GD55 Mainboard (Just RMAed , B3 rev)
- Xigmatek Balder CPU Cooler
- 8GB DDRIII team Elite 1333mhz
- MSI GTX 480 Lightning 1.5GB
- Creative XFi Fatal1ty Champion Series PCIE Soundcard with I/O Panel
- Western Digital 1TB HDD
- Western Digital 500GB HDD
- Silverstone ST60F-P 600W PSU


OK here is the summary of what had happened and is happening till now. any help or tips will be GREATLY appreciated!

- Bought this computer around late last year . 2011
- Updated the drivers , BIOS, windows 7, Direct X , etc
- Everything seemed to be running fine , in fact it was running like a dream machine
- About 3 months down the road, the system starts to behave strangely, such as artifacts keeps on appearing especially on Battlefield 3 game (Single and Multiplayer)
- Keeps going on for like 1-2 months and i searched on forums and all, found out could be bad drivers or overheating problems on my Graphic card.
- Ran Driversweeper and kept changing nvidia drivers to see whic one work best, even lowered the BF3 game setting to LOW (thats right LOW on this machine -__- )
- Seemed to run fine for a couple of weeks, after which problem STARTS AGAIN.
- By now suspected failing graphics card so went to distributor for rma / testing.
- BTW i ran MSI afterburner and GPU Z, NO REPORTS OF OVERHEATING OR SUCH THING, CARD SEEMED FINE.
- Sent the card to distributor, they did some testing with Furmark, OCCT. 3D mark, etc and claimed card is fine.
- Brought the car back , reinstalled on my machine and SUPRISINGLY no problems for like 3-4 months.



Fast forward to year 2012.



- The Problem COMES BACK, OMG.
- This time its more severe.
- Keeps getting the errors such as ""Display driver NVIDIA Windows Kernel Mode Driver, Version 296.10 stopped responding and has successfully recovered"
- Ran Driversweeper and tried older drivers, same thing.
- Underclocked my MSI GTX 480 , same thing.
- This time, the artifacts appeared on almost ALL games and would require hard reset, AT TIME ARTIFACTS APPEAR ON BIOS AS WELL!
- I confirm this would be my graphic card dying out on me, and thi time i will bring to distributor again.
- Brought my graphic Card, along with my mainboard , ram and cpu for them to test.
- distributor cited that mainboard faulty (not gfx?) and replaced new mainboard together with new rams.
- Brought Home those stuffs, reassembled everything and ran driver sweeper in safe mode to remove all drivers and reinstall all drivers .
- everything seemed fine, tested with furmark, occt, etc.
- rebooted PC and cant wait to play BF3.
- Got in Battlelog and chosse a multiplayer game.
- The moment i spawned, and took ONE STEP, the pc FROZE. No , no artifact or wadever, just frozed.
- I got pissed off and rebooted the PC and tried again. Same ***.
- I tried to test with other games to see if BF3 is the problem , since Frostbite 2 is a bitch.
- MW3, BFBC2, BF3, MOH 2010, Metro 2033 ALL froze the moment map/levels are loaded and im about to move my character. WTH!EE@*EY@E

OH IT GETS WORSE FROM THERE.

- I gave up two days ago. never touch my computer for 2 days.
- I decided to go online to email distributor and tell my sorry story to them.
- As i was online, just surfing the net, nothign else, my PC froze. WTH?
- Rebooted, same ***.

Now my PC is weird. It crashes when it wants to , how fast it wants to. Sometimes i can surf for a whole day , sometimes, a 5 min web surfing ends in a freeze. I had not played any games )=


Please. I need your help.distributor aint helping much )=

To Mods, users, sorry if the story is way too long or too much bold , underline is used. Need to emphasize on certain portions / informations.


Seriously I do not know what to do anymore. BTW awaiting new GTX 480 from distributor, out of stocks at the moment.

Also if you guys need any information please do PM me, i will desperately answer you asap!

Sorry for my bad english

 

[treefrog07]

Did you ever use memtest86+ to test your RAM for errors? If not, try that because a lot of BSODs are caused by bad RAM or bad RAM settings. Use the BIOS to set your RAM settings to those shown on the RAM stickers: speed (e.g. 1600MHz), latencies (e.g., 9-9-9-24), and voltage (e.g. 1.5V), leave all the other settings on AUTO. Test each stick separately, then test them together.

Download the bootable file (CD or USB stick), put on the media, and boot to memtest86+. Let it complete its testing. It could take up to an hour if you have large RAM. ANY errors and your RAM is bad. RMA or replace it and run the test on the new RAM.

 

[smorizio]

also check in the bios that you have the onboard sound off if your using a soundblaster card. you could be having an irq issue if you have two sound cards running.

 

[Brutusguy]

Hi there all, thanks for the input.

I forgot to mention that i did turn off on board sound to avoid hardware conflict.
I also did memtest on all the mem sticks, one by one, slot by slot.
Results : no problem with either.

The hardwares had received druers updates and firmware / BIOs updates as well

Im lost to what to do..

 

[Brutusguy]

Did you ever use memtest86+ to test your RAM for errors? If not, try that because a lot of BSODs are caused by bad RAM or bad RAM settings. Use the BIOS to set your RAM settings to those shown on the RAM stickers: speed (e.g. 1600MHz), latencies (e.g., 9-9-9-24), and voltage (e.g. 1.5V), leave all the other settings on AUTO. Test each stick separately, then test them together.

Download the bootable file (CD or USB stick), put on the media, and boot to memtest86+. Let it complete its testing. It could take up to an hour if you have large RAM. ANY errors and your RAM is bad. RMA or replace it and run the test on the new RAM.

Btw treefrog, my system freezes and comes to a halt with no response..

I did not encounter any BSOD...

 

[Brutusguy]

Did you ever use memtest86+ to test your RAM for errors? If not, try that because a lot of BSODs are caused by bad RAM or bad RAM settings. Use the BIOS to set your RAM settings to those shown on the RAM stickers: speed (e.g. 1600MHz), latencies (e.g., 9-9-9-24), and voltage (e.g. 1.5V), leave all the other settings on AUTO. Test each stick separately, then test them together.

Download the bootable file (CD or USB stick), put on the media, and boot to memtest86+. Let it complete its testing. It could take up to an hour if you have large RAM. ANY errors and your RAM is bad. RMA or replace it and run the test on the new RAM.

Btw cud it be that my gtx 480 is killing my psu?

I read some articles on the net stating that the card can be straining the psu, esp the 12v rail..

Now , wth is a rail???

Sorry for the noob question

 

[Brutusguy]

The technician mentioned that after in depth testing of my rig, they found artifacts n crashing issues (duh?)

The technician then pulled out my gfx and voila time ard it causes same symptoms on their test rig. (why the previous two test with them show negative failure??)

Anyways, they are out of msi gtx 480 lightning n thus i will have to wait for 6-8 weeks for rma?!

But the tech guy managed to talk to the management n they decided to loan a reference gyx 480 to me (usually the practice is to loan a low end gfx)

Well at least i can have a safe mind (hopefully that is the root cause of all probs, my msi gtx 480)

But nonetheless, do u guys think i should upgrade my psu?

 

[Brutusguy]

Oh i forget to mention that i brought my rig to the distributor n thy were willing to test it for several days

 

[treefrog07]

Silverstone has a great PSU reputation, wait until you get the replacement GPU. If you have no further issues, leave the PSU alone. You should really thank the distributor, he went a lot further in helping you than one would normally expect.

 

[donzgod]

I had artifacts on my card recently, small green ones during random games - had to upgrade the cards firmware. HD5970. Then I had freezes, replaced everrrrrrything PSU, CPU, mobo, ram, hard drive arrangements, hard drives blah blah - faulty PCI-e slot on the motherboard. Good luck figuring it out man~

 

[Brutusguy]

So here we are with another update (and its not a good one sadly)

Well i took back my pc last saturday, which i was loaned with a reference nvidia gtx 480 (yup reference from nvidia themselves!)

Got home n powered up the system, everything works smoothly now yay!
Gamed for like a whole day , from 4pm till 3am (i missed my system mind u)

Rested for a day and powered up my system on sunday ard noon.

1) played games like bf3, mw3, minecraft, etc for 3 hours no problem..
2) at ard 4pm while playing bf 3 , my system FROZE AGAIN?!
3) i got pissed, restart com n tried again. 30 mins in bf 3 n it froze again!! Omg
4) reset same thing happen n this go in for like 5 times
5) again, temperature log of cpu gpu seems well below overheating, gpu below 75 cpu below 67
6) even it crashes at minecraft n surfing the net!
7) one time was surfing net to get solution, bluescreen came up, minidump issue.. So i guees its ram?

So i did some testing..

1) furmark - passed
2) prime95 - blend mode with high evrrything, left overnight till 6am today - passed
3) 3d mark - pass but low score compared to same setup score online -_-
4) pc mark - pass same thing, low score
5) memtest - passed! Weird!!

So was could be the problem? )= im sad. Furious here as well!

Rma motherboard
Rma ram
Rma graphics card (thos not given back using ref gtx 480 by corbell)

Wad else could be causing this problem? Help me out guys PLEASE

 

[Brutusguy]

Guys heres an update!


I think i FINALLY found my answers to the BSOD!

IT's my RAZER lycosa and mouse!!! #!R#!@%#!%

take a look at this

http://www.techsupportforum.com/forums/f299/bsod-bsod-bsod-642476.html#post3713852

so any idea how to get alternative drivers? i dun think my mouse is running at highest DPI i uninstalled the drivers yesterday and its a lil slower response!

 

[Brutusguy]

First, Do you have anything overclocked? What are your voltages in the bios for the cpu and dram. If it's at auto pull up CPU-z, AIDA64, or some monitoring software and check them there. 67c is hot for the 2500k to be getting just gaming, especially if you are stock and with decent aftermarket cooler. That would raise a huge red flag for me.

How many passes of memtest+ did you do? I would let it get through a few before counting out the memory. Make sure that the memory is clocked and timed to its stock settings in the bios as well.

Second, you could try to pull out the sound blaster, wipe the drivers, and run the onboard sound to see if it is the issue. It's kind of been ignored this whole process. Creative drivers/hardware have been known to cause issues in the past.

Your 3dmark and PCmark scores will be comparitively low unless you are doing decent overclocks. I have a 2500k @ 4.5, 8gb 2133 ddr3 with 10-10-10-28 1T timing, and a GTX 580 @ 830/2100 and usually gives me the equal or better status with a bigass red x next to it. Only my lady's Phenom II/GT 240 build reports a better than comparable rating (weird, right?).

Firts of all its a typo its 57c hahaha

2ndly i did have lotsa other updates on another forum...

but recommended to view the one from techsupport forums

BSOD BSOD BSOD. - Tech Support Forum

 

[Brutusguy]

Anyone?