BSOD, caused by software?

F

FallDown

Member
Joined
Jul 27, 2012
Posts
5
Hey, new guy here. Gotten a few BSOD's recently and haven't been able to fix them myself so hopefully I can get some help from here. :)

I think the BSOD's are caused by software. I've overclocked my CPU but I've since put it back to normal settings and I've even underclocked my RAM (was never overclocked) but that BSOD's still kept happening. They seem to happen pretty randomly, sometimes during a game, sometimes when it seems I'm not doing anything.


· OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64 (Original and current), wasn't preinstalled.
· Age of system (hardware): About 2-3 months.
· Age of OS installation - have you re-installed the OS?: Reinstalled after some previous problems with USB drivers, it's been over a month since that.
· CPU: Intel core i5 3570k (Ivy Bridge)
· Video Card: Nvidia GeForce GTX 680
· MotherBoard: Asus P8Z77-V
· Power Supply - brand & wattage: XFX 650W
· RAM: 2x4GB G.Skill Ares http://www.gskill.com/products.php?index=472
I've already ran the Driver Verifier and the last 3 minidump files (included in the attachment) were caused by the Driver Verifier. I'd start up my system, it would load for a minute and then give me a BSOD.

Thanks, Sincerely.
 
We'll need those minidumps. Follow the instructions here to provide us all the goodies to start with. Also, what drive do you have?

Often times, however, being this system is so young, you most likely got a bad component in there somewhere. Let's do some hardware tests, shall we?

RAM: Memtest86+ - 7+ passes
CPU: Prime95 - Torture Test; Blend; overnight (9+ hours)
Drives: Seatools - All basic tests aside from the Fix all or the advanced ones.

All of these are included in the UBCD if you prefer a Live CD environment (which is the best environment to test hardware on). Note that Prime95 currently does not work on the latest version of UBCD due to a bug. Also, please provide us temps/voltages using HWInfo with Sensors only option checked. Log two 30-minute instances: one for idle, and one for high load. If you can get the system to crash during high load logging, that's even better.

Like any time installing a new PC or new hardware, you should immediately go to the hardware vendors' websites and download and install any appropriate driver, firmware, and BIOS updates. The ones that come with the hardware themselves are usually very buggy and outdated. Also, you should not be using any software that came with the motherboard, since they have a propensity to be buggy. This includes overclocking software, sensor monitoring software, and "performance enhancement" software and other gimmicky nonsense. Uninstall any existing stuff and only keep (and update) drivers for your motherboard that pertain to its chipset (drive controller, audio, network, etc). This does not apply to USB. Anything with "USB drivers" in it is actually gimmick software in disguise. Windows proprietary USB drivers are sufficient for everything. As for firmware, you especially wanna update firmware for your drive if you have an SSD installed. They almost always come with buggy firmware, and it's imperative to update them ASAP. Lot of people have resolved BSOD woes by doing so.
 
Ah, sorry. I thought I had attached the files. I've attached them now. Also I've ran Prime95 before as well as Aida64 and haven't had any CPU stability issues but I'll run Memtest86+ today.

I've updated the Motherboards drivers and GPU's drivers before and doubt that those could be causing any problems. I've just recently disabled all the software that came with the motherboard (Asus stuff). I'm going to uninstall them completely now. I don't recall if I updated my SSD's firmware but I'll check that and be sure to update it if I already haven't. Thanks for the tips, the requested files should be in the attachment files, maybe you can find something useful there. In the meanwhile I'll run those tests.

Thanks for the quick response.

Edit: I've just crashed again whilst playing World of Warcraft. The error was for MEMORY_MANAGEMENT

I'm attaching the dump file for it.

Edit 2: I forgot to mention, what comes to my hard drives I have a Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB and a Samsung 830 128gb SSD. The SSD has the latest firmware.
 

Attachments

I've looked at your crashdumps and the DV-enabled ones all showed up with your Creative HAL driver from 2011 being the culprit. Either update it or remove it, as I've heard from others of this thing crashing their system.

Of course not sure if this is actually the one responsible for causing your BSODs, but if DV caught it, and for a legitimate cause (in this cause it is), then you'd best deal with it. Keep DV on afterwards to see if BSODs recur.
 
Vir Gnarus said:
I've looked at your crashdumps and the DV-enabled ones all showed up with your Creative HAL driver from 2011 being the culprit. Either update it or remove it, as I've heard from others of this thing crashing their system.

Of course not sure if this is actually the one responsible for causing your BSODs, but if DV caught it, and for a legitimate cause (in this cause it is), then you'd best deal with it. Keep DV on afterwards to see if BSODs recur.
Click to expand...

Okay, I've read somewhere else as well that Creative drivers have been known to cause some BSOD's especially on newer machines as their drivers can be quite outdated. I'll see about removing it and seeing if that fixes the problem.
 
Hey, crashed again. I'm attaching the dump file. Driver verifier was on this time and the pc had been running for about 3 hours. Before I removed the creative drivers it would crash within a minute with driver verifier. I wasn't on the computer when the crash happened but when I got back the PC hadn't rebooted, but rather was shut down completely. Am I wrong in thinking that the computer reboots after a BSOD? Anyway I ran memtest86+ for an hour before and it passed twice. If the dump file doesn't point to anything else I'll run more CPU stress tests and more passes on Memtest86+

I'll also be removing my soundcard completely, as it's pretty much useless now anyway.
 

Attachments

Hello FallDown,

The latest attached dump is a 1A: MEMORY_MANAGEMENT bugcheck. It is verifier enabled, however it did not flag any drivers, so it's likely we're dealing with a hardware issue here, especially with the consistency of memory management.

I'm going to recommend running Memtest86+

Memtest86+:

Download Memtest86+ here:

http://www.memtest.org/

Which should I download?

You can either download the pre-compiled ISO that you would burn to a CD and then boot from the CD, or you can download the auto-installer for the USB key. What this will do is format your USB drive, make it a bootable device, and then install the necessary files. Both do the same job, it's just up to you which you choose, or which you have available (whether it's CD or USB).

How Memtest works:

Memtest86 writes a series of test patterns to most memory addresses, reads back the data written, and compares it for errors.

The default pass does 9 different tests, varying in access patterns and test data. A tenth test, bit fade, is selectable from the menu. It writes all memory with zeroes, then sleeps for 90 minutes before checking to see if bits have changed (perhaps because of refresh problems). This is repeated with all ones for a total time of 3 hours per pass.

Many chipsets can report RAM speeds and timings via SPD (Serial Presence Detect) or EPP (Enhanced Performance Profiles), and some even support changing the expected memory speed. If the expected memory speed is overclocked, Memtest86 can test that memory performance is error-free with these faster settings.

Some hardware is able to report the "PAT status" (PAT: enabled or PAT: disabled). This is a reference to Intel Performance acceleration technology; there may be BIOS settings which affect this aspect of memory timing.

This information, if available to the program, can be displayed via a menu option.

Any other questions, they can most likely be answered by reading this great guide here:

http://forum.canardpc.com/threads/28864-FAQ-please-read-before-posting
Click to expand...

No less than ~7-8 passes. This will take multiple hours, so run before work or sleep would be a good option.

Regards,

Patrick
 
E-Peen said:
Hello FallDown,

The latest attached dump is a 1A: MEMORY_MANAGEMENT bugcheck. It is verifier enabled, however it did not flag any drivers, so it's likely we're dealing with a hardware issue here, especially with the consistency of memory management.

I'm going to recommend running Memtest86+
No less than ~7-8 passes. This will take multiple hours, so run before work or sleep would be a good option.

Regards,

Patrick
Click to expand...

Okay, I'll run memtest86+ over night, I also have different RAM I can test if it still keeps crashing. I'll report back later.

Thanks for the quick response.
 

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