Confused about how I obtained a BSOD

Well, I goofed with that...I ran Tuneup Utilities in hopes of cleaning something that may have been the issue, and I deleted those.

However, I have a question for the time being that may be able to help: when I ram Windows Memory Diagnostic over the weekend and it said I had a hardware issue, though I stupidly assumed it was some driver issue. However, I had a feeling, and not having the time this week to monitor lots of tests, I opened up my PC and noticed one of the RAM cards (the closest to the CPU) had a layer of dust on it. I took out the card, cleaned it, put it back in, and ran Windows Memory Diagnostic again. However, no hardware issue was noted now.

This is where my question lies: could my issue, this whole time, been caused by RAM? As I've mentioned, there's no specific way to continue to repeat the method to get a blue screen, as it quite literally is random. I've noticed it happens when I have programs like Skype and Chrome active and my PC usually is on for a while, and they use a lot of memory...could it be the dusty RAM card and the memory usage that cause the PC to BSOD? Because I don't have a clue what driver, if any, could sporadically start causing issues last Saturday and not earlier, as my PC is only 18 months old. The only component I ever changed in it was the GPU, and it works fine.

Foffy said:

Well, I goofed with that...I ran Tuneup Utilities in hopes of cleaning something that may have been the issue, and I deleted those. Win 7 doesnt need tune up utilities and in fact does it on its on

However, I have a question for the time being that may be able to help: when I ram Windows Memory Diagnostic over the weekend and it said I had a hardware issue, though I stupidly assumed it was some driver issue. However, I had a feeling, and not having the time this week to monitor lots of tests, I opened up my PC and noticed one of the RAM cards (the closest to the CPU) had a layer of dust on it. I took out the card, cleaned it, put it back in, and ran Windows Memory Diagnostic again. However, no hardware issue was noted now. windows diagnostics doesnt stress the ram enough we prefer memtest.

This is where my question lies: could my issue, this whole time, been caused by RAM? As I've mentioned, there's no specific way to continue to repeat the method to get a blue screen, as it quite literally is random. I've noticed it happens when I have programs like Skype and Chrome active and my PC usually is on for a while, and they use a lot of memory...could it be the dusty RAM card and the memory usage that cause the PC to BSOD? Because I don't have a clue what driver, if any, could sporadically start causing issues last Saturday and not earlier, as my PC is only 18 months old. The only component I ever changed in it was the GPU, and it works fine.

Easily could be ram thats why we suggest you run memtest.

Hey there. Seems I'm still getting some messages, but perhaps I've fallen upon what the driver issue may be! I've noticed that the past few times I played a specific game with my PS3 controller, followed by browsing in Chrome, I got a BSOD. However, feeling like it was a hunch, I decided to tamper a bit further (the program was MotionJoy) and the system had another BSOD as I was tampering with the program. This has never happened before, so perhaps now with tampering with it my system has finally pinpointed the culprit. The driver in fact shows up in the most recent crash logs. Could it honestly be the source of all of my problems? And if so, why did it start acting up this month when I got a new GPU? I've installed MotionJoy way back in 2010. When I installed it back then, the driver was never certified, so I had to enable Test Mode on my PC. Could that too have added to the sudden appearance of BSODs? As I've said before, all that's different with my PC in the last three or so weeks is my GPU, which works fine. I noticed my system performed safer when I disabled AVG, Daemon Tools, and Motion Joy to load up at bootup.

Foffy said:

Hey there. Seems I'm still getting some messages, but perhaps I've fallen upon what the driver issue may be! I've noticed that the past few times I played a specific game with my PS3 controller, followed by browsing in Chrome, I got a BSOD. However, feeling like it was a hunch, I decided to tamper a bit further (the program was MotionJoy) and the system had another BSOD as I was tampering with the program. This has never happened before, so perhaps now with tampering with it my system has finally pinpointed the culprit. The driver in fact shows up in the most recent crash logs. Could it honestly be the source of all of my problems? And if so, why did it start acting up this month when I got a new GPU? I've installed MotionJoy way back in 2010. When I installed it back then, the driver was never certified, so I had to enable Test Mode on my PC. Could that too have added to the sudden appearance of BSODs? As I've said before, all that's different with my PC in the last three or so weeks is my GPU, which works fine. I noticed my system performed safer when I disabled AVG, Daemon Tools, and Motion Joy to load up at bootup.

In post 2 we asked you to run memtest, and driver verifier. We have seen nothing that says you have run BOTH.

The most recent crashes were still caused by a memory exception.

Your self help is making it more difficult and will result in it taking longer.