Strange, and different, BSOD's on new i7 system.

I just bought a new MB+CPU+MEM+GFX as an upgrade to my computer. Installed a fresh copy of Windows 7 Ultimate x64 on a formatted SSD drive without problems followed by the drivers supplied with the motherboard.

When trying to install Windows 7 SP1 I got the first BSOD; PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA.

After this the Windows installation seemed somewhat corrupt, so I downloaded Windows 7 with SP1 integrated (from MSDN) and installed that instead. This time the first BSOD came during Windows Update.

At this point I removed the graphics card (the only installed extension card) and used the internal one on the motherboard instead to eliminate as many external factors as possible and disconnected all hdd's except the SSD. No change.

At first it seemed that the BSODs came only during Windows Update, but on the third Windows installation attempt I also got it during the installation of Office 2010, and since that also when trying to run the .NET Framework 4 installer (immediately after double-clicking on it).

Now I have experienced around 10 of them over the course of two days. They have been:
CACHE_MANAGER 0x34
MEMORY_MANAGEMENT 0x1A
PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA 0x50
SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION 0x3B
with about the same frequency.

I have run memtest86+ 4.40 for around 8 hours without any problems detected. I have tried prime95 and burn-in tests from SiSoftware Sandra and PCMark without experiencing any problems as well, so it doesn't seem heat- or memory-related to me. I also tried installing windows on a different HDD with the same problems.

I am kind of at a loss here of what can be causing this and any help would be greatly appreciated.

System specs:
CPU: INTEL CORE I7 2600K 3.40GHZ 8MB S-1155
MB: ASUS P8Z68-V PRO Z68 S-1155 ATX
RAM: Corsair 8GB DDR3 XMS3 PC12800 1600MHz (2x4GB)
GFX: ASUS HD6870 DirectCU (or later the built-in on-chip)
PSU: CORSAIR HX 620W

Attached are also the information collected by the tools as per the forum instructions.

Sincerely, Peter.

Thank you for your welcome, and for your reply.

All drivers are installed (now anyway, did yet another Windows installation since I posted this). No exclamation marks in the drivers screen.

What I found out though was that some kind of corruption can occur during disk access, which I suppose can explain all my problems. I noticed that when installing applications, several times I got an error saying that some .cab-file was corrupt and I had to re-download or copy it from one drive to the other.

To test I took a large file (~2GB), and copied it from one disk to another and made a binary comparison. They differed. Copied the same file from/to the same disk, same thing, they differed. This happened on all 4 HDD's on my system, indicating that it is not a problem with the disks themselves but rather with something else.

Right now my guess is either a faulty motherboard or some memory issues, even though memtest86+ does not report any problems. Just to rule something out I ordered another set of memory, this time from the QVL of the motherboard and will try to see if these make any difference. If not I will have to try to get the MB returned as it looks right now and get one in exchange. If this still wouldn't solve the problem I don't know what to do... probably go back to using a pen and parchment and use the new computer for firewood or something.

I'll keep you updated.

Absolutely. Here it comes.

Where can I see which files and/or errors you found? (Looked through the files collected but couldn't see the problems you mentioned... of course I didn't quite know where to look either

But the problem persisted even without the ATI graphics card and any ATI drivers installed. The source of the drivers are the latest from ATI's homepage.

I did a quick-scan with Malwarebytes as suggested, didn't find anything. I will do a full scan as well.

I did however see a whole bunch of event-logs that looked suspicious to me, such as:

a few "The driver detected a controller error on \...\DR0.", and a lot of "An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk1\DR1 during a paging operation." as well as "The system failed to flush data to the transaction log. Corruption may occur.".

Could a graphics driver problem really be the cause of this? And if it is, would that disappear in Safe-mode?

Either way, I would really appreciate it if you could point me to where the the errors and files that you mentioned were listed, and I will have a closer look at these.

Thank you so much again! :)

As it turns out, replacing the memory with a model from the QVL of the motherboard seems to have solved all problems. Whether the memory I had was corrupt or just simply in some way incompatible with the motherboard remains unknown though.

I would like to thank you for your suggestions though. The graphics drivers seem correct since they are installed with the latest version from ATI's homepage and no graphics problems are apparent.

Regards, Peter.