Intermittent System Lockups - Windows BSOD Dump

For the last year or so, (possibly ever since I've built this computer ) I have been experiencing intermittent lock ups while doing regular web browsing / excel tasks. Generally, the system will "lock up" for around 30 seconds to a minute and then resume functioning as normal. During this lock up any window I click will fade white until the lock up ends about a minute later.

This was only a minor annoyance and I would see it happen about 3 or 4 times over the course of an 8 hour workday.

Starting yesterday however, the system no longer returns from the lockup. Instead, it stays "hung" for 1 or 2 minutes before completely blacking out and restarting. For whatever reason the restart also seems to fail most of the time and I have to manually turn the computer off and back on. I've tried doing some basic memory testing, psu testing, and experimenting with the different applications I'm running with no luck.

While I'm not directly seeing the BSOD, I do have logs in the windows event viewer corresponding to the lockup times that state it is a Blue Screen Event.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

Might not help much, but the Whocrashed info:

On Thu 4/4/2013 1:48:00 AM GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\Windows\Minidump\040313-17425-01.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: ntoskrnl.exe (nt+0x75C40)
Bugcheck code: 0xF4 (0x3, 0xFFFFFA800DB11B30, 0xFFFFFA800DB11E10, 0xFFFFF80003D84470)
Error: CRITICAL_OBJECT_TERMINATION
file path: C:\Windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
company: Microsoft Corporation
description: NT Kernel & System
Bug check description: This indicates that a process or thread crucial to system operation has unexpectedly exited or been terminated.
This appears to be a typical software driver bug and is not likely to be caused by a hardware problem. This problem might be caused by a thermal issue.
The crash took place in the Windows kernel. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver that cannot be identified at this time.



On Thu 4/4/2013 12:32:41 AM GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\Windows\Minidump\040313-19749-01.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: ntoskrnl.exe (nt+0x75C40)
Bugcheck code: 0xF4 (0x3, 0xFFFFFA800F302490, 0xFFFFFA800F302770, 0xFFFFF80003DDE470)
Error: CRITICAL_OBJECT_TERMINATION
file path: C:\Windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
company: Microsoft Corporation
description: NT Kernel & System
Bug check description: This indicates that a process or thread crucial to system operation has unexpectedly exited or been terminated.
This appears to be a typical software driver bug and is not likely to be caused by a hardware problem. This problem might be caused by a thermal issue.
The crash took place in the Windows kernel. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver that cannot be identified at this time.



On Wed 4/3/2013 10:19:28 PM GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\Windows\Minidump\040313-16894-01.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: ntoskrnl.exe (nt+0x75C40)
Bugcheck code: 0xF4 (0x3, 0xFFFFFA800F2C7B30, 0xFFFFFA800F2C7E10, 0xFFFFF80003DDB470)
Error: CRITICAL_OBJECT_TERMINATION
file path: C:\Windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
company: Microsoft Corporation
description: NT Kernel & System
Bug check description: This indicates that a process or thread crucial to system operation has unexpectedly exited or been terminated.
This appears to be a typical software driver bug and is not likely to be caused by a hardware problem. This problem might be caused by a thermal issue.
The crash took place in the Windows kernel. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver that cannot be identified at this time.



On Wed 4/3/2013 8:10:00 PM GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\Windows\Minidump\040313-17612-01.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: ntoskrnl.exe (nt+0x75C40)
Bugcheck code: 0xF4 (0x3, 0xFFFFFA800F0FF600, 0xFFFFFA800F0FF8E0, 0xFFFFF80003DDC470)
Error: CRITICAL_OBJECT_TERMINATION
file path: C:\Windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
company: Microsoft Corporation
description: NT Kernel & System
Bug check description: This indicates that a process or thread crucial to system operation has unexpectedly exited or been terminated.
This appears to be a typical software driver bug and is not likely to be caused by a hardware problem. This problem might be caused by a thermal issue.
The crash took place in the Windows kernel. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver that cannot be identified at this time.



On Wed 4/3/2013 7:04:26 PM GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\Windows\Minidump\040313-16754-01.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: ntoskrnl.exe (nt+0x75C40)
Bugcheck code: 0xF4 (0x3, 0xFFFFFA800F124910, 0xFFFFFA800F124BF0, 0xFFFFF80003D84470)
Error: CRITICAL_OBJECT_TERMINATION
file path: C:\Windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
company: Microsoft Corporation
description: NT Kernel & System
Bug check description: This indicates that a process or thread crucial to system operation has unexpectedly exited or been terminated.
This appears to be a typical software driver bug and is not likely to be caused by a hardware problem. This problem might be caused by a thermal issue.
The crash took place in the Windows kernel. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver that cannot be identified at this time.



On Wed 4/3/2013 5:07:35 PM GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\Windows\Minidump\040313-16161-01.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: ntoskrnl.exe (nt+0x75C40)
Bugcheck code: 0xF4 (0x3, 0xFFFFFA800F192B30, 0xFFFFFA800F192E10, 0xFFFFF80003D94470)
Error: CRITICAL_OBJECT_TERMINATION
file path: C:\Windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
company: Microsoft Corporation
description: NT Kernel & System
Bug check description: This indicates that a process or thread crucial to system operation has unexpectedly exited or been terminated.
This appears to be a typical software driver bug and is not likely to be caused by a hardware problem. This problem might be caused by a thermal issue.
The crash took place in the Windows kernel. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver that cannot be identified at this time.



On Wed 4/3/2013 3:44:07 PM GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\Windows\Minidump\040313-16068-01.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: ntoskrnl.exe (nt+0x75C40)
Bugcheck code: 0xF4 (0x3, 0xFFFFFA800DB40B30, 0xFFFFFA800DB40E10, 0xFFFFF80003DE4470)
Error: CRITICAL_OBJECT_TERMINATION
file path: C:\Windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
company: Microsoft Corporation
description: NT Kernel & System
Bug check description: This indicates that a process or thread crucial to system operation has unexpectedly exited or been terminated.
This appears to be a typical software driver bug and is not likely to be caused by a hardware problem. This problem might be caused by a thermal issue.
The crash took place in the Windows kernel. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver that cannot be identified at this time.



On Wed 4/3/2013 2:34:17 PM GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\Windows\Minidump\040313-16130-01.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: ntoskrnl.exe (nt+0x75C40)
Bugcheck code: 0xF4 (0x3, 0xFFFFFA800F366B30, 0xFFFFFA800F366E10, 0xFFFFF80003D81470)
Error: CRITICAL_OBJECT_TERMINATION
file path: C:\Windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
company: Microsoft Corporation
description: NT Kernel & System
Bug check description: This indicates that a process or thread crucial to system operation has unexpectedly exited or been terminated.
This appears to be a typical software driver bug and is not likely to be caused by a hardware problem. This problem might be caused by a thermal issue.
The crash took place in the Windows kernel. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver that cannot be identified at this time.

Thanks for the help! I have attached the MSINFO32 file.

Overnight, I read through several pages of other's BSOD's on here and tried to investigate whether some of the solutions that worked for others might be applicable to my machine as well.

I ended up:

• Updating the Nvidia GT430 drivers for both of these cards I have installed.
• Uninstalling Daemon Tools and also ensuring that the SPTD functionality was removed.
• Doing a sfc /scannow with no integrity violations found.
• Doing an SSD health check- came back fine.
• Disabled Windows Error Reporting- didn't help, renabled.
• Ran Memtest86+ throughout the night (5 total passes) with no errors.
• Disabled the auto overclocking functionality on the Motherboard. (also updated the Bios)
• Disabled all Firefox addons.
• Ran full Malwarebytes & MSE scans

A couple other things to mention:

Since it's a nonstandard setup, I should point out that I am using two PCIe GT430 video cards each dual dvi in addition to the onboard ATI HD Radeon 4250 DVI out. This pushes 5 monitors total and as such I have *both* ATI and Nvidia drivers installed. I do remember when I built this computer (18 months ago) having a decent bit of trouble getting both sets of video drivers to work together at the same time with no issues, but since then it hasn't seemed to be the source of much trouble. I don't game or do any other graphic intensive processes with this setup. I also investigated my PSU to see if I was over burdening it, but the online calculators have put me in the clear by a couple hundreds watts and I don't seem to have any other symptoms of a failing PSU.

I am considering doing a system restore to my last restore point (March 27th, I believe) as this was the last day that the computer wasn't locking up and crashing completely. (Only doing the previous 30-60 second lockups sporadically during the day.)

Thanks again for the help!

I think you may have nailed it!

Updated my Crucial M4 SSD firmware from 002 (apparently a 2011 release) to 07H and it's been smooth sailing for the last 3+ hours. Looks like I was encountering this ridiculous 5000 hour bug: BSOD Crucial M4 - Crucial Community

My SMART data shows me right in that range as well. Yesterday, I tried updating the driver for the SSD, but Windows said it was current. Stupid me for not realizing that the driver being up to date doesn't mean the firmware is!

I'm still back to my intermittent minute long pauses, but I might investigate that more thoroughly later. After the work day, I still plan on updating the Seagate firmware as well as uninstalling the raid controller.

If all is smooth sailing, I'll get this marked as solved in a day or so.

Thanks again for the great help. It's very much appreciated!

Definitely back to normal now. Glancing at my crash logs- they were indeed occurring almost every full hour inline with the symptoms of the 5000 firmware bug.

Thanks again for the help!