Windows 7: BSOD Stop 124

Ok ive read the threads and resigned myself that the blue screens are a result of bad hardware. I checked the ram and removed first one chip then two and had 8 straight days of no crashes... Until i turned the comp off to replace a ram chip and wouldnt you know it they sent me the wrong brand. So i turned on my comp to call them and on startup the computer crashes again after 8 days of no problems with virtually the same error code as before.

Now barring the possibility that i have 3 bad ram sticks what are some ways to tell if its the mother board (M4A78T-E Asus), my graphic cards (GTX 295 and GTS 250), my cpu(AMD Phenom IIX4 965 Proccessor), or my 2 tb hard drive?

I just ran burnintest on my 3d video cpu and ram with no errors after 15 minutes at 100%. So im really not suspecting them as the culprit anymore.

I have two leads im really looking for some guided insight on. First the possibility that the hard drive is faulty and sending bad data when the comp first starts up or finishes up installing a program. Could it be that the same bit of memory is trying to be written to the same ram address twice causing a bsod? If so are there any tests that i could run that may trigger the crash? Second, could my mother board be overclocking itself with one of its high performance settings? It goes by three settings Rocket, Airplane, Race Car. Those are in descending order however all 3 maximize stability. I read that the stop 124 BSOD is very common in machines that are overclocked. So am i unknowingly ocing this computer?

All drivers are up to date and as i said the crashes usually occur at start up or at the end of installing a new program. Currently i am operating with 4 gb of ram. Ill post the dump files but im really looking for extended knowledge on what could be causing this crash before i end up having to rebuild a computer piece by piece.

Hi and welcome

we really need the actual dmp file. use these to find and upload it. http://www.sevenforums.com/crash-loc...d-problem.html

thanks

Ken

STOP 0x124's are hardware errors - they don't mean that the hardware is broken, just that it's not working right.

Well, you may ask, isn't that what "broken" means? It ain't working right?

No, that's not quite right. The hardware can be working correctly, but a driver can be feeding it bad commands. Or, it can be that the hardware doesn't know how to interpret commands from Windows7, but can do it from other, earlier versions of Windows.

These are compatibility issues, and are most often seen when upgrading a system to Windows 7. They can either be compatibility with the hardware, or with the drivers. It can also be due to corrupted/broken drivers - but there's some disagreement on this among analysts.

Now, your 2 leads aren't quite that simple. They involve hardware, drivers, Windows, and maybe even compatibility issues.

For the hard drive, this entails physically checking the hard drive and it's connections, then the physical controller on the motherboard. Then you have to check the stuff that controls the boot and then check the file system on the hard drive. You can run these free hardware diagnostics:
And can run this to check the file system on the hard drive:
As for the Motherboard overclock, there should be a setting in your BIOS to reset everything to FailSafe or Optimized. Do that and you'll be at the recommended settings for the board. One of the benefits of the later versions of Windows is that they are able to communicate with some of the BIOS stuff - so you'll have to be concerned not only with the BIOS settings, but also with the settings in Windows.

Finally, we'll still need the dump files as zigzag3143 has requested. They sometimes have clues in them (such as finding outdated drivers).

Sorry, thought i had the correct dump files posted hope these are them i followed the directions.

As you can see from the dump files the crashes were fairly consistent up to the 8th ( i was driving on the 2 and 3rd and didnt set up my comp till later that week which is why there were no crashes). The comp ran fine for the longest time after i got two of the 4 chips of ram out.

As far as looking for a lead on where the problem may lie I just thought that certain pieces of hardware would be used more then others at different times. Such as with crashes occuring mostly around the start up of the comp or the installation of a new program pointing more towards a piece of hardware used heavily at these times. The graphics card is used at all times to give me my screen and the crashes have occured while the computer monitor has been plugged in to the 250 gts port and the 295 port. So i dont really suspect the cards and ive continuously checked for the most up to date drivers on them. Ive trouble shot the ram and after removing 2 chips the computer was stable for close to 2 weeks. I didnt do a lot of start up and shut downs during this time but i did install a lot of new programs just fine.

As far as the motherboard being the problem im not sure what operations utilize it... I think its the cross section of everything which in my mind should mean that the crashes would be more random if it were at fault. The hard drive sounds like it would be more heavily used at the times the crashes occured which is why i was looking for hard drive stress tests just to see what was going on.

Ill run all those diagnostics you mentioned the memory one ive already done with all 4 chips in 3 or 4 times with no errors. As for malware im running the top version of trend micro under the strictest settings. I installed this before i ever connected this to the internet so i doubt malware made it on though i will check.

If anyone else has any more insight as to what may be the problem please let me know.

It's always good to double check.

Unfortunately, the only "outdated" drivers that are shown are the ATI chipset drivers - and they're from May of 2009. They are ATIPCIe.sys and amdxata.sys

I'd suggest downloading and installing the chipset drivers for your motherboard from here: ASUSTeK Computer Inc.-Support- download_item_mkt Although they are the same date, it's possible that they will overwrite a corruption in the currently installed drivers.

Beyond that, I'd suggest following the advice in this topic: http://www.sevenforums.com/crash-loc...-what-try.html