Played game - crash - reboot ; failed - safe mode crashes - boot fails

I have requested a hardware guru to take a look. It may take up to 30 mins for the post from a hardware guru.

Thanks Dean, I really appreciate that :)

DeanP said:

I have requested a hardware guru to take a look. It may take up to 30 Minutes for the post from a hardware guru.

Fixed. :)

Hello Morph666,

So I read through the thread above, and it is definitely not obvious what the issue lies in.
I need you to answer some questions to give me a clearer picture of just how these crashes occur, and what is going on when they do:
1) Do these crashes occur when you are not stressing ANY component? (I.E. you just booted up and let it sit for 10 minutes, then it crashes)
2) Do you see any artifacting on your monitor? Artifacts show up as little squares or areas of screen discoloration that are generally described as yellow pixels (but not always yellow).
3) If these crashes DO NOT occur when the system is Idle, then download Prime95 and run a blend test for at least an hour, or until it crashes. This will help determine if it is the GPU or not.

If you have an old GPU laying around, plug it in and see if the crashes still occur. If it becomes stable, it might be a bad card, or a bad PSU. If it does become stable, then it gets a little more interesting.

~Lordbob

Lordbob75 said:

DeanP said:

I have requested a hardware guru to take a look. It may take up to 30 Minutes for the post from a hardware guru.

Fixed. :)

LOL, awesome

Hey Lordbob,

Of course, I'll answer any questions you have, really hope you can help me out!
1) It crashes whatever I do, and it seems to be at random times. One moment it won't even get to windows, the other it gets to windows and just sits on the desktop (as I'm browsing sevenforums on my laptop) and it just suddenly crashes. Another time I was simply browsing the Realtek website with it (few websites are more basic and simply than the realtek website, lol) and it just crashed on me as well. So no, not stressing ANY component...

2) Nope, no artifacting at all, but of course I'll let you know straight away if artifacting does start to occur. I also didn't get any artifacting when I ran the FurMark test.

3) Well, they do occur when it's Idle, but I suppose running a Prime95 test won't hurt it anyway? I'll try it, see what happens and report back.

I might have an old GPU laying around somewhere, but I think it's a Radeon, since they use different drivers, won't this form any new problems? Sorry if that's a stupid question or anything, you have way more knowledge of this than I do haha.

Oh and the PSU is brand new, though that doesn't mean it can't be bad I suppose. But the pc has been running with the new PSU in for a month or so already, so I' m guessing (well, more hoping than guessing) that that isn't it, since it was bloody expensive ><

Looking forward to hearing from you again Lordbob!

Regards,

Dennis

Very interesting, it may not be a bad GPU like we originally thought.

At this point, I recommend burning MemTest86+ to a CD and running it for AT LEAST 12 passes. I saw above you were running it off a USB drive, but you still need to give it the 12 passes.

It also wouldn't be a bad idea to take the PSU to a local computer shop and ask them to test it for you just to be sure.

~Lordbob

Hey Lordbob,

I ran MemTest86+ overnight, for approx. 9 hours, I'm not sure how long one pass takes? But it said it found no errors, press Esc to exit, so I did, and it failed to reboot itself. Will burning it to a CD make any difference in running it? Seems strange if it does...

I suppose I can take the PSU to a computer shop, if there's no other solution.

Btw, it's running Prime95 now, it's been running for 12 minutes, currently running Test 6, no problems yet. Just thought I'd let you know.

EDIT: It just crashed after 15 minutes, not sure at what test it was, I was typing stuff here on Sevenforums. The screen went black, it was silent for a moment then 6 short beeps from the internal speaker. Then another silent moment and 6 more short beeps. Another silent moment and 6 more short beeps. Then I switched it off, a little scared and waiting for your help...

EDIT 2: Started it up in normal mode, said it had a blue screen, and I found two new DMP files in the Minidump folder, so I've zipped and attached them. While I typed ' EDIT 2' just now, the machine crashed again, once again going black and giving 6 beeps, I switched it off again. So this time the crash happened again while it was doing nothing, but this time only after 2 minutes or so, bit faster than before.

EDIT 3: I have found an old graphics card, it's a Radeon X1300 / X1550 64MB . I replaced the GTX with it and it managed to boot to windows (which booted in terrible color and resolution, lol). It said it detected the Radeon and installed it, then said I needed to reboot, so I did. It rebooted to windows just fine, the resolution is back to what it was though the colors have a " lovely" blue tone for whatever reason now. I'm guessing it's the age of the card / no proper/new drivers, but at least so far it hasn't crashed. Will report if/when it does. I guess if it doesn't then the problem is narrowed down to two suspects? The videocard or the PSU. This old Radeon is only connected to the motherboard, but the GTX had a big cable going to it from the powersupply as well.

Regards,

Dennis

Update:

It has been running without crashes for 2 1/2 hours. As I'm now leaving to see my girlfriend and daughter, I have switched it off. I'll be home again in about 30 hours, and will continue to see how long it' ll run without crashing when I'm back and will of course post about it here. I suppose now it's narrowed down to two suspects then, the power supply or the GTX graphics card, right?

Morph666 said:

Update:

It has been running without crashes for 2 1/2 hours. As I'm now leaving to see my girlfriend and daughter, I have switched it off. I'll be home again in about 30 hours, and will continue to see how long it' ll run without crashing when I'm back and will of course post about it here. I suppose now it's narrowed down to two suspects then, the power supply or the GTX graphics card, right?

Sounds good. It may or may not be, but they both seem guilty at the moment.

~Lordbob

Well, when I get back home (I'm posting this from my girlfriend's house) I will see if i can succesfully leave it running at least overnight without crashing.
Any ideas/tips/software to find out which of the two is the problem?

Run Furmark with both graphics card to stress the cards. If it crashes with the old one, it might be the PSU, and if it crashes with the new one, it might be the card. Also run OCCT power supply check to stress the PSU specifically.
As I said, it wouldn't hurt to take it to a computer shop to get the PSU manually checked (or do it yourself with the PSU documentation and a multimeter).
Also run Prime95 to stress the CPU (and again PSU).

~Lordbob