consistent blue screen at boot

scruffy1 said:

thanks in anticipation of a solution

i am using win 7 home edition (sp2); it was an upgrade (from vista) on the original hdd

i puchased an ocz vertex 2 3.5" 120gig less than a month ago and did a clean install on the ssd - happily activated and all went well until possibly my installation of catalyst drivers was done (seemed to have no prior major glitches on the default win7 drivers)

system specs :
e8400 @ 3.9ghz 1.20v / t.r.u.e. / ep35-ds3 / 2x2gig corsair dominators 1066 / ocz vertex 2 3.5" 120gb / wd black 640gb / antec nsk6500 & corsair hx650 / xonar d2 & klipsch promedia ultra 2.0 & audio-technica ad700 / xfx hd5770 1gb & thermalright v2 / dell 2407wfp / win7

note that for the purposes of my troubleshooting i have also run at stock speeds and there appears to be no change in the instability whatsoever - same as below

the "normal" course of events is windoze boot, followed by "starting windows splash screen, then an ominous pause followed by bsod, spontaneous reboot and offer of "start windows normally" etc as options

if i don't choose to start in safe mode, the boot proceeds without error and i am at the log in screen and it's happy from there; i haven't tried safe mode because my wireless keyboard often won't allow me to move the cursor at that stage, although that's not universally consistent, nor is it only since the vertex got added

the vertex detests sleep mode (not just my problem, seems universal from the ocz forums) but otherwise does okay

will sometimes go the entire boot sequence without failure (as it did on the initial clean install a fortnight ago), especially if "warm", but cold boot = bsod (almost ?) universally

anyway, maybe i need to get a different ssd or upgrade my system (any excuse... ), but other than yet another fresh install (not that tragic to do) i am hoping for a simple fix


help me obi wan !

"It's not a true crash, in the sense that the bluescreen was initiated only because the combination of video driver and video hardware was being unresponsive, and not because of any synchronous processing exception.

Since Vista, the "Timeout Detection and Recovery" (TDR) components of the OS video subsystem have been capable of doing some truly impressive things to try to recover from issues which would have caused earlier OSs like XP to crash.

As a last resort, the TDR subsystem sends the video driver a "please restart yourself now!" command and waits a few seconds.

If there's no response, the OS concludes that the video driver/hardware combo has truly collapsed in a heap, and it fires off that stop 0x116 BSOD.

If playing with video driver versions hasn't helped, make sure the box is not overheating.

Try removing a side panel and aiming a big mains fan straight at the motherboard and GPU.

Run it like that for a few hours or days - long enough to ascertain whether cooler temperatures make a difference.

If so, it might be as simple as dust buildup and subsequently inadequate cooling.

I would download cpu-z and gpu-z (both free) and keep an eye on the video temps Let us know if you need help STOP 0x116: VIDEO_TDR_ERROR troubleshooting

zigzag3143 said:

"It's not a true crash, in the sense that the bluescreen was initiated only because the combination of video driver and video hardware was being unresponsive, and not because of any synchronous processing exception.

etc...

thanks for your kind advice

however it is midwinter in the antipodes, and my cooling is geek tweaked

exhibit a : the video card



exhibit b : the box



and yes, i cleaned all the dust puppies when the ssd (not seen in those older pics) was installed

the e8400 idles at 34c low fans, the 5770 says 48c and i just noted is running at full revs (gpu/vram) even without needing to do so - obviously the video drivers are fubar in some way

so what's the next step ?

i may try an earlier version of catalyst

cleaned the old one off with "DriverSweeper_2.1.0-[Guru3D.com]" and even noted belatedly that there was still a reference to it in the startup and killed that too - still the same old same old

more advice welcome; meantime it's back to catalyst i guess, and i'll report my success or otherwise when i next post

feel free to add to my list of to do

and after a further uninstall (after a driversweep) - SUCCESS !

the 5770 is idling at 37c (157/300) and no boot mischief

no overclocking the gpu possible neither, but i'll live with that for the moment :)

guess that's problem solved (till my next "experiments")


thanks for the inspiration to try the driver cull; so pleased that it worked