BSOD after DDR5 upgrade on HP m9400f

hey guys,
new to the site and the computer tech world... i am learning quickly but i am no pro by any means.

Short story on comp history:
Bought the computer new, ran it for a year wanted a new vid card, went out and bought a Nvidia 9600GT... 2 months later trying to install VISTA service pack 2, my computer lost screen and just stayed on for 3 days (in the "installing updates do NOT shut off" stage) so i had no choice 3 days later, i shut it down. brought the computer to the store and the guy there told me the armature in my hard drive over-heated and stopped working completely; thus losing all my files and stuff *shrugs* what do i do now? get a new hard drive right? so he GAVE me a 250gig he had kickin around nice guy! and well i bought a 500 just to have extra space anyway. then i couldnt find the vista disk with the claims of HP puts it on the recovery partition of the hard drive LMAO! Sooooo im like "well the hard drive wont even spin let alone recovery partition anything" so i said F vista and bought windows 7 (great move on my part, its 100x better)

so about 1.5yrs goes by on the 9600GT then all of a sudden i kept getting these messages that "display driver has crashed and has successfully recovered" i said oh ok, so i need a new video card right? (turns out i was wrong) but i bought a new DDR5 GTX550Ti EVGA card anyway cuz im a parts changer lol. and i put it in, it runs GREAT for like 2 weeks. i found where the vid card was getting "over-clocked" so now if i keep that at a lower setting (thanks to EVGA for making it easy to do that) it doesnt crash and recover like before. now my computer randomly crashes whenever it wants and gives me a blue screen SOMETIMES...

i tried clean boot, i tried a fresh hard drive and fresh windows 7 with drivers downloaded directly from EVGA's website... i THINK i have all this right and sorry about the book...

any help is greatly appreciated!!

m9400f said:

hey guys,
new to the site and the computer tech world... i am learning quickly but i am no pro by any means.

Short story on comp history:
Bought the computer new, ran it for a year wanted a new vid card, went out and bought a Nvidia 9600GT... 2 months later trying to install VISTA service pack 2, my computer lost screen and just stayed on for 3 days (in the "installing updates do NOT shut off" stage) so i had no choice 3 days later, i shut it down. brought the computer to the store and the guy there told me the armature in my hard drive over-heated and stopped working completely; thus losing all my files and stuff *shrugs* what do i do now? get a new hard drive right? so he GAVE me a 250gig he had kickin around nice guy! and well i bought a 500 just to have extra space anyway. then i couldnt find the vista disk with the claims of HP puts it on the recovery partition of the hard drive LMAO! Sooooo im like "well the hard drive wont even spin let alone recovery partition anything" so i said F vista and bought windows 7 (great move on my part, its 100x better)

so about 1.5yrs goes by on the 9600GT then all of a sudden i kept getting these messages that "display driver has crashed and has successfully recovered" i said oh ok, so i need a new video card right? (turns out i was wrong) but i bought a new DDR5 GTX550Ti EVGA card anyway cuz im a parts changer lol. and i put it in, it runs GREAT for like 2 weeks. i found where the vid card was getting "over-clocked" so now if i keep that at a lower setting (thanks to EVGA for making it easy to do that) it doesnt crash and recover like before. now my computer randomly crashes whenever it wants and gives me a blue screen SOMETIMES...

i tried clean boot, i tried a fresh hard drive and fresh windows 7 with drivers downloaded directly from EVGA's website... i THINK i have all this right and sorry about the book...

any help is greatly appreciated!!

These were caused by a memory exception. Please run these two tests to verify your memory and find which driver is causing the problem.


1-Memtest.

*Download a copy of Memtest86 and burn the ISO to a CD using Iso Recorder or another ISO burning program. Memtest86+ - Advanced Memory Diagnostic Tool

*Boot from the CD, and leave it running for at least 5 or 6 passes.

Just remember, any time Memtest reports errors, it can be either bad RAM or a bad motherboard slot.

Test the sticks individually, and if you find a good one, test it in all slots.

RAM - Test with Memtest86+



2-Driver verifier

I'd suggest that you first backup your data and then make sure you've got access to another computer so you can contact us if problems arise. Then make a System Restore point (so you can restore the system using the Vista/Win7 Startup Repair feature).

In Windows 7 you can make a Startup Repair disk by going to Start....All Programs...Maintenance...Create a System Repair Disc - with Windows Vista you'll have to use your installation disk or the "Repair your computer" option at the top of the Safe Mode menu .

Then, here's the procedure:
- Go to Start and type in "verifier" (without the quotes) and press Enter
- Select "Create custom settings (for code developers)" and click "Next"
- Select "Select individual settings from a full list" and click "Next"
- Select everything EXCEPT FOR "Low Resource Simulation" and click "Next"
- Select "Select driver names from a list" and click "Next"
Then select all drivers NOT provided by Microsoft and click "Next"
- Select "Finish" on the next page.

Reboot the system and wait for it to crash to the Blue Screen. Continue to use your system normally, and if you know what causes the crash, do that repeatedly. The objective here is to get the system to crash because Driver Verifier is stressing the drivers out. If it doesn't crash for you, then let it run for at least 36 hours of continuous operation (an estimate on my part).

If you can't get into Windows because it crashes too soon, try it in Safe Mode.
If you can't get into Safe Mode, try using System Restore from your installation DVD to set the system back to the previous restore point that you created.

Driver Verifier - Enable and Disable



If i were you i would remove and replace Norton

http://us.norton.com/support/kb/web_...080710133834EN


Microsoft Security Essentials - Free Antivirus for Windows

Ok will do when I get home from work today thanks

update on my situation, i got the memtest and i ran it with all 4 2GB sticks in the computer, and got about 500,000 errors between 4000Mb and 6000Mb, i am currently following the process of testing all the sticks one by one to find out which slot/stick is throwing the error codes....

got to 13 passes on my #1 slot #1 stick and all clear :) yay so i have a test stick/slot...

At the very moment it is testing the good stick in slot #2, thanks a lot for your help! I tried the hardware tester built into the computer from HP and it said my ram passed 100%... guess memtest is the only way to accurately test it. thanks again

*edit* side note: when you say remove and replace norton, even though i still have a year existing on Norton i should remove it anyway and chock it($50) up to an education?? Use the antivirus from microsoft u provided the link for?? thank you very much

m9400f said:

update on my situation, i got the memtest and i ran it with all 4 2GB sticks in the computer, and got about 500,000 errors between 4000Mb and 6000Mb, i am currently following the process of testing all the sticks one by one to find out which slot/stick is throwing the error codes....

got to 13 passes on my #1 slot #1 stick and all clear :) yay so i have a test stick/slot...

At the very moment it is testing the good stick in slot #2, thanks a lot for your help! I tried the hardware tester built into the computer from HP and it said my ram passed 100%... guess memtest is the only way to accurately test it. thanks again

*edit* side note: when you say remove and replace norton, even though i still have a year existing on Norton i should remove it anyway and chock it($50) up to an education?? Use the antivirus from microsoft u provided the link for?? thank you very much

If you have that many ram errors, i dont think you need to remove norton yet

Ok I will let you know when I have tested all slots and when I have replaced them to see if that fixed my problem
Thanks again

m9400f said:

Ok I will let you know when I have tested all slots and when I have replaced them to see if that fixed my problem
Thanks again

Good luck and let us know if you need help