2 years of BSODs while playing

Hello Seven Forums!

I built a new computer about two years ago and ever since I've had BSODs occurring every time I play a game that demands a powerful PC to run. These games include for example Battlefield 3, Grand Theft Auto IV, Red Orchestra 2, Crysis and many more.

Sometimes I can play for a couple of hours without getting a BSOD, but sometimes it can only take 15 minutes for one to occur.

I've tried the following to solve the problems, but none of them have worked:
-2 different GPUs
-2 different PSUs
-Different RAM memory sticks
-Reformatting
-Windows XP 32- and 64-bit versions
-Windows 7 32- and 64-bit versions
-Messing with BIOS settings
-Countless of driver updates, including GPU, motherboard and audio
-Increasing and decreasing voltage on my CPU and GPU
-Aftermarket coolers
-Some other things that I can't remember right now...

My temperatures are fine when I play. I've also been able to run Prime95 for about an hour without any errors (didn't keep it running for a longer time) and the memory diagnostics tool that you can run while booting didn't find any errors.

My current computer setup is the following:
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64
Motherboard: Asus P5QC
GPU: Asus GTX 550 Ti
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 @ 2,66 GHz
Memory: 4Gb of Kingston DDR3 (can't remember the clocks, probably 800MHz)
PSU: Chieftec 550W
HD: Seagate 500Gb 7200rpm hard drive

Today I've got 2 BSODs while playing Battlefield 3. Minidumps are attached to this post.

If anyone can help me solve this, I'll be more than grateful :). This has been going on for too long.

Jepu said:

Hello Seven Forums!

I built a new computer about two years ago and ever since I've had BSODs occurring every time I play a game that demands a powerful PC to run. These games include for example Battlefield 3, Grand Theft Auto IV, Red Orchestra 2, Crysis and many more.

Sometimes I can play for a couple of hours without getting a BSOD, but sometimes it can only take 15 minutes for one to occur.

I've tried the following to solve the problems, but none of them have worked:
-2 different GPUs
-2 different PSUs
-Different RAM memory sticks
-Reformatting
-Windows XP 32- and 64-bit versions
-Windows 7 32- and 64-bit versions
-Messing with BIOS settings
-Countless of driver updates, including GPU, motherboard and audio
-Increasing and decreasing voltage on my CPU and GPU
-Aftermarket coolers
-Some other things that I can't remember right now...

My temperatures are fine when I play. I've also been able to run Prime95 for about an hour without any errors (didn't keep it running for a longer time) and the memory diagnostics tool that you can run while booting didn't find any errors.

My current computer setup is the following:
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64
Motherboard: Asus P5QC
GPU: Asus GTX 550 Ti
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 @ 2,66 GHz
Memory: 4Gb of Kingston DDR3 (can't remember the clocks, probably 800MHz)
PSU: Chieftec 550W
HD: Seagate 500Gb 7200rpm hard drive

Today I've got 2 BSODs while playing Battlefield 3. Minidumps are attached to this post.

If anyone can help me solve this, I'll be more than grateful :). This has been going on for too long.

Both DMP files are corrupt and in a rather strange way. Please download Malwarebytes and run it just to be sure.

zigzag3143 said:

Both DMP files are corrupt and in a rather strange way. Please download Malwarebytes and run it just to be sure.

This reminds me. I tried to scan 3 minidumps a few days ago with WhoCrashed but it said that they were all corrupted. WhoCrashed also wasn't able to read these but this time it gave me an "unknown path" error. BlueScreenView however was able to get something out of these minidumps (picture below).



I also ran a quick scan with Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, and all files were clean.

Also, a few times when I've got a BSOD, it has only said "HARDWARE MALFUNCTION, please contact blah blah..." Could this mean that this is most likely a problem caused by of faulty hardware? Only pieces of hardware I still haven't changed are the motherboard, CPU and hard drive. It has only given me this message about 5 times out of 100 though. A few time it has first showed me the hardware malfunction message and then it quickly changed to a different BSOD message with all the STOP codes and such.

I'm off to bed now. I've got some studying to do tomorrow.

Just to be sure run a FULL or comprehensive scan with Malwarebytes.

Both Who crashed, and Blue-screen view often get erroneous results and falsely blame OS files.

We do need the DMP files and the only reason they usually are not created is c0ontrol panel configured incorrectly, no page file, crashes where you have to cold boot it, etc.

Ok, I decided that I'll go buy some thermal paste tomorrow and change the motherboard and reformatt. Wish me luck.