atikmpag.sys, mostly

Hello and Merry Christmas (almost!),

I've been getting some BSODs lately with atikmpag.sys mostly being involved. I also remember a file watchdog.sys (what the..?). I reinstalled windows this morning, see what that would do, but again another BSOD with atikmpag.sys involved. I'm running Catalyst 11.12, also tried 11.11, 11.10 (I think) and 11.9

I already ran memtest from cold boot, for 5 ours or so with no errors being reported. Furmark just ran stable for 75 minutes with 88 degrees Celcius maximum, showing a nice flat line for the temperature. Also I must note that I can game on this system for hours at once, without problems.

Sometimes it just BSOD during a game, sometimes (like today) while in windows. I think I wanted to maximize the Steam window, then it bugged out.

Since my system is overclocked, I also reverted the bios to default but it still gave a BSOD at some point (before I reinstalled windows this morning).

Not sure at all what causes this, maybe the videocard is trying to tell me it wants to retire to FPS heaven.

Just to let you know:

- reverted system back to stock speeds via bios fail safe defaults, only editing memory timings and so on
- newest AMD graphics driver was already installed this morning after reinstalling windows, catalyst 11.12
- uninstalled NOD32 via software panel
- installed MSE
- installed intel rapid storage technology, I always get confused on their site on which driver to download. It used to be known as matrix storage manager driver, right? But neither are required for a functional system?
- directx was already up to date

Will run GPU and CPU stresstest later when I have more time.

Alright, will try both 11.10 and 11.11 and uninstall 11.12 with Driver sweeper.

OCCT GPU just ran without problems (results attached). Also had no other crashes in the mean time. Which seems weird to be, because last time I also got a BSOD at default clock speeds. Perhaps I didn't reset the bios properly, or it comes down to something else like NOD32.

Prime 95 blend test is 3.5 hours stable, plus everything else I've done with it in the meantime. I guess you could say the overclock might have needed a bit more voltage, somewhere, after having run for a year or so (I could easily check the error code and see how that translate to usual low voltage causes, but I think I like it this way!). Or the problem was something else like NOD32. If anything interesting happens, I'll let you guys know, thanks for the help.

Reinstalled NOD32 in the meanwhile as well. No problems encountered!

Guess it all came down to the quality of the overclock deteriorating overtime. It might need a bit more voltage somewhere, but I think I'll keep it like this for now. HA. Pretty stupid, I thought I had something more serious on my hands here. I remember reverting the bios settings and then still getting a BSOD. But I didn't "reset to fail safe defaults". Lesson learned.