BSOD 101 - A clock interrupt was not received on a secondary processor

I built this computer back at the beginning of 2009, and I started getting this same blue screen error, "A clock interrupt was not received...", about once every other week since the beginning of last year, 2011. I investigated it a little here and there but have found no solutions. Unfortunately there isn't a situation that can consistently reproduce this error.

It began as a Windows XP machine, then I upgraded it to the retail version of Windows 7 64bit as soon as Windows 7 was released, and I did a clean install of Windows 7 back in October, 2011. The clean install didn't help.

The only hardware changes were adding an extra stick of RAM, added in the middle of last year, and a new graphics card, which was added a couple months later. These errors were occurring before the hardware changes.

My BIOS is up-to-date and all my drivers are as well. I've done a Memtest over night, which reported no issues, a CPU test with Prime95, which also reported no issues, and a video card test with FurMark for extra measure, no issues there either. So I'm really at a loss...

Attached is my BSOD dump (only going back to October from when I did a clean install) and system file collection along with my system health report and my system specs. Any pointers as to figuring out the culprit of this problem would be greatly appreciated!

maybe bumping your vcore voltage up just a bit will help. or just wait till someone can read the BSOD dump for you.


scrooge

See STOP 0x101: CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT troubleshtg for information and troubleshooting steps regarding your crashes.

writhziden said:

See STOP 0x101: CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT troubleshtg for information and troubleshooting steps regarding your crashes.

That narrows it down. Unfortunately the stress tests tell me there aren't any issues, and attempting to replace parts is really what I was hoping to avoid, unless there's something specific I can replace that will for sure take care of the issue.

scrooge said:

maybe bumping your vcore voltage up just a bit will help. or just wait till someone can read the BSOD dump for you.


scrooge

I'm a complete beginner when it comes to overclocking, but from what I read about upping the voltage, it can make the system more stable. If that's the case, I'll certainly give it a try. I used the Intel Desktop Control Center to bump up the voltage from 1.25 to 1.2875 (screenshot attached). I'll leave it at that and report back to let you know if that did the trick.

Did upping the voltage help? If you'd like, I can take a look at your settings and help you with voltage settings if you still need them.

You know, upping the voltage really did help. It's been three weeks and I haven't seen a single blue screen error. So thanks, guys! I'll mark this as solved.

Sometimes a small voltage bump is all it takes, especially if you have more than 4 GB of RAM in the system. Glad you got it working. Enjoy!

I'm afraid I can't help you with finding out how to up your voltage, but I would suggest creating a new thread as this one is already marked as solved and may get looked over by those that could help you.

I should mention too, as an addendum to this thread, that upping my voltage only mitigated my problem. I still ran into blue screen errors, just less frequently. I finally discovered the true cause of the problem when I put the RAM I was using in my computer that blue-screened into another computer. This other computer was completely unstable on my blue-screening computer's RAM. My RAM was defective, yet stress tests showed no issues, and the blue screen every other week was the only indication that anything was wrong.

So if anyone who's reading this has a similar issue and they're at the point of replacing parts to try to pin down the problem, the RAM is a great place to start. It's very cheap, and if it ends up not being the problem, you get to add more RAM to your computer. If you don't have any more slots, you're not out much and it doesn't hurt to have extra RAM to test your computer with when you run into other hardware problems in the future.