Seemingly random BSOD issues - Head hurts from banging it on the wall

Hi, guys... I fear I may have inadvertently put some blinders on myself and can't really diagnose my problem(s) so well. Since it never hurts to have some fresh eyes on a project, I'm posting this in hopes for some new advice... attached are specs.

I'm having some (seemingly) random BSODs, as well as a number of system freezes (without dumps), but the main culprit seems to be ntoskrnl... I can't really be 100% sure about that, as I'm also having some serious brainfart issues at the moment and may be missing something really simple on this one (I would hope). I've been through several driver updates and rollbacks (to no avail) and hoping you guys could offer some fresh eyes and direction on this.

A test with Driver Sweeper will result in an almost immediate BSOD.
I've got new RAM being delivered tomorrow, though all tests have been passing.

And I'm new to the forum, so please excuse me if I miss anything... I'll try to upload anything I've missed as quickly as I can, but I'm pretty frazzled about this one and just about ready to give it up... thanks for any help you can offer.

Thanks for the speedy reply... I've basically cleared my schedule and will start working on this from square one, though I've looked for BIOS updates for my MB before with little success, i.e. - 05/2008 is the newest I could find... but the internet is a big place, so I'll continue my search. I'll be working this today and tomorrow, but I'll be out of town later this week, so may not be able to update my results until after the 25th... thanks again.

Alright - I've done most of your suggestions... I've uninstalled Spybot and AVG, and currently waiting for MSSE to update and finish its run... I've updated and run Malwarebytes, but it found nothing... as for my BIOS, I've made an exhaustive search for a newer version (newer than 05/2008), but still no luck in that one. Several of the posts I've read in my searches leads me to believe that 05/2008 is as new as it gets for this board, which would lead one to think that maybe getting a new board and building a new machine (I understand that I may need to do that anyway) is the only option, but I wasn't really ready to go there yet. This machine has been my "workhorse" for several years, and I dread all the activation and deactivation I will have to go through if I swap my hard drive... my windows version is retail, but my Adobe, and Office, and a slew of other financial apps will have to be reactivated... sigh. Anyway, I've got a couple of questions:

Is MSSE reliable? If it is, I'll stick with it, but I process a number of financial transactions on this machine and really need to be sure it's "clean".

I've grown to love Spybot over the years I've used it (and supported them financially, too), but if they're the root cause of the BSODs then I'm sorry to see them go... they've got to go, right? I use them as real-time protection, so if they go I need to find a comparably priced replacement (free).

And I'm hoping that the RAM I get tomorrow will fix things up, but we'll see... I know Driver Verifier will throw a BSOD quickly if enabled, so I'd rather wait until I can swap the RAM to enable it again... I've had a few more BSODs since I began my journey today and, if only for the psychological benefit of not seeing any more tonight, I will wait to enable it until after I swap the RAM.

MSSE came up clean while I was writing this, so I'm hoping it's the RAM.

SFC & Disk Check came up clean, too.

I normally run CPUID's monitors and have never had extreme temps with anything (except during the GPU test where my card plateaued at 95C), but I can’t rule out overheating completely.

Anyways, do you have any other suggestions that I could try this evening?

Thanks.

You must have the latest BIOS for your motherboard then, and what results did these stress tests give?

MSE is much more stable, and I've been using for almost a year and have had no problems at all; AVG and Spybot were both real-time protection programs and were causing problems such as the crashes.

You can run a scan with this program which is designed to scan for rootkits, it was designed by the same programmers who made Malwarebytes:

• Anti-rootkit utility TDSSKiller

Test RAM:

• RAM - Test with Memtest86+

Run Memtest86+ for least 7-8 passes, and preferrly overnight as it can take a while to fully complete.

Test each RAM stick individually, if an error is found then move the same RAM stick into the next DIMM slot and test again, if errors are found for the same RAM stick in every available slot then you have a faulty RAM module. On the other hand, if no errors are found in the next slot or the other slots for the same RAM module, then you have a faulty DIMM slot.

Test each RAM stick and every motherboard DIMM slot available.

Each pass performs a different test on the RAM modules and DIMM slots.

The BIOS is what is, I suppose... Spybot and AVG are gone, and the stress tests all came back good... Prime95 ran almost 3 hours with no anomalies... Furmark did its thing, and though it plateaued my card at 95C, it reported and caused no anomalies during its run... MSSE was clean, as was Malwarebytes, and TDSS, too... SFC and CHKDSK were both good... and the only thing else I can do right now is enable Drive Verifier, but I wanted to wait until I could swap my RAM, but apparently Hurricane Sandy is causing delays in my delivery to New Mexico from California... I’m not sure how exactly, but Fedex wouldn’t lie, would they? Anyway, I won’t be able to do that until Monday. I did, however, get a BSOD overnight, but I’m not sure if it was before or after or during my daily machine backup using Paragon (free) software. I will be performing a complete backup now, and then maybe uninstalling Paragon for the moment. Do you know of any issues with Paragon software?

I did another diagnostic grab (this morning) and will attach it, though I don’t know if you need another one... and I don’t know if the several BSODs I’ve had since my first diagnostic grab are included, but maybe they are and I can’t see them. And after I complete my backup I will do the RAM test and post back any results... probably this evening or tomorrow, though.

Thanks for all your help and direction with this.

Grumble, grumble... my RAM tests have been passing, and I won't get my new RAM until Tuesday, as Fedex doesn't make home deliveries on Mondays (news to me)... it seems as though my RAM has political connections, as it's been very hard to get them replaced. Anyway, I'm holding out hope that some new sticks will fix this, but I'm still throwing some BSODs. I think I followed your instuctions for kernel dumping, but don't think I actually changed anything... I thought it was set for kernel dumps all along, but maybe not... I'm included the latest grab.

I ran the W7UA program and it listed everything as compatible except Speedfan, which I uninstalled, but I'm still getting BSODs showing ntoskrnl as a suspect. Please let me know if this upload is incorrect or missing any valuable information... I hate to keep asking you guys for help, but I'm also having some issues installing the latest Windows SDK debugging tools, too... if I could get them working, I'd probably be asking a lot more specific questions, I'm sure. Thanks for the help, though.

Jiminy Christmas - sometimes you run around so blind that you don't even realize how blind you are. I'm going to be looking around for some way to share my 200MB (zipped) memory.dmp file with you guys, but I had a question: I know my machine is probably archaic to some, but I'm happy with it (for the most part)... anyway, several weeks back I did (for a short time) install an SSD and some system modifications (TRIM, etc.), but what caused me to uninstall the SSD was that I ultimately couldn't find any W7 AHCI drivers for my system/board... my machine is currently running with IDE controllers only, and though I can't say with absolute certainty that my BSODs started when I did this, I can basically equate them to "around" the same time. I know my BIOS is old and doesn't support AHCI within it, but I didn't think it would matter if I could find a correct driver(s) for W7... well, I do have an AHCI driver that says it's Vista x64 compatible, but not sure if I should try it or not, so I wanted to ask the forum for its opinion.

Thanks,
JAM