BSOD while gaming and web browsing

DarkFire · 04 Jan 2013

Crashed again but this time, I only had Origin open downloading Battlefield 3.
When I tried to use the SF Diagnostic Tool, I didn't realize that it wouldn't make a folder if there was a folder with the same name already on the desktop. So, the first time I ran the tool for this crash, I didn't get any crash files and had to re-run the tool. Also, throughout the process, I was prompted throughout about copying and replacing files. Not sure if this will cause any issues.

If it's worth noting, my system is set up where it doesn't go to sleep mode.

DarkFire · 04 Jan 2013

Left my computer on at the desktop with no open programs and came back later to yet again find that "Windows has recovered from an unexpected shutdown".

DarkFire · 04 Jan 2013

System crashed when I had Steam open and tried to launch Natural Selection 2 for the first time. However, I was around to see my system crashing this time. There wasn't any blue screening, it seemed like my system just restarted.

Edit: Tried to launch Natural Selection 2 again after system restarted and things seem fine.

DarkFire · 04 Jan 2013

In-game with Natural Selection 2, had a brief screen freeze and sound buzzing/looping then system crash. No blue screen, just what seems like a restart. Will undo my overclock and try again with stock CPU settings.

DarkFire · 04 Jan 2013

Playing Natural Selection 2, system crashes again. No blue screen. Same thing as what happened last time: brief screen freeze and sound looping/buzzing then system restart.
However, this was with my CPU and motherboard at default settings so I guess that kind of rules out CPU overclocking as the issue.

DarkFire · 05 Jan 2013

Yesterday, played Chivalry: Medieval Warfare for multiple hours without any crashing.

This morning, I left Origin downloading Battlefield 3 again. Thought that perhaps leaving Firefox open would help prevent crashes. Came back to find the same "Windows has recovered from an unexpected shutdown".

**Pauly** · 05 Jan 2013

We seem to be getting nowhere fast, BSODs are never clear cut and its very rarely the case we look at a dump file and say theres your problem do that its fixed, to fix a BSOD we need to go through a logical procedure step by step and where necessary excluding variables bit by bit. By altering bios values every thing we have worked towards to this point is now gone, you CANNOT OC anything while troubleshooting a BSOD. If you are happy to try this then we can go at it bit by bit and maybe we can narrow down/pinpoint the cause.

In light of all the system changes that have taken place my advice to you would be to uninstall GFX OC trixx software (its the oldest driver on your system ATM) and to go back into bios and reset/restore to optimum defaults, remove all OC settings and double check all settings inc RAM timings and all voltages for everything. When thats done i would run memtest again for minimum 8-9 passes and start the process again, its up to you ?

DarkFire · 05 Jan 2013

When I re-enabled my CPU overclock, it was to try and troubleshoot whether or not my crashing in-game was being caused by a bad CPU overclock. I had crashes on both default settings and on overclocked settings, which would point to it not being a CPU problem. The overclock was only re-enabled briefly and was undone right after I crashed.

The previous run with MemTest was done with all settings at default with my RAM at spec. These idle crashes have been with everything at defaults (except for the graphics card overclock which I will undo).

Just something to add: I tried to download Battlefield 3 through Origin again, but this time I stayed at the computer the entire time and did other things while it downloaded and it finished successfully.

DarkFire · 06 Jan 2013

Okay, I defaulted everything (CPU overclock undone, motherboard settings, graphics card) and uninstalled Trixx, and checked that my RAM settings were correct. A weird thing I noticed that when my DRAM voltage in my BIOS was set to auto, it was making my RAM run at ~1.65v. I tried to manually set it to my RAM's spec'd voltage of 1.5v, but the closest I could get in the BIOS was 1.5055v. I checked around on a few forums and they said that it was nothing to worry about. If anything, that tiny bit extra voltage would help its stability rather than hurt it. (though the tiny bit of voltage is still largely insignificant and close enough to spec).

Anyways... I finished 10 passes of MemTest with 0 errors. (DDR3 1600mhz; 9-9-9-24; 1.5v)

**Pauly** · 06 Jan 2013

Good now we got a clean sheet to work with i would go back and run all hardware tests
Hard Drive Diagnostic Procedure
Hardware - Stress Test With Prime95
Video Card - Stress Test with Furmark
If all comes out ok then we can go for drivers, please post any new dump files generated since restoring OC, may be worth clearing minidump folder to another location so when you run tool it doesnt give us all the old dumps everytime, just move them somewhere so you still got them just in case