Repeated annoying BSODs troubling a beginner

essenbe said:

According to CPUz you have your system specs wrong. You have 16GB of ram not 8GB. That is way more than you will need, but is good to have just in case. You have 1600MHz ram but it is running at 1340MHz. That is OK, but it will run faster. CPUz says your CPU is running at 3920MHz, but it is not. It's running at 1600MHz, as it should at idle on the desktop. That is easily fixed by 1 setting in Windows, but it really does not matter, but you just can't read the actual CPU Frequency. Save this. It is Asus site for your board's drivers in case you need to update them. ASUS - MAXIMUS V FORMULA
Click the start button and type in the search box Device manager, open the device manager entry that appears. Tell us if you have any yellow triangles or greyed out exclamation marks on any of the entries. You can see all of the entries of any option you want to see by clicking the small mark just to the left of the catagory. Like this.
Attachment 270774

Attachment 270775

Ok. I found one yellow mark, check the attached screen shot. And one stupid question: on asus download site there is a ton of files to download for my board, which one of them is the driver I should download?

It sounds quite weird that my specs are a mess. Have I done something stupid or has the store that sold this computer screwed up somehow?

essenbe said:

That is Avast anti virus. You run what you want, but I prefer Microsoft security essentials. I also use Malwarebytes, but as an on demand scanner. Both Free. Superantispyware on demand is a good one too. I use all 3.

Avast will not be on the motherboard web site. But, when looking at the drivers there, they will have several versions. You will want the newest one. You can tell (newest is usually the first version listed) by the version number and it will also have a date added or modified. The most recent date is the newest version.

With Avast in device manager, right click it and select properties, the first screen should tell you what is wrong. At least I believe avast is an antivirus. I can't read the catagory it is under but appears it is under network adaptors. do you have Avast installed?

Network adaptor is right. Avast was the anti-virus I had previously, I got a tip here before to remove it and use microsofts own programs. I don't know why it appears here in this list at all. I uninstalled avast but somehow something wasn't removed. The dialogue in device manager says something like "this device cannot be used because the installation information in registry is incomplete or corrupted". Search for errors in registry didn't give any results. Should I right click it and remove it from the device list?

essenbe said:

Yes you should. How is it running? Any BSODs yet?

OK, I'll remove it. I'm thinkin that we've done something right here. The computer is running well, at least for the moment. Last BSOD occurred On Sat 1.6.2013 17:21:42 GMT. I'm cautiously hopeful that you guys have already been able to find ways to stabilize the computer. I'll continue to monitor the temperature and behaviour of the system. I'll report if any more BSODs occur.

Any hints/tips on how to keep the system stable in the future and things to do/not to do are welcome.

miksu

essenbe said:

Keep in touch with us. First I want to absolutely make sure it is stable. After that, there are a few tweeks I would like to do so that you will get the best performance out of the hardware. They are very minor ones and shouldn't cause any instability unless you have some defective hardware, which you would want to know about anyway.

A couple of posts above you stated a search of the registry. Exactly how did you do that? Not with a program I hope. Most of the 'speed up your computer' and 'registry cleaner' programs will mess up your system real fast. They are very much frowned upon in this forum, and rightfully so. Windows 7 is excellent in dealing with the registry itself, and needs no help, in most situations. Keep your drivers from Asus updated, and drivers from any add on programs and your graphic programs updated. The best anti virus you can have is be careful what web sites you go to and be certain of anything you download from the internet. Know very well who you are downloading from and don't let them put entries in your start menu or install junk programs. Any time you have problems, we'll be right here. If you don't have one, get you a couple of external hard drives and do regular backups, especially of your data files. The OS and programs can be reinstalled, but data files in many cases can't. My personal rule about that is never trust any hard drive. I believe it is not a question of if they will die, it's a question of when. So, I do backups to 3 different hard drives and am confident I will not lose anything. To most people, I am a fanatic about that. But, I have lost everything before, and it cost me dearly. It won't happen again.

If you have security essentials, get yourself into a habit that the first thing you do when you turn on your computer is open security essentials and update the definitions. It will take you about 2 minutes, but you will be much better off.

Sounds good to me, essenbe. I'll keep the system running 24/7. Hopefully we've managed to stabilize it. I welcome your tips on how to increase the performance later on. My computer still has warranty so any information on malfunctioning hardware is also very useful, indeed.

It seems that I've done a typical dummy-error. I've used a program (Ccleaner) to clean up the registry. It's good to hear that it is not needed nor recommended. I'll avoid it in the future, thanks for the tip. I'll have to get one of those portable drives to back up my files. I actually had one - a quite old one with bad sectors (?) - which I disabled and removed as a precaution during this stabilizing project.

I've started to use Security essentials on my computer and I'll keep those updates running every day. A good tip that, too.

I'll keep you informed. And again, I thank everyone for the great efforts you've done to help me overcome those nasty problems. I'll definitely recommend this forum to everybody with Windows 7 issues!

miksu