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Most bizarre BSOD/rebooting issue EVER, 1 1/2 years ongoing, HELP!!
IF YOU LIKE A CHALLENGE, THIS POST IS FOR YOU!!
I am about to write a novel here with all of the ridiculousness I've been through. Note: I am an advanced user myself, and I am seeking the help from THE MOST experienced, uber-advanced techies out there. I am going to need to hear the most bizarre, far-out ideas you can think of because I am at my absolute wits end.
Let me first say, BSOD's are only 1 of 3 issues I am having. The others are; -my system just freezing up and rebooting, and -my displays going out (as if the computer went to sleep, even though I have all that disabled) and after a minute or so, one display will come back but the other (the main one) will remain unresponsive.
--- If you don't want to read it all, you can skip to bottom for the summary. ---
Like the title says, this has been going on for well over a year. It's been mostly intermittent, so for a while I kind of just dealt with it, while reinstalling drivers here and there, testing memory, etc. Anything I did seemed to help for some amount of time, till it'd all start acting up again. In the beginning, BSOD's would throw random driver errors... as in THE MOST RANDOM drivers.
Back in Jan, after a fresh reformat and BSOD'ing again soon after, I posted a crash dump on another forum and someone pegged Daemon tools as the culprit. I got rid of that, and I seemed home-free... for about a month. Queue once again, the intermittent issues- some days nothing, some days 2 or 3 reboots/freez-ups etc. Again I am uninstalling & reinstalling drivers to try to find the issue. Still some random driver errors, and a bunch of new "windows uncorrectable hardware error" ones. And when it rebooted without the BS, I'd go look in the event logs and see this "WHEA" error.
--- INSERT LIFE(PC)-CHANGING EVENT ---
One day this past spring, the fan in my PSU decides to quietly die. Which, I can only deduct, fried my motherboard. I won't go into details, but I absolutely could not get anything to run, not even a virtual OS off of a CD. This prompted me to finally start replacing things, and I thought thank god, I can get rid of the issues I've been having.
I acquired an MSI G33M mobo, a QX6700 CPU, and Thermaltake 850w PSU. Reformatted my HD to go along with that. Everything is fine, yet again, for a short amount of time. My three intermittent issues are back.
Note: my BSOD's aren't throwing driver errors so much anymore, but a mix of "paged fault in nonpaged area" and "windows uncorrectable hardware error". Also note: I HAVE tested my RAM through all of this, ran MemTest overnight, and came up with no problems.
After some more time of dealing with this, I decided to get a new HD. Maybe, mechanically, mine happened to be failing?? I don't know but I was running out of things to replace. Along with the brand new HD, I tried an older video card (GeForce 9500), one I'd never had issues with. Perhaps that's the problem, since my displays would do that weird thing too.... nope! Within a couple days, I was experiencing my three issues of doom again. So I decide to just put my GTS 450 back in.
The new HD was almost 2 months ago now. Ever since, BSOD's aren't my most common issue, it's the freezing & rebooting that I'm getting the most. However, any BSOD's I DO get are ONLY the "Windows uncorrectable hardware error" one- they don't point to a driver or system file or anything.
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SO... to make a long story short, the problem I am still trying to figure out... What is causing BSOD/freezing/rebooting/weird display thing AFTER ALL THE HARDWARE HAS BEEN CHANGED/CHECKED?!?
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The ONLY constants that are left are my case, CD/DVD-RW, 2 fans, SATA cables, and 2nd HD. And the RAM, as I mentioned, I have tested. Now, I do have 2 sets of 2 different speeds of RAM (2x 2gb DDR3 2800 and 2x 2gb DDR3 3200), and before you say anything about that, I HAVE tried to pull out just the 3200's... still the same issues. I've checked the mobo mounts to make sure there isn't anything contacting the case that shouldn't be. Could it be the wiring to the power/reset button??
Let me also point out, there isn't any one particular thing that triggers any of the three issues. Sometimes it happens while I'm gaming, sometimes while browsing, and sometimes while I'm not even at the PC and it's idle. But they do seem to happen in bursts.... i.e., 5 days of peace and then 2 days of all three things happening half a dozen or more times.
Now, I did some digging not too long ago, and found the only remotely relevant explanation I can find that fits my scenario- the Realtek audio on the mobo (which my last mobo had, even though it was an AMD and this one Intel), having some weird conflict with NVidia graphics cards. However, I don't seem to have any options as far as chipset driver versions that I can install. I had uninstalled NVidia's HD audio thing- that seemed to work for a while, then of course everything started acting up again.
The only other solution that fits, albeit illogical, is there is a gremlin in my case.
I have done everything short of buying a whole new tower, which I can't do now that I spent the extra money I had on parts for this one. I'm ready to rip my hair out, after I throw this thing through the window. -.-
Last edited by whitewolf81; 06 Oct 2013 at 14:41.