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#1
BSOD while gaming or soon after closing a game
Hello all, I need your collective help. A few weeks ago, I built a new computer and quickly began getting BSODs while gaming or shortly after exiting a game. This is the second time I have built a computer and I never had any problems with the first build. Here are the new build's specs:
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 Rev. 4001
CPU: AMD FX 6300 6-core 3.5GHz
GPU: XFX Radeon R9 290x
Hard drives: SanDisk Ultra II 240GB SSD (operating system); SanDisk Extreme 240GB SSD; Western Digital 500GB HDD
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LP 8GB (2x4GB)
Power Supply: Corsair HX750 750W
Operating System: Windows 7 Professional 64bit
The BSODs occur while gaming approximately 90% of the time. The other 10% of the time, the BSOD occurs after closing a game or while shutting down my computer after playing a game. Unfortunately, there is no apparent pattern to when the crashes occur. Sometimes I can game all day without any problem, and other times I will get several a day. Also, sometimes I can tell when a crash is about to occur because windows gadgets will stop responding (while gaming) or other programs running in the background will stop responding. I know when that happens, there will soon be a crash, or there will be a crash when I try to shut down the computer.
The only consistent thing about the BSODs is that they are centered around gaming. When I turn on the computer and use it for anything but gaming, I never have a problem. (I am using the computer without a problem while typing this message!)
I have taken several steps to try to diagnose and/or fix the problem.
I have looked at the crash dump files after each crash, but they are largely inconsistent, so I could not pin anything down.
I have tried updating all my drivers, especially the graphics card driver. I found out, however, that the latest AMD driver (14.9) was unstable, so I used Driver Uninstaller software in safe mode to remove all traces of it, and I installed an earlier stable version (14.4). The older driver seemed to help a little, but I still get BSODs.
I have tried updating the motherboard BIOS using the Gigabyte @BIOS software, but that did not change anything.
I tried uninstalling my antivirus software (AVG) and turned off all non-Microsoft services using msconfig. The BSODs still occur.
I tried repairing windows using the operating system disk. This did not help.
I tried running a scan of the windows system files using sfc/scannow in the command prompt. There were no errors found.
I suspected there might be a problem with the hardware, so I started doing stress tests of the different components to try to induce a BSOD. I stress tested the CPU using prime95 for about 2hrs, but there were no problems. I tried testing the memory using MemTest86 for about 4 hours, but there were no errors found. I tried stress testing the GPU by running FurMark for about 40 minutes, but there was no problem.
I have considered doing a complete reinstall of Windows, but decided against it because the problems started with a fresh install with the new computer build, and I don't want to go through the trouble of getting my computer back to the way I like it.
I have tried a bunch of other things that I cant even remember right now. So basically I am frustrated and out of ideas. Please let tell me if you know of something that might help!
Last edited by Ethan6180; 08 Dec 2014 at 21:31.