pervasive BSOD on Win7

galex856 · 19 Nov 2009

Hello everyone,
I've been struggling with random BSODs for almost 2 weeks now and I must confess I'm out of ideas.

I did another fresh install last night using the Win7x64 DVD.

I've attached all the minidumps of the 5 crashes today.
1st crash: right after launching dxdiag
2nd crash: another go at dxdiag (I think) , which now launches fine...
3rd crash: I was copying a file from a hard drive to another / reading forums
4th crash: during the installation of WorldOfWarcart (about half way, copying files from the DVD to the first hard drive)
5th crash: during the installation of WorldOfWarcraft (at the end, right before launching the on-line updates)

I also have the full memory dumps for crash 2, 3, 4, and 5, if need be.

So here's all I gone through since 2 weeks:

This machine was running Vista 32 bits (even World of Warcraft for several hours) just fine for the past year and decided to upgrade to seven x64 and that when the problems began. First I got a BSOD problems during the first installation and eventually that came through (each time starting from sratch).

RAM
After a lot of digging, re-installling, (I even used kill disk to clear the drive) I came to the conclusion that the default BIOS settings for memory were incorrect. So I manually set the clock ticks to 5 5 5 15 / 60, after reading through the corsair docs/forums. I also boosted up the voltage to 2.1V for DRAMM and 1.2V for Northbridge (Note for readers: this "stablized" the system which used to BSOD after about 15 min, even idle).

Last night I ran memtest 4.0 for about 9 hours, almost 20 full passes and not a signle error. Hopefully that is fixed, though you never know, right ?

Graphics driver
On the current clean install, I installed the Catalyst 9.11 for win7x64 (the latest).
the fact that Dxdiag crashed the system is still unnerving, and when I did manage to install WorldOfWarcraft (a few days ago), the system crashed after about 15 min in game).
I did a stress-test of the graphics card a few days ago with the video card stability test and no crash then (haven't tried it again on this install). Also did an IntelBurnTest: no issue either.
I also watched a complete movie last night on this machine with no crash.

I also installed the marvel (motherboard) drivers for the hard drives.
I have Avira Antivir running.
Firewall: windows firewall with default settings
Other than that, I got Mozilla firefox and Mozilla thunderbird, CPU-Z, GPU-Z, BlueScreenView and the windows debugger (though reading memory dumps is quite a challenge).

Sorry this is such a long post....

Any thoughts, ideas, suggestions are welcome as I don't know where to look now.

Thanks.

chev65 · 19 Nov 2009

If you are running your board at spec 1333 FSB you should not try running the memory at 1066MHz. Use the link and sync memory setting, or set memory speed to 1000MHz, or 667MHz. Or you can adjust the FSB to 1600MHz which will set up a better divider for running your memory at 1066MHz.

Another adjustment that has an effect on your board is called "CPU clock skew" and "North Bridge clock skew", change them both to 100ps. It's been known to help stabilize the P5Q Pro.

There is also a newer bios out for your board that might be worth trying, 1501 bios.

galex856 · 19 Nov 2009

Thanks Chev65,
That was fast!

I'll do that and post the results. Currently I'm at 1000Mhz for memory, and will lower if it doesn't work.

I understand from your answer that 1066Mhz memory was overkill, and 800Mhz wouls have been sufficient (unless I plan to overclock, which is not even remotely the concern at the moment).

Something I didn't catch, though "Use the link and sync memory setting"... not sure which link you are referring to. Do you mean a ratio or a (missing) url link.

A final comment on bios: the current version is 2102 from Feb 09 (i checked agin this morning on the Asus site) , so not sure where you get the 1501 from.

galex856 · 20 Nov 2009

Good news!
With memory set @ 1000Mhz and both "CPU clock skew" and "North Bridge clock skew" @ 100ps. it seems to work fine. I played WoW for over an hour (all settings to highest quality) and also left the PC running alll night (though idle) and still no issues. Certainly looks good as I've never had this stability before.
I guess time will tell if it is fixed and i'll post back in a few days.

Thanks again Chev65. you gave me hope again!

torrentg · 20 Nov 2009

Oh it's fixed alright.

He's been on a roll with getting improper RAM settings fixed, alleviating bsod.

Good job again, Chev.

galex856 · 22 Nov 2009

I guess you're right Torrentg: no crashes.

Thanks again Chev65!

chev65 · 23 Nov 2009

galex856 said:

Good news!
With memory set @ 1000Mhz and both "CPU clock skew" and "North Bridge clock skew" @ 100ps. it seems to work fine. I played WoW for over an hour (all settings to highest quality) and also left the PC running alll night (though idle) and still no issues. Certainly looks good as I've never had this stability before.
I guess time will tell if it is fixed and i'll post back in a few days.

Thanks again Chev65. you gave me hope again!

Us overclockers know how important those settings are but around here they mostly blame drivers for stablity problems.

Pretty much all enthusiast boards will require specific bios settings to run stable depending on the brand of memory used. Overclocking or not makes no difference.

Anyway, give it some time to make sure it's stable, hopefully those settings will work.

chev65 · 23 Nov 2009

torrentg said:

Oh it's fixed alright.

He's been on a roll with getting improper RAM settings fixed, alleviating bsod.

Good job again, Chev.

Thanks buddy, when ever I see an enthusiast board with stability problems the first thing I do is look up stable memory settings for that board. Seems to work more often than not. It should be pretty obvious at this point that not all stablity problems can be blamed on using improper drivers.