Solved BSOD running Plex Media Server, now NIC not working and locking up

[bobafetthotmail]

pagefaults are not an issue, as long as it doesn't bluescreen (which would indicate bad RAM).
Any program causes some when running, but it's normal. If it is doing something heavy or if it is coded by rookies, then it's more likely to cause them. Here to read more.
Page file has limited effect on them, as they are basically a RAM memory address error.

I appreciate it's needed for the dumps, etc but I'm still a bit concerned that it won't let me disable it on this system, as I'm almost certain I've been able to in the past with systems with only 8GB. Anyway, we can look into that later perhaps.

Altering pagefile is not very forgiving and can require more alterations and reboots. You sure you did like this:
click on disk C: in the list, select "no paging file" and then click on "set".
And repeated this for other disks that had a pagefile?
Try again.

Again. please leave 1024 mb of pagefile, as if you don't then the dumps from the BSODs won't be available and Arc won't be able to assist.

The latency seems to be triggered by HDD activity and the person who's analysed the traces for me tells me
"and you still have disk issues. Your HDD is flushing the data all the time (open the etl with xperfview.exe, make a rightclick on the disk graph and select "Detail graph", here you see a lot of red lines). The depth queue is better but still 30 which is still bad. "

Ok, so you have stuff accessing the disk all the time. Need to find out what is doing it.
write "resmon" in the Star menu searchbox (or from the Resource Monitor button in the Performance tab of Task manager) and look at the tab about disk usage. Can also post a screenshot if there is something weird in the list.

An obvious suspect for these things is the indexing service. You can write "indexing options" in the searchbox of the start menu and exclude everything that isn't Start menu from the list, or turn it off alltogether (but then searchbox won't help you find other commands and utilities like I am telling you in this post).

Another obvious suspect would be an antivirus (check the options on real-time protection, about scanning what is read and what is written, if there are some), or some kind of malware.

running in High Performance mode, not Balanced, which might be helping as well.

I doubt that this matters. the High Performance is more or less a copy-cat of Balanced, it's there mostly in case you want to tweak Balanced but still have a high performance setting.

although HwInfo wasn't running after rebooting I did have the Persistent Driver enabled, so I suppose that might have still been scanning and causing problems.

What's that? If you mean driver verifier, then the BSODs you are getting contain info about a wretched driver causing system instability (the whole point of driver verifier). So upload the dumps for Arc to have a look.

Btw, for your weirdness about the NIC, I would try reflashing (updating if available) the BIOS.

 

[doveman007]

pagefaults are not an issue, as long as it doesn't bluescreen (which would indicate bad RAM).
Any program causes some when running, but it's normal. If it is doing something heavy or if it is coded by rookies, then it's more likely to cause them. Here to read more.
Page file has limited effect on them, as they are basically a RAM memory address error.

Sorry, I don't understand that. The betanews latencymon page you linked to before says "Hard page faults occur when a program needs data that isn't resident in physical RAM, and so Windows has to read it in from the paging file, instead. " and the wiki says "page faults are not always errors and are common and necessary to increase the amount of memory available to programs in any operating system that utilizes virtual memory". So I don't really understand how I can still get them when not using a pagefile/virtual memory.

Anyway, I don't really care about seeing hard pagefaults if they don't cause any problems (although the betanews page suggest that they can result in audio dropouts), I just thought they might be connected to the high latency spikes, which I'm more concerned with, as they seemed to coincide with each other.

Altering pagefile is not very forgiving and can require more alterations and reboots. You sure you did like this:
click on disk C: in the list, select "no paging file" and then click on "set".
And repeated this for other disks that had a pagefile?
Try again.

Again. please leave 1024 mb of pagefile, as if you don't then the dumps from the BSODs won't be available and Arc won't be able to assist.

Yep, that's exactly what I did. Originally I had the pagefile on D: and nothing on C:, so I set D: to no paging file, clicked set and rebooted and that's when I got this error that Windows had created a temporary pagefile. I went into the settings and it was still on "no paging file" for C: despite there being a pagefile on it now (I guess the settings just hadn't synced or maybe after rebooting again it would have done), clicked set again and rebooted and the same thing happens.

Ok, so you have stuff accessing the disk all the time. Need to find out what is doing it.
write "resmon" in the Star menu searchbox (or from the Resource Monitor button in the Performance tab of Task manager) and look at the tab about disk usage. Can also post a screenshot if there is something weird in the list.

An obvious suspect for these things is the indexing service. You can write "indexing options" in the searchbox of the start menu and exclude everything that isn't Start menu from the list, or turn it off alltogether (but then searchbox won't help you find other commands and utilities like I am telling you in this post).

Another obvious suspect would be an antivirus (check the options on real-time protection, about scanning what is read and what is written, if there are some), or some kind of malware.

It's not all the time as I don't have latency spikes constantly but do when launching Iron, which is what I did for the trace. Indexing/Windows Search service is disabled and I don't currently have an antivirus installed. So when he says "all the time" he means for the duration of the trace. I'm pretty sure there isn't a disk queue problem when it's just idle, as otherwise I'd expect to see latency spikes but I might do a trace at idle for him to look at anyway, just to see if it shows anything useful.

I doubt that this matters. the High Performance is more or less a copy-cat of Balanced, it's there mostly in case you want to tweak Balanced but still have a high performance setting.

It's quite different on all the systems I've used. High Performance disables the clock control (Cool'n'Quiet) so the CPU runs at 2.8Ghz constantly, whereas in Balanced it downclocks to 800Mhz when idle, so I suppose when I do some activity and it has to ramp up, this could be triggering latency spikes, hence why I get them when launching IE in Balanced but not in High Performance. The option "Link State Power Management" (whatever that does) is also set to Off in High Performance and Moderate Power Savings in Balanced.

What's that? If you mean driver verifier, then the BSODs you are getting contain info about a wretched driver causing system instability (the whole point of driver verifier). So upload the dumps for Arc to have a look.

Persistent Driver is an option in HwInfo, which I guess speeds up the launching as it doesn't have to load/start the service/driver. I asked the author if that could have possibly been related to the lockups at boot I had but he's told me "No, the persistent driver should have no impact on system when you don't run HWiNFO - it just sits idle there and waits for commands from HWiNFO."

It's probably worthwhile running Driver Verifier though, as it might reveal something.

Btw, for your weirdness about the NIC, I would try reflashing (updating if available) the BIOS.

Yeah, I'll try that if it happens again. I need to try plugging in the IDE devices and see if that triggers it again. I had to reset the CMOS anyway yesterday as I stupidly disabled "Legacy USB mode" in the BIOS and then couldn't use my keyboard until Windows had booted, so couldn't get into the BIOS or change boot options

 

[bobafetthotmail]

So I don't really understand how I can still get them when not using a pagefile/virtual memory.

As I said, a pagefault is a memory address error. If the stuff it is looking for isn't in memory or in the pagefile (disabled or not), it still has to come from somewhere or the program/process/PC will crash, so it must read the disk to get the missing data.

So yeah, they could be connected to disk activity and latency spikes, but it's not a given (as it can simply find stuff in memory and not need disk access).

I went into the settings and it was still on "no paging file" for C: despite there being a pagefile on it now (I guess the settings just hadn't synced or maybe after rebooting again it would have done), clicked set again and rebooted and the same thing happens.

Heh, try setting a pagefile on C with "system managed size" and then reboot, then try removing it.

Otherwise the only thing that could cause that would be that there is some program that requires a pagefile for its own reasons.

It's not all the time as I don't have latency spikes constantly but do when launching Iron,

As said above and in wikipedia, badly written programs can cause more pagefaults than normal. Try reinstalling/updating Iron or find a replacement.

Still, if for Iron you mean the good twin of Google Chrome, and you reported issues with the NIC... I speculate that it's the NIC issue causing that. Can you try using other browsers or stuff that works over the internet (the NIC)?

It's quite different on all the systems I've used. High Performance disables the clock control (Cool'n'Quiet) so the CPU runs at 2.8Ghz constantly, whereas in Balanced it downclocks to 800Mhz when idle, so I suppose when I do some activity and it has to ramp up, this could be triggering latency spikes, hence why I get them when launching IE in Balanced but not in High Performance. The option "Link State Power Management" (whatever that does) is also set to Off in High Performance and Moderate Power Savings in Balanced.

Cool'nQuiet is handled by BIOS, cannot be disabled by other than motherboard utilities and BIOS options afaik. What High performance does though is increasing the minimum CPU frequency to 100%.

If the latency spikes are connected with hard drive activity, I doubt that CPU frequency matters.

 

[doveman007]

As I said, a pagefault is a memory address error. If the stuff it is looking for isn't in memory or in the pagefile (disabled or not), it still has to come from somewhere or the program/process/PC will crash, so it must read the disk to get the missing data.

So yeah, they could be connected to disk activity and latency spikes, but it's not a given (as it can simply find stuff in memory and not need disk access).

OK, I see what you're saying. Anyway, I'm not really concerned with the pagefaults, just the latency and they don't seem to be connected.

Heh, try setting a pagefile on C with "system managed size" and then reboot, then try removing it.

Otherwise the only thing that could cause that would be that there is some program that requires a pagefile for its own reasons.

Nope, it still throws up the same error and creates a pagefile on C: I really don't think I've got any programs installed that could be forcing Windows to do this and I've got the same programs and a lot more installled on my other system that lets me disable the pagefile no problem. I've done sfc /scannow which says everything is OK but there must be something wrong or maybe some Windows registry setting that's causing this and I really should sort it out and not just ignore it, in case it's indicative of some other fault. Other people tell me they're running without a pagefile on 8GB systems, so it doesn't appear that Windows is designed to prevent this.

EDIT: Aha, I might have found the problem. In the registry under Memory Management it had pagefile set to f:, which was a secondary HDD I had connected before but don't currently, so I changed that to d: There's also a TempPageFile setting which I changed from 1 to 0, so we'll see when I reboot if that's fixed it

EDIT2: Yep, that's done the trick

As said above and in wikipedia, badly written programs can cause more pagefaults than normal. Try reinstalling/updating Iron or find a replacement.

Still, if for Iron you mean the good twin of Google Chrome, and you reported issues with the NIC... I speculate that it's the NIC issue causing that. Can you try using other browsers or stuff that works over the internet (the NIC)?

It's not just Iron that cause latency spikes though. Nor is Iron the worst culprit for pagefaults. Running Windows defrag and analysing my partitions, svchost generates a ton of pagefaults (like 30000) but no latency spikes, hence why I don't think pagefaults and latency spikes are connected. If I Analyse in CCleaner, no latency spikes but when I run the Wipe, they appear, which makes me think they're related to writing and not reading.

Iron seems to generate a spike (3500us) just as it's finished opening all the saved tabs, so perhaps it does some writing at that point. Then again, if I open a new tab and browse to a new page, that obviously writes to the temporary files and doesn't generate a spike. Opera Portable also generates a spike of around 1100us just as it finishes loading. Sometimes IE, which only opens with one tab, does and other times it doesn't generate a spike, whether I'm in Balanced or High Performance mode. I get the odd spike to 600-700us with various apps but that's below the threshold to trigger LatencyMon's warning, so they probably don't matter.

Even in High Performance mode, launching MediaPortal generates several spikes from 1500us to 3908us. On the second launch, it hit 20874us and then 9000us. Even if I restart LatencyMon after MediaPortal has loaded, it spikes to around 2000us several times.

Then again I can update/install software without triggering any spikes and that's obviously writing.

Generally storport.sys is appearing from both ISR and DPC although sometimes ISR gets replaced by tcpip.sys or ndis.sys. Generally the ISR and DPC aren't any higher at the point of a latency spike than at other times, although when launching MediaPortal, they both refer to storport.sys and spike to around 230us.

I asked Asrock about why the NIC might stop functioning when I connect devices to the IDE port and they've replied

"I am not sure how a device connected to IDE can influence the function of the NIC. They might share a PCIe lane. Or there might be some micro fracture in the motherboard. A Compact Flash card IDE adapter is not a device that is commonly used, and it is not something that we normally test on our motherboards."

Cool'nQuiet is handled by BIOS, cannot be disabled by other than motherboard utilities and BIOS options afaik. What High performance does though is increasing the minimum CPU frequency to 100%.

If the latency spikes are connected with hard drive activity, I doubt that CPU frequency matters.

Ah, I see. Anyway, that's what I meant, that the CPU frequency stays at 100% and doesn't ramp down. It did appear I was seeing less latency spikes in High Performance mode but as my tests above have shown, I'm still getting some quite severe ones so you're probably right.

Strangely, if I run DPC Latency Checker with Iron open, the highest spike is 168us over several minutes. If I close that and start LatencyMon however, I get a spike of 758us within 10s. Likewise with MediaPortal, the highest spike shown with DPC-LC is 138us. It might be that DPC Latency Checker is sampling at a less frequent interval and missing the spikes or there may be an issue with LatencyMon which is causing it to misreport spikes.

EDIT: The author of LatencyMon has told me:

"The interrupt-to-latency test is only meaningful without having any other programs running in the background."

In reply, I asked "You say it's only meaningful without having any other programs running but my concern is that if I'm getting high latency spikes when certain activity happens, such as writing to disk, then these spikes are going to cause issues with audio/video when this activity happens whilst using A/V software, gaming, etc."

and he replied "The interrupt-to-latency monitor simulates a critical audio process. This is why it is not recommended to be running any other activity on top." but he's offered to take a look at the reports for me, so we'll see if they show anything.

 

[doveman007]

At the moment, I've managed to connect my SATA ODD and the IDE HDD and ODD and the NIC is still working, so I'll have to monitor that over the next few days as previously the NIC only stopped working after I'd had the IDE devices connected for a few days.

Having the SATA ODD connected (to SATAII_2, with the SATA HDD on SATAII_0 and without the IDE devices connected) does cause a 10s delay on booting.

After the first screen, which is the AHCI/RAID controller part, it then shows

2.02.1205 Copyright 2010 American Megatrends

at the top and A2 at the bottom, which changes to to A3 then 99 after 10s and the boot continues. I don't get this screen/delay with only the SATA HDD connected but I can't work out why the SATA ODD should cause it.

I also had an issue when connecting the IDE devices, where even though I'd set the only boot device to the SATA HDD in the BIOS and set every other option to Disabled, it was still trying to boot from the PATA IDE HDD, which it obviously couldn't as it doesn't have any OS installed. Even if I pressed F11 to bring up the boot menu and selected the SATA HDD, it still tried to boot from the PATA IDE HDD!

I had to fiddle around and set the second HDD BBS option to the PATA IDE HDD and the second boot device to the SATA ODD and then it boots from the SATA HDD OK, so it seems it's just a weird BIOS bug.

 

[bobafetthotmail]

I hope you fixed the pagefile issues.

storport.sys is a driver dealing with storage devices. Can you check if there are errors related to storage devices (or that driver or or whatever happening in those minutes) in Event Viewer?

Try disabling these services (if you have them) to see if they are related:

• Offline Files
• Intel Rapid Storage Technology
• SeaPort
• Storage Service
• Superfetch
• Volume Shadow Copy Service

Can you try doing a full checkdisk of the drive that gives you this lag (where that stuff is installed), with both options checked? Could be a bad drive. So that only some areas suck and so only some writes trigger the lag as it decides to write somewhere else. Although it's a slim chance admittedly, but it's worth checking.

Another could be the Windows Defender. It's a built-in minor AV program that is on by default and could be causing issues. This explains how to turn it off.

"I am not sure how a device connected to IDE can influence the function of the NIC. They might share a PCIe lane. Or there might be some micro fracture in the motherboard. A Compact Flash card IDE adapter is not a device that is commonly used, and it is not something that we normally test on our motherboards."

Compact flash IDE adapter? What's it for? Adapters in general aren't known for their reliability, you sure it's not that adapter causing the lag? (i.e. does stuff run from outside that CF card while it's physically disconnected cause lag?)
Also, in case this mysterious thing about the NIC not liking IDE devices remains unresolved, consider getting a CF to SATA adapter.

 

[bobafetthotmail]

After the first screen, which is the AHCI/RAID controller part, it then shows

2.02.1205 Copyright 2010 American Megatrends

at the top and A2 at the bottom, which changes to to A3 then 99 after 10s and the boot continues. I don't get this screen/delay with only the SATA HDD connected but I can't work out why the SATA ODD should cause it.

It appears that BIOS is telling us something. That's a code telling what it is doing in that time. Takes a lot of time, so might be a way to report an error.

From here, last table, or here it says that A2 is the code for the page for displaying soft errors after the "cache checking", then A3 is about setting keyboard "typematic rate" whatever that is.
99 is a step that should have done already.

This is not my field, and probably Asrock should be able to tell you more as it's their board's own firmware speaking here. Could help pinpoint hardware faults or whatnot.

Or could simply be another sign that the BIOS is screwed up and that you need to reflash it.

 

[doveman007]

I hope you fixed the pagefile issues.

Yes thanks, that seems fine now. Must make a mental note that if removing a HDD, ensure the pagefile isn't set to it first

storport.sys is a driver dealing with storage devices. Can you check if there are errors related to storage devices (or that driver or or whatever happening in those minutes) in Event Viewer?

Try disabling these services (if you have them) to see if they are related:

• Offline Files
• Intel Rapid Storage Technology
• SeaPort
• Storage Service
• Superfetch
• Volume Shadow Copy Service

No relevant errors in the Application or System logs. The only error I see is a WMI one.

I've disabled Offline Files, SuperFetch and VSCS. I don't have any of the others.

Can you try doing a full checkdisk of the drive that gives you this lag (where that stuff is installed), with both options checked? Could be a bad drive. So that only some areas suck and so only some writes trigger the lag as it decides to write somewhere else. Although it's a slim chance admittedly, but it's worth checking.

Will do.

Another could be the Windows Defender. It's a built-in minor AV program that is on by default and could be causing issues. This explains how to turn it off.

Already disabled thanks.

Compact flash IDE adapter? What's it for? Adapters in general aren't known for their reliability, you sure it's not that adapter causing the lag? (i.e. does stuff run from outside that CF card while it's physically disconnected cause lag?)
Also, in case this mysterious thing about the NIC not liking IDE devices remains unresolved, consider getting a CF to SATA adapter.

Don't worry about that, I'm not even using it anymore It was just that I first experienced the NIC stop working when I'd plugged in the CF->IDE adapter and it started working again after removing it but the second time the NIC stopped working, I just had the normal IDE HDD connected (as well as the SATA HDD) and not the adapter. Even without the IDE HDD connected and just the SATA HDD, I get the latency spikes, so it's unrelated to either the adapter or the IDE devices.

I'm not intending to use the CF card again and just want to use the IDE HDD and ODD (as well as a SATA HDD and ODD). In time (i.e. when it breaks), my brother will replace the IDE ODD with a SATA one and if the IDE HDD (which will only be used as a secondary drive for extracting files, authoring DVDs, etc to avoid the choking you get when reading the source files and writing the destination files to the same HDD) ever breaks he'll probably get a SATA HDD to replace that as well.

 

[doveman007]

From here, last table, or here it says that A2 is the code for the page for displaying soft errors after the "cache checking", then A3 is about setting keyboard "typematic rate" whatever that is.
99 is a step that should have done already.

This is not my field, and probably Asrock should be able to tell you more as it's their board's own firmware speaking here. Could help pinpoint hardware faults or whatnot.

Or could simply be another sign that the BIOS is screwed up and that you need to reflash it.

Thanks for that. I guess that means whatever A3 covers is taking too long, as that's the "completed" code that's taking a long while to appear. I'll e-mail Asrock as you suggest and see if they can shed some light on why it might be doing this. I cleared the CMOS the other day but there's no harm in trying to reflash the BIOS again in case but I'll wait to see what they say first.

 

[bobafetthotmail]

Just in case it wasn't clear, clearing CMOS =/ reflashing bios. The latter means doing a BIOS update to the latest version, as it erases the BIOS and creates it again hereby fixing a corrupted BIOS, while clearing CMOS just resets settings to factory default. It is risky, or not depending on what features has that board (double BIOS chips, additional stuff that allows you to reflash it agan from USB at boot, whatever)

 

[doveman007]

Just in case it wasn't clear, clearing CMOS =/ reflashing bios. The latter means doing a BIOS update to the latest version, as it erases the BIOS and creates it again hereby fixing a corrupted BIOS, while clearing CMOS just resets settings to factory default. It is risky, or not depending on what features has that board (double BIOS chips, additional stuff that allows you to reflash it agan from USB at boot, whatever)

No worries, I know that. I can see my reply was a bit unclear when I referred to flashing the BIOS again. What I meant is that I upgraded it to the latest version fairly recently, perhaps 1-2 months ago.

I had hoped we'd gotten the system stable now but unfortunately I just had another BSOD. It's a weird one as I'm 95% sure I decided to shut it down for the evening several hours ago but then I noticed that the lights were on and so switched on the monitor and there was a BSOD referring to teamviewervpn.sys. I can only think that it must have woken in response to a WOL signal from one of my other machines perhaps, although I guess it's possible it happened when I shutdown and I just didn't notice it hadn't completed successfully.

I haven't done the disc scan yet. I'll do that tomorrow as I don't want to leave the machine on overnight unattended.

Anyway, perhaps Arc can cast his expert eye over the dump for me. I've posted what Windows showed when I rebooted below:

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: BlueScreen
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.1
Locale ID: 2057

Additional information about the problem:
BCCode: d1
BCP1: FFFFF9800573AD20
BCP2: 0000000000000002
BCP3: 0000000000000000
BCP4: FFFFF88004292DB5
OS Version: 6_1_7601
Service Pack: 1_0
Product: 256_1

Files that help describe the problem:
C:\Windows\Minidump\071613-15147-01.dmp
d:\wintemp\user\WER-21340-0.sysdata.xml

EDIT: I checked the SYSTEM log and I did indeed shutdown at 21:48 and the next restart was at 01:46, although I guess if it did restart and BSOD before loading Windows that might not show in the log.

I'm also wondering if perhaps this latest BSOD might be connected to my disabling Offline Files, SuperFetch and VSCS earlier. I'll probably need VSCS anyway as I think EaseUS ToDo Backup might need it, for doing System backups if not Data backups.

 

[doveman007]

I've done a disk check on both the SATA and IDE HDDs now and they were fine.

The boot delay turned out to be due to a dodgy SATA cable on the ODD. I replaced it and it doesn't delay at that screen anymore.

I had another problem when I reconnected my IDE HDD and plugged my PCI tuner card in. When I booted, the keyboard was not functional at POST and when it automatically went to boot Windows it BSOD the first time and the second time said somthing about not having an ACPI compatible BIOS. I disconnected the IDE cable from the board and then it worked normally again, so I shutdown and replaced the IDE cable and now it seems to be OK, so it seems I might have had two dodgy cables, although it seems strange that would have caused these BSOD at boot as I'm not booting from the IDE HDD (add I had done a disk check in Windows with the IDE HDD and the old cable and that worked fine).

Regarding the latency issues, the author of LatencyMon has told me

"Your system appears to be OK. Regarding excessive hard disk usage and spikes under load, I suggest you make sure that your harddisks have enough free space and are not fragmented. You can use the standard Windows defragmentation tool for that. If fragmentation on your system is low and not a problem then I suggest considering if excessive paging might be the problem (take a look at your memory load, kill of processes that consume a lot of memory, etc.)"

My HDDs are defragged and have plenty of space, so that's not an issue. I also told him that I see tons of hard pagefaults from svchost.exe when analysing the disk with Windows defrag but no latency spikes and he replied

"Whether they are connected depends on the priority of the process that incurs the page fault. Defrag runs at lower or idle priority. In principle, only a real-time priority process/thread can compete and thus influence the interrupt to process latency measurements."

Which makes sense, although it doesn't get me any nearer to understanding why I'm getting latency spikes with MediaPortal, where it does matter as that's for playing media and having spikes during that could cause audio/video glitches. I guess I should ask on the MediaPortal forums if anyone knows anything about that.

 

[Arc]

The latest BSOD as you posted is caused by teamviewervpn.sys, TeamViewer VPN Adapter driver.

*******************************************************************************
*                                                                             *
*                        Bugcheck Analysis                                    *
*                                                                             *
*******************************************************************************

Use !analyze -v to get detailed debugging information.

BugCheck D1, {fffff9800573ad20, 2, 0, fffff88004292db5}

*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for [URL="http://www.carrona.org/drivers/driver.php?id=teamviewervpn.sys"]teamviewervpn.sys[/URL]
*** ERROR: Module load completed but symbols could not be loaded for [URL="http://www.carrona.org/drivers/driver.php?id=teamviewervpn.sys"]teamviewervpn.sys[/URL]
Probably caused by : [URL="http://www.carrona.org/drivers/driver.php?id=teamviewervpn.sys"]teamviewervpn.sys[/URL] ( teamviewervpn+2db5 )

Followup: MachineOwner
---------

And the driver date is historically old.

fffff880`04290000 fffff880`0429d000   teamviewervpn T (no symbols)           
    Loaded symbol image file: teamviewervpn.sys
    Image path: \SystemRoot\system32\DRIVERS\teamviewervpn.sys
[COLOR=Red]    Image name: teamviewervpn.sys
    Timestamp:        Thu Dec 13 14:52:09 2007[/COLOR] (4760F9C1)
    CheckSum:         00017C81
    ImageSize:        0000D000
    Translations:     0000.04b0 0000.04e4 0409.04b0 0409.04e4

How do I update TeamViewer?

 

[doveman007]

Thanks Arc. Is there any clue in there as to what the PC was doing at the time (i.e. waking in response to a WOL signal)?

I checked and there's an update from 8.0.19045 to 8.0.19617 so I've done that and now the driver File Version is v9.0.0.3 dated 06/06/2013, Product Version 2.1_rc4 9/3 (the digital signature timestamp is still 17/12/2007 though), which is quite a jump for a minor update and hopefully will prevent it happening again.

 

[Arc]

I am not very sure about either of your questions, but what I can say that the remote control mechanism sometimes cause BSODs.

 

[doveman007]

I am not very sure about either of your questions, but what I can say that the remote control mechanism sometimes cause BSODs.

OK, thanks.

 

[bobafetthotmail]

Which makes sense, although it doesn't get me any nearer to understanding why I'm getting latency spikes with MediaPortal, where it does matter as that's for playing media and having spikes during that could cause audio/video glitches. I guess I should ask on the MediaPortal forums if anyone knows anything about that.

Emphasis on "could". Do you experience such glitches or distorted audio? On some systems it's normal, or at least not severe enough to cause visible effects.

I've disabled Offline Files, SuperFetch and VSCS. I don't have any of the others.

If the issue is still there you can enable them again.

What I meant is that I upgraded it to the latest version fairly recently, perhaps 1-2 months ago.

I assume the latency problem was already present. If not, reverting to an older BIOS (just check the CPU compatibility first, if you revert to a too old BIOS it will stop recognizing the CPU) could solve it.

The way I see this, with all the jumpiness of the BIOS and machine starting on its own, and NIC hating IDE, there is a hardware issue somewhere, a buggy BIOS, damaged mobo, a malfunctioning PSU (yes, bad PSUs can power up the system out of the blue like that, some were even kick-started, that is you give a kick and the PSU powers up).

Btw, what are the voltages from the PSU? Check in BIOS after a while it has been on (restart) and from HWMonitor while running (note that the BIOS is likely the only one that is 100% right, the other can be off by some 20%).
Try to disconnect power from secondary stuff (the CD player or a secondary HDD, addon cards you can do without) to see if the voltages change (increase) and latency decreases.
Trying with another PSU would be cool, but I understand that it's a bit annoying.

 

[doveman007]

Emphasis on "could". Do you experience such glitches or distorted audio? On some systems it's normal, or at least not severe enough to cause visible effects.

I'm probably more obsessed with this at the moment than I should be, because this is a system I'm building for my brother and once I've sent it to him, it's going to be next to impossible to check things like latency over the Net using TeamViewer. In some ways, it's perhaps easier to check for and eliminate latency issues (in theory anyway!) than to test every possible scenario to see if there's any audio/video glitches and if I've ensured there are no latency issues and my brother reports that he's experiencing glitches, at least I'll know it's not that and can look at settings/codecs, etc.

I'm not sure at the moment whether LatencyMon is just showing phantom readings though. If not, it would seem to suggest that DPC Latency Checker is pretty useless as it's not showing any of the latency spikes that LatencyMon is, so anyone just using that would think there is no latency problem and any issues they're having must be due to something else. On the other hand, if LatencyMon is only meant to be used with nothing else running, as the author initially suggested, then it's not much use for establishing whether any programs/activity are triggering latency spikes and DPC Latency Checker is probably more useful if there's no such restrictions with it.

If the issue is still there you can enable them again.

OK, I've re-enabled SuperFetch and VSCS. I don't think I have any use for Offline Files, so I might as well leave that disabled.

I assume the latency problem was already present. If not, reverting to an older BIOS (just check the CPU compatibility first, if you revert to a too old BIOS it will stop recognizing the CPU) could solve it.

The way I see this, with all the jumpiness of the BIOS and machine starting on its own, and NIC hating IDE, there is a hardware issue somewhere, a buggy BIOS, damaged mobo, a malfunctioning PSU (yes, bad PSUs can power up the system out of the blue like that, some were even kick-started, that is you give a kick and the PSU powers up).

Btw, what are the voltages from the PSU? Check in BIOS after a while it has been on (restart) and from HWMonitor while running (note that the BIOS is likely the only one that is 100% right, the other can be off by some 20%).
Try to disconnect power from secondary stuff (the CD player or a secondary HDD, addon cards you can do without) to see if the voltages change (increase) and latency decreases.
Trying with another PSU would be cool, but I understand that it's a bit annoying.

I think I flashed the latest BIOS before installing Windows, so I never looked at the latency with a previous version. I'll certainly try re-flashing the latest version, just in case something's got messed up and if I still have the same problems, try an earlier version. I've only got an Athlon II X4 630 in there, so it's unlikely the previous BIOS won't be compatible (I'll check first of course though).

Most of the time I've been running with only a single SATA HDD and had the latency issues still but I'll check the voltages as you suggest. Currently I've also got a SATA ODD and IDE HDD connected. I decided to remove the IDE ODD, mainly to tidy up the cabling and arrangement and because it's cheap enough for my brother to buy himself another SATA ODD if he wants. I've disabled the SATA3 for now as I'm not using it and it speeds up POST by eliminating the first screen and I figured I might as well disable anything I'm not using to see if it helps make the system more stable. If necessary, I'd be prepared to remove the IDE HDD and try and find a cheap SATA HDD (the IDE one is only 80GB, so I don't need anything special) but the BIOS doesn't actually allow me to disable the IDE controller (although I could of course disable it in Device Manager).

The PSU is a Seasonic G-360, which is supposedly a very good one using high quality components, so it should be fine but of course, even the best models have faulty units slip through the net. Unfortunately I don't really have a spare I can use (if the system was totally non-functional, I'd probably take the Antec CP-850 from my main system and test with that but I couldn't do that for any length of time to check stability as I need to use my main system).

I did wonder if the dodgy IDE cable could have been shorting some of the lines on the IDE connector and if this did share a PCI bus with the NIC, whether that could have been causing it to stop working temporarily but then I remembered that it happened with just the CF->IDE adapter plugged in, so it can't have been that.

However weird and redundant the "SATA IDE Combined Mode" BIOS option (which is now disabled) is, it seems unlikely that would cause the NIC to stop working, as it's obviously intended to be used by users and it seems unlikely the manufacturers would put in an option that breaks the NIC. Perhaps the "Aggressive Link State Power Management" option (also now disabled), was triggering the problem when an IDE device was connected though. Perhaps it's possible that Networx was somehow the final straw but I'll just have to see if it reoccurs. If so, it may well be there's a microfracture in the board being triggered by plugging in stuff to the IDE connector but it seems unlikely that this would then be corrected by unplugging it again.

If it does happen again, I'll double-check with the Dr Lan cable test in the BIOS, to see if it's just happening in Windows (should have done that before but I only discovered this test recently).

 

[gregrocker]

Why do you need TeamViewer VPN. I'd uninstall the program and all remnants of that VPN and then reinstall the latest version.

Where did you get Ultimate and how is it activated? Please post back the output from http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=52012

 

[doveman007]

Why do you need TeamViewer VPN. I'd uninstall the program and all remnants of that VPN and then reinstall the latest version.

Where did you get Ultimate and how is it activated? Please post back the output from http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=52012

Sorry for the delay in replying. I needed to borrow the power lead from the PC to work on my brother's Raspberry Pi (which I'm also having problems with but that's another story) and frankly have been a bit reluctant to turn on the PC for fear of running into more problems but I guess I can't keep putting it off!

I'm not sure I do need the VPN component on this particular PC but nonetheless, it shouldn't be causing BSOD and works fine on other PCs (as does the other software that was causing BSOD, which fingers crossed have been resolved by tweaking the BIOS settings, etc). Hopefully updating Teamviewer has sorted that particular problem out anyway.

As for your questions. I bought Ultimate and activated it with Microsoft using my key. Output is below:

Diagnostic Report (1.9.0027.0):
-----------------------------------------
Windows Validation Data-->

Validation Code: 0
Cached Online Validation Code: 0x0
Windows Product Key: *****-*****-FX8WW-PGVVM-W69YC
Windows Product Key Hash: G0IoKNtQuZbGXRpYTtNcJHSLzAU=
Windows Product ID: 00426-OEM-9402076-14585
Windows Product ID Type: 8
Windows License Type: COA SLP
Windows OS version: 6.1.7601.2.00010100.1.0.001
ID: {81C96419-83A1-465B-990C-7E216FE37F5C}(3)
Is Admin: Yes
TestCab: 0x0
LegitcheckControl ActiveX: N/A, hr = 0x80070002
Signed By: N/A, hr = 0x80070002
Product Name: Windows 7 Ultimate
Architecture: 0x00000009
Build lab: 7601.win7sp1_gdr.130318-1533
TTS Error: 
Validation Diagnostic: 
Resolution Status: N/A

Vista WgaER Data-->
ThreatID(s): N/A, hr = 0x80070002
Version: N/A, hr = 0x80070002

Windows XP Notifications Data-->
Cached Result: N/A, hr = 0x80070002
File Exists: No
Version: N/A, hr = 0x80070002
WgaTray.exe Signed By: N/A, hr = 0x80070002
WgaLogon.dll Signed By: N/A, hr = 0x80070002

OGA Notifications Data-->
Cached Result: N/A, hr = 0x80070002
Version: N/A, hr = 0x80070002
OGAExec.exe Signed By: N/A, hr = 0x80070002
OGAAddin.dll Signed By: N/A, hr = 0x80070002

OGA Data-->
Office Status: 109 N/A
OGA Version: N/A, 0x80070002
Signed By: N/A, hr = 0x80070002
Office Diagnostics: 77F760FE-153-80070002_7E90FEE8-175-80070002_025D1FF3-364-80041010_025D1FF3-229-80041010_025D1FF3-230-1_025D1FF3-517-80040154_025D1FF3-237-80040154_025D1FF3-238-2_025D1FF3-244-80070002_025D1FF3-258-3

Browser Data-->
Proxy settings: N/A
User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Win32)
Default Browser: C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe
Download signed ActiveX controls: Prompt
Download unsigned ActiveX controls: Disabled
Run ActiveX controls and plug-ins: Allowed
Initialize and script ActiveX controls not marked as safe: Disabled
Allow scripting of Internet Explorer Webbrowser control: Disabled
Active scripting: Allowed
Script ActiveX controls marked as safe for scripting: Allowed

File Scan Data-->

Other data-->
Office Details: <GenuineResults><MachineData><UGUID>{81C96419-83A1-465B-990C-7E216FE37F5C}</UGUID><Version>1.9.0027.0</Version><OS>6.1.7601.2.00010100.1.0.001</OS><Architecture>x64</Architecture><PKey>*****-*****-*****-*****-W69YC</PKey><PID>00426-OEM-9402076-14585</PID><PIDType>8</PIDType><SID>S-1-5-21-4142153632-2294863933-3660688552</SID><SYSTEM><Manufacturer>To Be Filled By O.E.M.</Manufacturer><Model>To Be Filled By O.E.M.</Model></SYSTEM><BIOS><Manufacturer>American Megatrends Inc.</Manufacturer><Version>P1.80</Version><SMBIOSVersion major="2" minor="6"/><Date>20111227000000.000000+000</Date></BIOS><HWID>C4C40D00018400F2</HWID><UserLCID>0809</UserLCID><SystemLCID>0409</SystemLCID><TimeZone>GMT Standard Time(GMT+00:00)</TimeZone><iJoin>0</iJoin><SBID><stat>3</stat><msppid></msppid><name></name><model></model></SBID><OEM/><GANotification/></MachineData><Software><Office><Result>109</Result><Products/><Applications/></Office></Software></GenuineResults>  

Spsys.log Content: 0x80070002

Licensing Data-->
Software licensing service version: 6.1.7601.17514

Name: Windows(R) 7, Ultimate edition
Description: Windows Operating System - Windows(R) 7, OEM_COA_SLP channel
Activation ID: 022a1afb-b893-4190-92c3-8f69a49839fb
Application ID: 55c92734-d682-4d71-983e-d6ec3f16059f
Extended PID: 00426-00188-020-714585-02-2057-7601.0000-1522013
Installation ID: 011233698945697890692972915495290251918235112246918961
Processor Certificate URL: [URL]http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=88338[/URL]
Machine Certificate URL: [URL]http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=88339[/URL]
Use License URL: [URL]http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=88341[/URL]
Product Key Certificate URL: [URL]http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=88340[/URL]
Partial Product Key: W69YC
License Status: Licensed
Remaining Windows rearm count: 3
Trusted time: 30/07/2013 18:07:09

Windows Activation Technologies-->
HrOffline: 0x00000000
HrOnline: N/A
HealthStatus: 0x0000000000000000
Event Time Stamp: N/A
ActiveX: Registered, Version: 7.1.7600.16395
Admin Service: Registered, Version: 7.1.7600.16395
HealthStatus Bitmask Output:


HWID Data-->
HWID Hash Current: MgAAAAEAAwABAAEAAAABAAAAAwABAAEAln0mUUAKJByUshAz5oIUzqoOqlFYpualQho=

OEM Activation 1.0 Data-->
N/A

OEM Activation 2.0 Data-->
BIOS valid for OA 2.0: yes, but no SLIC table
Windows marker version: N/A
OEMID and OEMTableID Consistent: N/A
BIOS Information: 
  ACPI Table Name    OEMID Value    OEMTableID Value
  APIC            ALASKA        A M I
  FACP            ALASKA        A M I
  HPET            ALASKA        A M I
  MCFG            ALASKA        A M I
  AAFT            ALASKA        OEMAAFT 
  MCFG            ALASKA        A M I
  SSDT            AMD           POWERNOW