Hello, merry xmas.
Sorry to just jump straight in with a problem, but this has been bugging for months now until yesterday when 5 bsod's in a day. I use my PC for music production, video editing and photoshop so can push it pretty hard at times and it is (was) a pretty stable system - a random bsod once a month or so.
I have spent hours reading forums but just do not have the knowledge to figure it all out - windbg is mystical to those not in the know, i am hoping one of you clever people can help
I have not installed any new software or hardware, excluding a D-link usb hub and denon mixer which has not been on at any point.
The history:
In the last year I had a system that i was happy with (as said earlier the odd crash which is all part of the windows experience in my, er, experience). I decided I wanted to upgrade to allow more ram and have access to usb 3 and 6gb sata ports. So I bought the asus m5a97 evo r2 mobo - everything was tickety boo (good) for 3 months, I benched the gigbyte mobo and the OCZ ram - i bought corsair vengence 2 x 8gb(cmz16gx3m2a1600c10). I upgraded to the samsung evo 840, a corsair h100 and win 7 pro - no OS issues (just a bad firmware update on the ssd) but that got sorted with an RMA. I added two more sticks of RAM to the corsair vengence a couple of months later (cml16gxm32a1600c10). The ram is of different serial numbers but close enough and after reading many posts I discerned it wouldn't be a problem (and i couldn't afford 4 new sticks!)- it defaults to the slightly lower timings but as I am not overclocking and am happy with stability as opposed to speed, that is ok with me. It all worked fine - but still the odd random BSOD, no more or less than with the gigbyte mobo system and ocz ram. I started to think PSU as that is a constant. I have monitored voltages using HWmonitor for a few months now and have seen nothing that concerns me (but im no expert, just no great voltage drops that i could see). So I started to think RAM (again) even though there has been no difference between the Corsair and the OCZ in terms of stability, either with 2 sticks of same serial number or 4 sticks with slightly different serials.
Yesterday after several BSOD's and after trying to work out the cause via windbg and reading forums I thought do a clean install, not a sys image from my back up. Honestly, windbg to me is like a baby trying to read shakespear! Several hours later I got a clean system that runs, that was until I tried to run MSE to check for viruses before i made another system image - it crashed. I tried again and it did it again. I uninstalled MSE and installed Avast. I ran avast and it crashed - bsod. The same thing seems to happens with anti malware bytes: this is new! Especially as ntkrnlmp.exe keeps popping up - I attached the dumps from today (4 of them) and the files as requested (nice little tool BTW).
I have d/l memtest and will run it when I buy some dvd's and can burn the ISO - damn, no disks! I ran prime 95 for an hour today and it worked a treat, I was especially pleased to see my cpu temp never got over 48 degrees.
So now I am utterly bewildered. Ram has been changed, mobo has been changed, clean install, cool running. It doesn't crash when i am on photoshop doing 3d whilst watching media centre, running a virus scan and surfing the net. It does crash when i run an anti virus! The only constant I can think of is the hardware (a driver fault that keeps re-occuring) and the PSU. I hope its not the PSU and is a driver that one of you guys can see straight off (drivers are fully up to date) - if indeed you are kind enough to help.
If you got this far, thank you very much and have a happy new year. Thanks in advance for any help or clues.
P.s. I got Traktor dj yesterday which i have been waiting for for 3 weeks, it couldn't have happend 3 weeks ago could it?!? No point putting it on at the moment. Bloody sods law!
p.p.s I have also run chkdsk on the OS drive.
Update: I forgot to mention i have updated to the the latest bios. I just booted in safe mode and tried to malwarebytes - it crashed with the same culprit - ntkrnlmp.exe. Thanks.
Update 2: I just ran furmark GPU stress test after following this thread: http://www.sevenforums.com/bsod-help-support/304118-bsod-ntoskrnl-when-explorer-exe-open.html
- 10 mins and the temps levelled out at 83 degrees.
Update 3: I ran driver verifier and it would not boot - the faulting driver was niwincdemu.sys which is form native instruments. I will uninstall all there stuff, run ccleaner and then try to run avast again. I will post back
Update 4: Ok so I found 4 instances of niwincdemu.sys on my system. I renamed 3 of them, one would not let me, restarted and ran malwarebytes and avast at the same time - NO CRASH! I did not delete their software, just a renamed the faulting file. So now I am unsure whether that driver has always been the issue (it would make sense as their software has always been on my system) or whether there is still another problem that is concerned with hardware. Are niwincdemu.sys and ntkrnlmp.exe related in some way? All I have now is a yellow exclamation mark in device mnaager under storage controller: ISO mounter (which is preferable to instability). Any techhie harry potter have any ideas. illuminatus. Cheers. BTW no viruses or malware found on any drive.
Sorry to just jump straight in with a problem, but this has been bugging for months now until yesterday when 5 bsod's in a day. I use my PC for music production, video editing and photoshop so can push it pretty hard at times and it is (was) a pretty stable system - a random bsod once a month or so.
I have spent hours reading forums but just do not have the knowledge to figure it all out - windbg is mystical to those not in the know, i am hoping one of you clever people can help
I have not installed any new software or hardware, excluding a D-link usb hub and denon mixer which has not been on at any point.The history:
In the last year I had a system that i was happy with (as said earlier the odd crash which is all part of the windows experience in my, er, experience). I decided I wanted to upgrade to allow more ram and have access to usb 3 and 6gb sata ports. So I bought the asus m5a97 evo r2 mobo - everything was tickety boo (good) for 3 months, I benched the gigbyte mobo and the OCZ ram - i bought corsair vengence 2 x 8gb(cmz16gx3m2a1600c10). I upgraded to the samsung evo 840, a corsair h100 and win 7 pro - no OS issues (just a bad firmware update on the ssd) but that got sorted with an RMA. I added two more sticks of RAM to the corsair vengence a couple of months later (cml16gxm32a1600c10). The ram is of different serial numbers but close enough and after reading many posts I discerned it wouldn't be a problem (and i couldn't afford 4 new sticks!)- it defaults to the slightly lower timings but as I am not overclocking and am happy with stability as opposed to speed, that is ok with me. It all worked fine - but still the odd random BSOD, no more or less than with the gigbyte mobo system and ocz ram. I started to think PSU as that is a constant. I have monitored voltages using HWmonitor for a few months now and have seen nothing that concerns me (but im no expert, just no great voltage drops that i could see). So I started to think RAM (again) even though there has been no difference between the Corsair and the OCZ in terms of stability, either with 2 sticks of same serial number or 4 sticks with slightly different serials.
Yesterday after several BSOD's and after trying to work out the cause via windbg and reading forums I thought do a clean install, not a sys image from my back up. Honestly, windbg to me is like a baby trying to read shakespear! Several hours later I got a clean system that runs, that was until I tried to run MSE to check for viruses before i made another system image - it crashed. I tried again and it did it again. I uninstalled MSE and installed Avast. I ran avast and it crashed - bsod. The same thing seems to happens with anti malware bytes: this is new! Especially as ntkrnlmp.exe keeps popping up - I attached the dumps from today (4 of them) and the files as requested (nice little tool BTW).
I have d/l memtest and will run it when I buy some dvd's and can burn the ISO - damn, no disks! I ran prime 95 for an hour today and it worked a treat, I was especially pleased to see my cpu temp never got over 48 degrees.
So now I am utterly bewildered. Ram has been changed, mobo has been changed, clean install, cool running. It doesn't crash when i am on photoshop doing 3d whilst watching media centre, running a virus scan and surfing the net. It does crash when i run an anti virus! The only constant I can think of is the hardware (a driver fault that keeps re-occuring) and the PSU. I hope its not the PSU and is a driver that one of you guys can see straight off (drivers are fully up to date) - if indeed you are kind enough to help.
If you got this far, thank you very much and have a happy new year. Thanks in advance for any help or clues.
P.s. I got Traktor dj yesterday which i have been waiting for for 3 weeks, it couldn't have happend 3 weeks ago could it?!? No point putting it on at the moment. Bloody sods law!
p.p.s I have also run chkdsk on the OS drive.
Update: I forgot to mention i have updated to the the latest bios. I just booted in safe mode and tried to malwarebytes - it crashed with the same culprit - ntkrnlmp.exe. Thanks.
Update 2: I just ran furmark GPU stress test after following this thread: http://www.sevenforums.com/bsod-help-support/304118-bsod-ntoskrnl-when-explorer-exe-open.html
- 10 mins and the temps levelled out at 83 degrees.
Update 3: I ran driver verifier and it would not boot - the faulting driver was niwincdemu.sys which is form native instruments. I will uninstall all there stuff, run ccleaner and then try to run avast again. I will post back
Update 4: Ok so I found 4 instances of niwincdemu.sys on my system. I renamed 3 of them, one would not let me, restarted and ran malwarebytes and avast at the same time - NO CRASH! I did not delete their software, just a renamed the faulting file. So now I am unsure whether that driver has always been the issue (it would make sense as their software has always been on my system) or whether there is still another problem that is concerned with hardware. Are niwincdemu.sys and ntkrnlmp.exe related in some way? All I have now is a yellow exclamation mark in device mnaager under storage controller: ISO mounter (which is preferable to instability). Any techhie harry potter have any ideas. illuminatus. Cheers. BTW no viruses or malware found on any drive.
Last edited:
My Computer
At a glance
win 7 64bit proamd phenom 2 x4 955 3.2ghzcorsair vengence 4 x 8gbradeon hd 5770
- Computer type
- PC/Desktop
- Computer Manufacturer/Model Number
- homemade
- OS
- win 7 64bit pro
- CPU
- amd phenom 2 x4 955 3.2ghz
- Motherboard
- asus m5a97 evo r2
- Memory
- corsair vengence 4 x 8gb
- Graphics Card(s)
- radeon hd 5770
- Sound Card
- various - realtek onbaord, edirol ua 25, denon x1600
- Monitor(s) Displays
- samsung x 2
- Hard Drives
- samsung 840 evo ssd 120gb
4 other internal hdd
2 external
- PSU
- 1000w
- Case
- refine r4
- Cooling
- h100 corsair
- Antivirus
- was mse, now avast
- Browser
- firefox (and IE)
