BSOD at random times, often at startup.

[frogsatdesk]

Hope you guys can help me this issue has been plaguing me for a month now, recently the crashes became less frequent but its starting to happen quite often again. Any help you can offer would be EXTREMELY appreciated.

 

[frogsatdesk]

Can somebody please help me? This is the third thread I've asked for help and received none At this point all I can do is either contact MS support for $200, take it back to the people who built my PC a few years ago for about the same amount of money, or try to cleanly install Windows 7 (which I have no ****ing clue how to do, don't have OS discs, etc.) PLEASE.

 

[derekimo]

Hi there,

Sorry about that, unfortunately threads slip by sometimes,

Looks like your video driver is getting flagged as the cause,

BugCheck 116, {fffffa800b6884e0, fffff88004fbedc0, ffffffffc000009a, 4}

*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for nvlddmkm.sys
*** ERROR: Module load completed but symbols could not be loaded for nvlddmkm.sys
Probably caused by : nvlddmkm.sys ( nvlddmkm+7a2dc0 )

Followup: MachineOwner

And as it's up to date,

Loaded symbol image file: nvlddmkm.sys
    Image path: nvlddmkm.sys
    Image name: nvlddmkm.sys
    Timestamp:        [COLOR="Red"]Fri Jan 09 14:22:06 2015[/COLOR] (54B0548E)
    CheckSum:         009D73FA
    ImageSize:        00A0E000
    Translations:     0000.04b0 0000.04e4 0409.04b0 0409.04e4

I notice all the ones from Dec until now are the same 116's (Video Driver related) you can try using a driver from before that to see if it helps.

One before the 344.65 version since that was flagged in the first 116 crash.

This is a good resource,

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/327414-nvidia-drivers-avoid-problems.html

Your previous ones were hardware 124's, did you change something to remedy those?

If not, it's possible they may all be pointing to your Graphics card as the problem but you can try the driver first.

 

[frogsatdesk]

Thanks Derek I'm doing another complete removal of everything Nvidia and going to download some drivers pre-344! Will keep you posted!

 

[frogsatdesk]

Wanted to post a quick update! So last night following your advice I completely removed all the drivers, and installed an older one where the system worked fine from almost a year ago. Upon rebooting the resolution was 800*600, first time it did that even after 'deleting' all the drivers before. Hopefully that indicates it was completely fresh! I had another crash a few minutes after installing the older driver.

I had forgotten to go into my recycling bin and deleting the older driver folders (as per the instructions in the link you provided me), so I did that following the first crash and my computer worked well for an hour or two before I went to bed. Was that a fluke or is it possible that merely having those files in the recycling bin was still causing system instability?


edit: also with the bugcheck 124's I don't believe I had made any changes when those were occurring. To be honest I had a few BSODs in December but they were so rare I didn't give them much thought.

 

[derekimo]

Was that a fluke or is it possible that merely having those files in the recycling bin was still causing system instability?

It's possible, I've seen stranger things.

 

[frogsatdesk]

Well the crashes have become less frequent since I removed the drivers and downloaded an old one, but I was just hit with another Posting to log to see if its the same issue, thank you again for your help it means a ton to me! I promise if I get this resolved I will post on this thread what fixed it in case anyone else is suffering from something similar.

 

[derekimo]

There are no new dumps in there, the latest one is from Jan 25 of this year.

 

[frogsatdesk]

I'm not sure why it didn't collect the latest dump, had another crash this morning and ran the Log Collector. I went through the zip before attaching it and same deal, no logs from FEB. Any idea why its no longer collecting them when it crashes?

Ran Furmark for a couple minutes, let the GPU temp climb up to 75C before I turned off the test. Had a steady 50+ fps, about 88% power usage, and no shut down or crash. When I am playing my games there are no weird graphical errors, no slowdown or odd colors. Is this an indication that the card itself is fine and that the problem lies somewhere in the software?

So frustrating!!! Haha.

 

[derekimo]

I don't know why it would stop creating dumps, and it sounds like the card passed. Did you run out of drivers to try?

Here's a couple tutorials for testing and diagnosing,

Graphics Card Problems - Diagnose

Stress test the Graphics Card using Furmark.

Video Card - Stress Test with Furmark

 

[frogsatdesk]

The crashing stopped for a period of a couple days. I was paranoid to shut the computer down because it had been running well but eventually thought i should let it rest and turned it off before bed. The next day the issues were back, albeit less frequent. Was good for another few days with maybe one crash every 2 days. As of today its crashing constantly again.

I ran the FurMark test suggested in your post, all the settings were set to the instructions. No crash, temp reached a max of 81C and stayed running for 5 minutes before I closed the program down.
I've also tried almost all the drivers from before the crashing began, none of which seemed to make any notable difference. In fact, once I gave up and just let it install the latest version that's when I had the 3 days of stability.

At this point I am raging, I am a few crashes away from taking my computer into the yard and turning it back into silicon with a sledgehammer.

I've attached what the Log Collector put together following some crashes today. Don't know if this POS actually has anything helpful in it though.

 

[frogsatdesk]

Just an update with where I am at. The issue is definitely related to the video card, seems fairly common across forums that recent Nvidia drivers have led to the blackscreen crash and reboot problem I've been having. Irritating because this machine had been flawless for the longest time. Even now, when it works, it works great. Playing BF4 on ultra right this minute and no slowdown, artifacts, anything like that. Will keep working towards a resolution.

 

[derekimo]

Yeah, I read a few things about those Nvidia drivers causing problems.

And there was no dump file in your latest upload.

 

[frogsatdesk]

Just wanted to post an update!

My computer is on its fourth day of running perfectly, following a day or two where it wouldn't even boot. The computer crashed one night and wouldn't start back up. I could hear the HDD spinning, power supply fan was running, and there was a few LEDs going but none of the fans fired up and obviously no video output. I was completely defeated and was going to take it in.

As a last shot in the dark I unplugged the 24 pin connector from the MOBO, gave it a quick blast of air and plugged it back in. Computer started right away after not doing it for 1.5 days, and has run perfectly since. I've had stable streaks before but not like this, so I think there may have been static or dust (don't know how dust got in there as it was connected tightly) cause mobo interruption.

Either way hopefully it keeps working!!

I guess looking back at it, my first crash logs indicated hardware failure and all the other crashes kind of seemed like it was a power issue as it was completely random and happened regardless of what the computer was doing. So maybe the interruption of mobo power was initially not enough to crash everything, just the GPU. Then it got progressively worse until almost nothing ran.

 

[derekimo]

Sounds promising, Thanks for posting back.

That was good thinking, checking that connector, hopefully that's all it was. If it stays that way you can come back and mark this solved.