Computer Blacks out at random, BSOD.

[Allplay1997]

BSOD [Attempt to reset the display driver after timeout failed]

Hey guys, Hopefully I can get some help on this, I've recently acquired a used computer, to which I was told had been refurbished, well from the start I've had this one constant problem.
The computer would black out and simply shut down, sometimes giving me a BSOD, sometimes blacking out, music would still play for a few more seconds then stop, then the computer would either reboot or stay stuck until I manually reboot it, the BSOD is random as sometimes it doesn't happen, staying frozen on a black screen before rebooting or as mentioned above, until I reboot manually since it doesn't do that on some occassions.

On two occassions it has given me a clear BSOD screen, one other time it has given me a garbled weird screen that looked like a BSOD screen, on a last note regarding this, the space where it'd say that the computer is creating a dump report was garbled and writen in white and purple, I unfortunately don't have photos of the two weird screens however I'll leave attached the report compiled with the tool given by the admin on the BSOD Thread Posting Help, this computer was acquired yesterday, had been reformatted and the issue remains.

When I got it and saw the first issue, I checked my drivers, my graphics card was displayed as x300/550/1050 series (Microsoft WDDM) and had a driver, however thinking this was the issue I installed Vista drivers for the card from the ATI website and the issue remains. These issues happen at random, it can take an hour to 30 minutes or even 2 hours.

Thank you for your assistance, and sorry in advance for the wall of text

EDIT: I managed to snap a picture of one of the BSOD screens and will add it on here as more things to help establish what could be the error

EDIT #2 Gonna be posting my computer's specs down here Perhaps that can give a bigger image of what my build is and what the problem might be:

CPU: Intel Pentium D 925 3.00GHZ
Motherboard: Foxconn 662 7MA
Graphics Card: ATI Radeon X1050
RAM: 2x 1GB (One's manufacturer is "TeamGroup" the other's is "Transcend Information")
BIOS: Phoenix 6.00 PG
HDD: 160GB SATA

EDIT #3 When I turned on the computer after it had two more crashes, on bootup Windows gave me this message I shall leave here, additionally when running a game (ran GMod and it crashed 10 to 15 minutes in) or when running a 3D modelling software (Ran MMD, a software for 3D models) and it crashed not long after loading in a model, can this be linked to Graphics Card??? Here's what Windows told me:

Problem Signature:
Name of the event problem: BlueScreen
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.1
Region ID: 2070

Additional Information about the problem:
BCCode: 116
BCP1: 865A0348
BCP2: 9021D8FE
BCP3: 00000000
BCP4: 00000002
OS Version: 6_1_7601
Service Pack: 1_0
Product: 256_1


EDIT #4: changing thread name to reflect a change in the issue which lays in the fact all of my BSOD's state the error message *Attempt to reset the display driver after timeout failed*

 

[SCANNERMAN777]

Just curious but did you try completely uninstalling all the video drivers and rebooting? Will it boot into Safe Mode? Have you checked for the cute little yellow triangles in device manager? My guess is that you're having a graphics issue and I have seen similar things happen when the wrong driver for the graphics card is installed. If you're not using a Vista operating system I highly recommend getting rid of the Vista drivers first and then letting Microsoft sort out the drivers before finding the correct and updated driver. There is also a remote possibility that your graphic card is shot. Of course I could be mistaken but that is what I would try first.

 

[Allplay1997]

Just curious but did you try completely uninstalling all the video drivers and rebooting? Will it boot into Safe Mode? Have you checked for the cute little yellow triangles in device manager? My guess is that you're having a graphics issue and I have seen similar things happen when the wrong driver for the graphics card is installed. If you're not using a Vista operating system I highly recommend getting rid of the Vista drivers first and then letting Microsoft sort out the drivers before finding the correct and updated driver. There is also a remote possibility that your graphic card is shot. Of course I could be mistaken but that is what I would try first.

Hey Scannerman777 thanks for your input, to answer your question, no I haven't tried unninstalling all video drivers, can this be done directly from the device manager or do I need some third party tool? At present there's no yellow triangles, never were there any, the ATI site only mentioned Vista drivers as it doesn't have Win7 Drivers, when I installed the driver along with ATI Catalyst, the device manager's entry on the Display Devices changed from Radeon x300/550/1050 Series (Microsoft WDDM) to Radeon x1050. and the issue still remains.

 

[Allplay1997]

Bump to inform computer specs and an image of one of the BSOD Screens is added to main post

 

[Allplay1997]

Bump :/ the computer is starting to get worser and worser, now the shut downs are more erratic and happen more frequently, same symptoms, screen blacks out, if you're listening to music it'll keep playing for a little while before eventually stopping and then the computer shuts down, sometimes showing me a BSOD always with the same error message "Attempt to reset display driver from timeout failed"
I'm starting to think maybe this computer has no repair and I should just return it. Please can someone help? Thanks for your interest

 

[SCANNERMAN777]

What I see in your picture looks annoyingly familiar. I had an old HP PC that gave me some of the same error codes. Yes, you can completely remove all of the drivers to allow for legacy drivers to default. If you are getting a blue screen with the legacy drivers I would say you have bigger problems and there is a chance that your graphics card is on its way out. I wouldn't write off the entire PC however. Another thing you can try is a different graphics card if you have one handy. Please let me know how it goes. If your drivers are wrong you can have all kinds of problems.

Oh yes... Indeed you can uninstall the drivers via device manager. I find it odd that ATI/AMD does not have drivers for your card if you are using Windows 7. I do know there are a lot of wannabe web sites out there that pretend they are ATI/AMD "catalyst" so be careful. Do you happen to know the make and model of your graphics card? This information could be helpful.

 

[Allplay1997]

Yeah, I remember having an HP Laptop that also gave me hundreds of issues, HP was never that good making laptops from what I've heard but anyways
yesterday night I decided to uninstall all drivers from the computer, screen went blank, I still heard music and Discord running in the background as the message notification sound kept playing, so what I did was reboot the computer and it booted into Windows 7 normally, as usual, horrible resolution which I fixed, and ran the computer in this state without any real drivers to see what would happen, no crashes, no lock ups or black outs, it ran perfectly :/ I decided to go to the ATI site and download the latest drivers they had again and installed them however kept the computer running without rebooting to make the drivers active persay, and it kept working great, of course, I couldn't run any games (tried GMod, PPSSPP) and 3D modelling software also didn't work, however I didn't pay that much mind, unfortunately the only other card I have is an AGP Nvidia card, but the mobo doesn't have an AGP port from what I can tell, it only has PCI, the graphics card I'm using is an ATI Radeon X1050, what struck me odd was that in device manager IF you let Windows install drivers for you, the card changes name to Radeon x300/550/1050 Series (Microsoft WDDM) but get rid of those and install the ATI Catalyst drivers and the name becomes ATI Radeon X1050 so I'm guessing that is the official name of the card, on the AMD/ATI site, on the drivers section, the only available for the X1050 are Vista, no Windows 7. SO those are the only ones I can really use.
I took out the card once and it showed that at least part of it was Asus. Perhaps I'll try looking up in the Asus Website for drivers and I'll update when possible.

I looked it up, apparently ASUS did mod the X1050 and called it the EAX1050, checking on their website I found Vista Drivers, none for Windows 7, under the Win7 category I only found some utility called GPU Tweak, I believe the issue lied with conflicting drivers? As the card is ATI but modded by Asus? Catalyst saw it as ATI and installed their own drivers when the components and the card itself are more compatible with the ASUS drivers? And the computer itself got confused hence giving off that string of issues? May this be the issue? Should I proceed with installing the ASUS drivers on top of the ATI drivers or unninstalling the ATI drivers and install the ASUS ones?

 

[SCANNERMAN777]

Glad you got it working

Should I proceed with installing the ASUS drivers on top of the ATI drivers or unninstalling the ATI drivers and install the ASUS ones?

I think, given the age of the PC and O/S, the old adage "If it ain't broke don't fix it" might apply here. Of course if you're like me you could always fix a restore point, back everything up, and play around with it I never leave anything well enough alone. lol How else can I learn? The other alternative might be trying to find a second replacement card for the unit but hey, that's your call. I love fiddling with old PCs and making them work despite what people might say about them. Alas, the wife won't let me keep them

So glad to see you got it up and running proper. Good job!

 

[Allplay1997]

Hey everyone, I proceeded with the installation of the ASUS Drivers I found, at first failing when trying to install in Safe Mode, rebooting it into normal Windows 7, and running the installer, all seemed fine and well until when trying to run Gmod once again the computer froze, blacked out and showed me a quick glimpse of a BSOD screen before rebooting, I'm truly demotivated after working for so long on it I cannot place my other card because its AGP, and I cannot afford another card at the moment, so I believe this computer is a lost cause.
when downloading and installing the drivers it also installed GPU Tweak from Asus but unfortunately it doesn't run, giving me the message "Fail to load dlls. Please install VGA driver." I installed and am running the computer with the Vista drivers I got from their website, on the device manager the entry for the graphics card now shows ASUS X1050, at first I thought everything was okay after it didn't crash when running a 3D software. Then it crashed when playing GMod, I really don't know what else to do with this build, perhaps its best to just return it (Quite mad about being fooled into buying a broken DoA computer, bad business practices ) Is there anything else I can do to try and fix it or throw in the towel?

Thanks for all the help so far

 

[SCANNERMAN777]

Just bring it back to where you had it working. I mean, you probably have your money's worth anyway considering you really dated yourself with that AGP. How serious can you take this? At least you know how to make it run stable now without blue screening.

You did get it working for a time, yes? At least it sounded like you did before you tried to reinstall the ASUS drivers. I dunno. I've heard it's pretty tough to keep Win 7 Ultimate running on a Pentium D chip to start with. I salute you for your efforts. I remember trying to do this on an old Elite board with a Pentium D. Eventually the board died but it was fun while it lasted. I think I might still have that old D chip kicking around. Is your total RAM only 1 GB or, is it 2X1 GB? If you can get a PCI card to give you graphics I'd settle with that and just run stock legacy drivers via update through device manager.

 

[Layback Bear]

Did you buy your computer with Windows 7 Ultimate already installed?

Jack

 

[Allplay1997]

Hey guys, sorry for extremely late reply, some developments happened, I might be returning the computer tomorrow, but to answer your questions, the ATI Asus graphics card I have IS indeed PCI Scannerman and I have 2GB of RAM sorry if it's confusing ^^"

Layback Bear, the computer CAME with Windows 7 Ultimate is what I was told

 

[Layback Bear]

Just curious.
Does your computer have one of these Microsoft stickers?

View attachment 399027

If not what kind of sticker does it have?

If you can return it I would do so.

Jack

 

[Allplay1997]

I looked in the case, it has one but it's been ripped out, can't make it out that well :/

 

[Layback Bear]

Return the computer.

It smells like a counterfeit install of Windows 7.

Jack

 

[Allplay1997]

Could you please explain Layback Bear if its not asking much?

 

[Layback Bear]

With the problems you are having and the fact that the original Microsoft sticker is scratch out gives off a smell that things are not right.
Even a re-manufactured (refurbished) computer should have a Windows 7 Microsoft sticker if Windows 7 has been installed.

Jack

 

[Allplay1997]

Yeah you're right about that, the Windows sticker has been ripped off, some parts of it are still on the case, plus when going to see if Windows 7 is activated, it says something along the lines of *Status not available* and below on the ID section it says Not Available. So it seems the problems can come from Windows itself??

In such a case it'd be best to just return it?

 

[SCANNERMAN777]

Good for parts

If you didn't pay that much for it you could keep it for parts. It really depends on your interest. Sometimes older parts like the ones you have can be quite valuable to others. Returning it is your choice but I suspect it is as others say... Your o/s is likely not authentic, in which case you have a recipe for disaster brewing on your PC. If you can't get your operating system to verify that it is genuine you may as well scrap it.

 

[Allplay1997]

Well update on the situation, I tried returning it today (lets not forget I only paid 25€ for it the full price was 50€, I was paying in halves, was gonna pay the rest by the end of this month) and ended up going away with the computer already mine, he doesn't want it anymore and even walked away with a free LCD Monitor I guess I could either fix it and keep it while upgrading it with better parts or scrap it and sell it for parts as Scannerman said. My interest in all cases is to keep it and fix it as computers that fall in my financial interest are hard to find, however given we cannot find what the problem is, places me in a tough situation, I could buy a graphics card for it just to find out that either the computer doesn't support it (I'd of course make my research so this shouldn't happen ) or the problem doesn't reside in the graphics card and I'd be buying a graphics card for nothing. So I'm in a rut D: