Random Crashes (not BSOD) in RTM x64

[moshee]

Shortly after putting together my new rig (specs on my profile), using the same hard drives from my previous one, my computer began freezing randomly. The kind that you get with games sometimes when the sound in the buffer plays repeatedly and sounds like a jackhammer. The only way to get out is to force restart the computer. Sometimes, it doesn't even get past the boot screen; it just hangs, and when I force restart it, I have to run startup repair (which is always successful but really annoying).
Memtest passed over 100% with no errors. Any ideas?

 

[slithernet]

Is it overclocked?

 

[jcgriff2]

Did you re-install Windows 7 or was it already installed on the HDDs from the old system? If the latter, I suggest that you re-install the OS.

 

[moshee]

I never overclock, and I will try reinstalling it. It seems that I have temporarily avoided the problem by removing the program that controls my motherboard onboard audio. Not sure how long this will last, though. Thanks for helping

 

[usasma]

Thanks for letting us know the solution!
It's likely to help others who come searching for the solution to similar issues.

 

[moshee]

Nevermind, it still freezes.
Now, though, it seems like it only freezes during boot. When this happens and I force restart, however, I have discovered that when it says "windows failed to start", nothing actually happened, and I can just start windows normally, and it works fine. This problem is quite fishy...

update: some pretty interesting crashes.
1. I got stuck in a loop of restarting and "windows failed to boot"
2. I had itunes open and working on something in illustrator, and suddenly everything froze and the music turned into something that sounded like playing a text file as raw audio data. Still have not found the culprit.

 

[Moran]

Hi, I have what sounds like a very similar problem. Specifically, windows freezes up - monitor power light starts blinking, if there's sound it gets stuck in a loop. Only solution is to restart computer. I also have onboard audio - in my case from realtek. I can replicate the bug by starting the game "Empire Total War" and hitting escape to skip the credits. I've tried reinstalling windows and the game, getting the latest realtek drivers, trying both newer and older versions of catalyst (radeon 4850). Nothing seems to work. I wonder if this is an integrated audio problem? (running Win7 rc 7100). Funny part is, when I started running win7 in august I didn't have this problem, and I have no idea what might have changed to cause it.

 

[moshee]

Well, removing all of my motherboard drivers one by one and trying out several different graphics drivers didn't help me. Hopefully that answers at least part of your problem.

Meanwhile, I have done a re-install, but it froze in the middle of the install so I had to reboot and wait 45 minutes to rollback the install. I changed my memory timings to match the XMP profile, and so far there have been no audio loop crashes - but just now I had a BSOD. If anyone knows how to read it then here's the info.

Problem signature:
  Problem Event Name:	BlueScreen
  OS Version:	6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.1
  Locale ID:	1033

Additional information about the problem:
  BCCode:	124
  BCP1:	0000000000000000
  BCP2:	FFFFFA800542B8F8
  BCP3:	0000000000000000
  BCP4:	0000000000000000
  OS Version:	6_1_7600
  Service Pack:	0_0
  Product:	256_1

Also, it seems that many of the crashes, but not all, were when I was doing something in Illustrator and hadn't saved for a while
Update: My computer just went 5 times in a row freezing while booting up. Looks like memory timings weren't the issue. Also froze during system restore. A clean install was successful on another hard drive I had lying around, but I'm not sure whether or not transferring all of my data will just cause the crashes again. anyone?

 

[usasma]

A STOP 0x124 error is a hardware error on your system - either broken hardware or incompatible hardware (IMO).

Can you temporarily remove your audio card from the system to test and see if that stops the problem?

Also, please run the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor tool to see if it finds any issues. It's free from here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...90-7659-4bd9-9e51-2497c146af15&displaylang=en

 

[moshee]

My audio is motherboard integrated...
But I will try that upgrade advisor. Thanks.

Ok, so the Upgrade Advisor says that my computer is all compatible. 1 Error, which was MSN Messenger being out of date.

I tried booting in safe mode after a string of unsuccessful boot attempts, and that failed too. Every time I tried safe mode, it would hang after loading 'atipcie.sys'. I even went and got something to eat and when i came back it was still stuck. Not sure if graphics drivers/hardware could be the issue?

There are 2 types of crashes - jackhammer (sound buffer repetition) and random binary ("squeaky" static). The second type seems to be happening more often than the jackhammer type now...

So far I have triggered these crashes with all sorts of seemingly unrelated actions, including but not limited to: Locking the computer, opening a file in WinRAR, and being productive.

 

[usasma]

Try disabling your sound in the BIOS.

 

[moshee]

Thanks for the suggestion, I disabled the sound and so far, so good. More than 3 hours of uptime

okaaaay.... onboard audio is NOT the problem... Now it refuses to boot up even with it disabled.

update 2: after countless boot failures, I finally decided to explore my bios in-depth. I found another onboard audio option to turn off - the AMD northbridge chipset. After fiddling with all the other settings to make them get along with eachother, I finally managed to get my computer booted up. Not sure if changing another setting (like re-enabling the realtek audio controller) will break anything again, but i'm not about to try to find out. right now, any uptime at all is good enough for me...

update 3: Alright, that wasn't the problem, either. So far I've tried disabling and changing pretty much everything in the bios, and nothing seems to work 100%. I'll get a lot of uptime after changing one setting, and then I come back the next day and it freezes again.

update 4: man, nothing seems to be working. I enabled hd audio while keeping amd hdmi audio disabled, and the crash that resulted cut off the sound instead of making it go crazy.

please help...... is it bad hardware? software? FIRMware? or am I just unlucky....?

 

[moshee]

Here are some minidumps that I have from the crashing... hopefully they can shed some light on this situation

 

[scurrie]

@moshee - I'm getting the exact same problem with the same motherboard (I found this forum after Googling "windows 7 x64 +M4A785TD-V randomly freezes") but my freezes are less frequent - many hours between them. No BSOD, just frozen.

How did you get minidumps?

Edit: I just realized my memory timings are quite agressive (666 MHz @ 8-8-8-21 on memory rated for 9-9-9-24) so I'll change that before investigating further into the freezing. Interestingly, MemTest86+ 4.00 passed with these timings.

 

[moshee]

Actually I thought this thread was dead but I got my problem fixed. It was, in fact, a memory problem - something wrong with the motherboard maybe? (edit: I just realized that maybe a BIOS flash is necessary) The manual tells you to put the DIMM's in alternating slots for dual channel. It shows up as dual channel when in adjacent slots. So I followed the manual's instructions, put my DIMM's in alternating slots, and voila, it works. The memory is in single channel though, and memory performance decreased by 0.1 in the windows experience rating, but at least it doesn't freeze every hour

How did you get minidumps?

start menu -> right click on my computer
advanced system settings (on the left side)
"advanced" tab -> startup and recovery settings
bottom of the window - write debugging information, select "small memory dump" and make sure the path is "%SystemRoot%\Minidump" without quotes. Next time you restart it something should show up in ~\Windows\Minidump

 

[zigzag3143]

Here are some minidumps that I have from the crashing... hopefully they can shed some light on this situation

Hi Moshee

Sorry this took so long. I just didnt see this one. Your dmps are identical the cause is hardware

I would
Update all the drivers Bios, chipset, video, wifi, etc
download and run memtestx86 for several hours at least
If you are Overclocking stop
If you have a raid upload its driver
run a system file check to verify and fux system files.
type cmd in search>right click and run as admin>sfc /scannow
let us know the results

Hope this helps

Ken J++


Microsoft (R) Windows Debugger Version 6.11.0001.404 X86
Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.


Loading Dump File [C:\Users\K\Desktop\103009-29250-01.dmp]
Mini Kernel Dump File: Only registers and stack trace are available

Symbol search path is: SRV*d:\symbols*Symbol information
Executable search path is:
Windows 7 Kernel Version 7600 MP (4 procs) Free x64
Product: WinNt, suite: TerminalServer SingleUserTS
Built by: 7600.16385.amd64fre.win7_rtm.090713-1255
Machine Name:
Kernel base = 0xfffff800`02e55000 PsLoadedModuleList = 0xfffff800`03092e50
Debug session time: Sat Oct 31 01:42:47.783 2009 (GMT-5)
System Uptime: 0 days 0:00:09.469
Loading Kernel Symbols
.................................................
Loading User Symbols
Mini Kernel Dump does not contain unloaded driver list
*******************************************************************************
* *
* Bugcheck Analysis *
* *
*******************************************************************************

Use !analyze -v to get detailed debugging information.

BugCheck 124, {0, fffffa80055f56c8, 0, 0}

Probably caused by : hardware

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

1: kd> !analyze -v
*******************************************************************************
* *
* Bugcheck Analysis *
* *
*******************************************************************************

WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR (124)
A fatal hardware error has occurred. Parameter 1 identifies the type of error
source that reported the error. Parameter 2 holds the address of the
WHEA_ERROR_RECORD structure that describes the error conditon.
Arguments:
Arg1: 0000000000000000, Machine Check Exception
Arg2: fffffa80055f56c8, Address of the WHEA_ERROR_RECORD structure.
Arg3: 0000000000000000, High order 32-bits of the MCi_STATUS value.
Arg4: 0000000000000000, Low order 32-bits of the MCi_STATUS value.

Debugging Details:
------------------


BUGCHECK_STR: 0x124_AuthenticAMD

CUSTOMER_CRASH_COUNT: 1

DEFAULT_BUCKET_ID: VISTA_DRIVER_FAULT

PROCESS_NAME: System

CURRENT_IRQL: 0

STACK_TEXT:
fffff880`02fc46f0 fffff800`0310fa89 : fffffa80`055f56a0 fffffa80`03a1b040 00000000`0000000a 00000000`00000001 : nt!WheapCreateLiveTriageDump+0x6c
fffff880`02fc4c10 fffff800`02ff1547 : fffffa80`055f56a0 fffff800`0306a5f8 fffffa80`03a1b040 00000000`00000282 : nt!WheapCreateTriageDumpFromPreviousSession+0x49
fffff880`02fc4c40 fffff800`02f59b95 : fffff800`030cc360 fffffa80`055f0688 fffffa80`055f0680 fffffa80`03a1b040 : nt!WheapProcessWorkQueueItem+0x57
fffff880`02fc4c80 fffff800`02ed4161 : fffff880`00e3be00 fffff800`02f59b70 fffffa80`03a1b040 00000000`00000000 : nt!WheapWorkQueueWorkerRoutine+0x25
fffff880`02fc4cb0 fffff800`0316a166 : 00000560`00000000 fffffa80`03a1b040 00000000`00000080 fffffa80`03a099e0 : nt!ExpWorkerThread+0x111
fffff880`02fc4d40 fffff800`02ea5486 : fffff880`02d64180 fffffa80`03a1b040 fffff880`02d6efc0 00000560`00000000 : nt!PspSystemThreadStartup+0x5a
fffff880`02fc4d80 00000000`00000000 : fffff880`02fc5000 fffff880`02fbf000 fffff880`02fc41d0 00000000`00000000 : nt!KxStartSystemThread+0x16


STACK_COMMAND: kb

FOLLOWUP_NAME: MachineOwner

MODULE_NAME: hardware

IMAGE_NAME: hardware

DEBUG_FLR_IMAGE_TIMESTAMP: 0

FAILURE_BUCKET_ID: X64_0x124_AuthenticAMD_PROCESSOR_BUS_PRV

BUCKET_ID: X64_0x124_AuthenticAMD_PROCESSOR_BUS_PRV

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

 

[scurrie]

Well this is annoying. I changed memory timings to the recommended ones (9-9-9-24) and yesterday the system was stable. This evening, however, it was stable for many hours and then froze twice within half an hour. The only common non-service app running during both freezes is uTorrent. It was not running during the stable periods.

To make matters worse, since the system freezes it has no chance to create minidumps. I set up the Small Memory Dump setting yesterday but there were none created this evening.

Any ideas?

 

[Tews]

Just a WAG but your PSU seems underrated for what you are running....I would try upgrading that to 650W at a minimum...that would also explain your freeze issue... just a thought

 

[moshee]

type cmd in search>right click and run as admin>sfc /scannow
let us know the results

Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations.

I think my problem is mostly fixed now, I updated my video drivers (catalyst 9.11) today and my memory performance in windows experience rating went up 0.1 points again (?) to where it was initially. Thanks for your help though.

To make matters worse, since the system freezes it has no chance to create minidumps. I set up the Small Memory Dump setting yesterday but there were none created this evening.

You sure you're looking in the right place (C:\Windows\Minidump\ by default)? my computer was able to make minidumps, somehow.

 

[scurrie]

I think I fixed it! I have a POS wireless card (Asus WL-138G V2) and when I initially built the system using its latest Asus drivers it refused to connect to anything. So I found the chipset it uses (Broadcom 4318), installed the Broadcom 5.10.97.7 drivers and it started working fine.

Or so I thought.

Since I just realized the freezes only happen when downloading torrents, I thought that maybe the wireless driver had a bug which only exposed itself when the network is heavily loaded. I found a newer Broadcom driver 5.30.21.0 and after installing it, downloaded a couple large torrents simultaneously. The system operated just fine! I'll try to remember to update this in a week or so after giving it enough time to prove stable.

If anyone else has this card, I suggest staying up on the latest Broadcom drivers. I found a great post here with links to them: Latest Broadcom 943xx Driver - NVISION

You sure you're looking in the right place (C:\Windows\Minidump\ by default)? my computer was able to make minidumps, somehow.

Yeah, the folder didn't even exist. I think it's because Windows didn't even get a chance to realize the freeze happened since even the kernel was frozen.