Blue screens, many (not all) 'seems to be caused by ... ntoskrnl.exe'.

[ForTheLoveOfSod]

Hullo, everyone. Getting somewhat frequent blue screens. Far as I can tell they're not triggered by any thing specific, and have occurred when the computer wasn't doing much work. I've tried things like replacing the power supply (which I thought had solved it as it went months without doing it after that), testing the HDD, turning off the onboard audio, updating some drivers (particularly my GPU), and testing my memory.

The interesting thing about the RAM was that I ran MemTest and it got a lot of errors, so I removed one of the sticks to test them individually, and that test was fine (ran fifteen 1024GB-instances of the programme until they'd all gone over 100%). Then I switched that stick with the other stick and repeated the test, which was grand. Then I put the first stick back in the board (but it was now in the second slot) and ran the test again, now on both sticks again, and the test was fine. I concluded that somehow one of the sticks could've been loose. Note that when I say first or second slot, I mean slot 2 and slot 4 as per the motherboard manual.

One interesting thing I noticed is that this began to happen again (recall, I'd not had any blue screens since replacing the PSU several months ago) with great frequency last month when I installed Microsoft Visual Studio. Could of course be totally unrelated but that thing took hours to install and seemed to be changing a lot of files.


I built this computer at the end of 2014. Here are the specs:
Operating System
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit SP1
CPU
AMD FX-8320 29 °C
Vishera 32nm Technology
RAM
16.0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 577MHz (11-11-11-28)
Motherboard
ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. M5A97 R2.0 (Socket 942) 34 °C
Graphics
S22D300 (1920x1080@60Hz)
2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti (Gigabyte) 31 °C
Storage
2794GB Seagate ST3000DM001-1CH166 ATA Device (SATA) 35 °C
746GB ASDK ST3000DM001-1CH166 ATA Device (NULL)
Optical Drives
ATAPI iHAS124 W ATA Device
Audio
ASUS Xonar DG Audio Device


Thanks very much.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Hello and welcome ForTheLoveOfSod mate you say you ran memtest for100% just what did you mean by that ?? see this of mine

MEMTEST

The memtest you will need to make a bootable disk / stick andset the BIOS to boot from the optical or USB and it will take a fair time torun- some leave it overnight. http://www.memtest.org/

But one thing is very important you must let the test run for at least 8 passes any less and thefindings are no good. Now if errors come up straight away then you can stop it- see my pics. Now if there are errors and you have more than one stick of RAMin then you will need to test each stick ie remove the sticks and replace stick1 in slot 1 and test no errors do the same in slot 2 with stick 1 no errorsthen repeat the process with stick 2 - that will show up the faulty stick - theother thing is it could be a faulty slot but most unusual.

It is a very lengthy and tedious process but worth it if youhave errors.
Meanwhile I shall look at the dumps and that dump file you referred to covers a multitude of issues software to hardware so hence I want to make sure the memtest was indeed run for the specified amount of time.

 

[ForTheLoveOfSod]

Ah thanks very much. I'm glad faulty slots are unusual, as I'd prefer not to have to RMA my motherboard and not use my comuter for a week.

The programme I'd run is not the normal Memtest86 or MemTest86+ but one just called MemTest, by HCI design. Initially I thought I'd downloaded some poor imitation programme, but on looking it up a lot of people say that it's found errors that the more usual MemTest86(+) never found.

This programme:
MemTest for Windows Download Page

It blue-screened the last two times I tried to play Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. But the first time I played it was for about two hours, I think two days ago, and it ran smoother than just about any other game I have and didn't crash. The last crash was only a few hours ago so it wasn't in the initial file, but I've added it to my .zip file of all the Minidumps and attached that here. Let me know if it's preferable to use that Seven Forums software.

Thanks very much.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Ok mate now that test I or we do not use it has to be the one I linked in my post previously.

The dumps are coming up with that wretched ntoskrnl.exe which can be just about anything and may take some tracking don so please we need to get that memtest out of the way as per that link.

 

[ForTheLoveOfSod]

Understood. Been trying to get it to work since I wrote my last response but it won't recognise the USB drive as bootable.

This is the one I used:
Download - Auto-installer for USB Key (Win 9x/2k/xp/7) *NEW!*

I simply unzipped and installed it on the USB as I believe it was guiding me to do, and it's not recognising it. Any ideas? Besides that, been updating my Windows and trying to keep my audio device drivers uninstalled (besides my Xonar sound card). Would you have any advice on the drivers? I think that was the cause of the portcls.sys crashes.

Thanks very much.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Ok mate now as a personal preference I always use a disk I really cannot be bothered with USB sticks and storing the disk is so much cost effective in my mind than clutter a USB stick with a fair amount of applications / programs.

So just try an optical disk and I use ImgBurn to do the bootable disk The Official ImgBurn Website it can be fiddly to use until you get use to it though.

 

[Golden]

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/105647-ram-test-memtest86.html

 

[ICIT2LOL]

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/105647-ram-test-memtest86.html

Yep theres that ref too FTLOS

 

[ForTheLoveOfSod]

Thanks, Golden. That's exactly what I'd done. But it goes straight to Windows. I have no blank CDs, either, ICIT2LOL.

I think I may have it sorted, though. From what I can tell, between the two things I've tried it's fixed. The two things are updating Windows (I'd the updates turned off because it was restarting my PC every couple of days without even asking; too aggressive) and disabling all audio devices but my sound card.

However, this is not the first time I've disabled my onboard audio and Nvidia audio. They just sometimes reënable themselves. Tried uninstalling them as well. Many times.

I suppose I hould keep Windows updates on. I always said I'd update manually every once in a while but hadn't in seven months. Is there any way to make it less aggressive? It even highjacks the Start menu so that when I try to lock it it shuts down!

Thanks.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

There is an option in the update settings mate to find the updates but let me choose which ones to install.

 

[ForTheLoveOfSod]

I thought I'd chosen that one but maybe not, as it had the 'download but don't install' one selected.

I was installing updates an hour ago and it blue-screened again. It was another 'IRQL not less or equal' one but with no dump file for some reason. Maybe owing to the updates in progress? I could swear it had the word 'driver' on the blue screen but I'm not positive. I didn't pay much attention as I'd assumed there'd be a dump file to look at in BlueScreenView. But there isn't.

The audio drivers are still disabled but they're not uninstalled. Uninstalling them seems impossible for some reason, apart from physically removing my motherboard or my GPU. Obviously, I'd rather not do that.