BSOD 0x9C during gaming, new gaming PC, nothing helps

[Lazzi]

Hi all! About 5 months ago I bought all new parts and assembled a PC for gaming / school work. The goal was to buy parts that are instantly available (sold older PC to a friend and I needed a replacement fast) and the price range was about 1000-1200€ (in Finland). I ended up with the following parts:

- Fractal design Define R4 Black Pearl
- Asus DRW-24F1ST/BLK/G/AS 24x DVD+/-RW
- Kingston HyperX Genesis 8 GB (2 x 4 GB)
- WD Green 1 TB SATA III 64 MB
- MSI GeForce GTX 760 Gaming OC Edition 2048 MB
- Kingston SSDNow v300 120 GB SSD 2,5"
- Corsair CX600W V2
- Intel Core i5 4690K 3,5 GHz LGA1150
- Asus Z97-K Intel Z97 LGA 1150 ATX
(Decided to save some money and buy heatsink/cpu fan later, since I also needed a new monitor)

- Running Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit

I haven't overclocked anything.

All seemed fine until I installed the first games and Bluescreens started coming up.
There are 3 different BSOD Im getting (more detailed info below). Always Machine Check Exeption 0x9C. The thing is BSOD only comes during gaming. First the sound loops and everything freezes followed by BSOD.

Searching for the problem I have:

- Formatted and re-installed everything 3 times
- Monitored temperatures with Bios, Realtemp, Open hardware monitor (60c-80c with heavy gaming)
- Run sfc / scannow, chkdsk, Seatools, Lifeguard Diagnostic, Memtest, Prime95, Heaven Benchmark, dxdiag; no errors in any of them
- Borrowed my old rams and graphics card back and replaced the new ones; same BSOD still
- Removed and put back pretty much all the parts, checked the wires etc.
- Updated all drivers I could think of, including all the chipsets and BIOS

And nothing makes any difference... BSOD doesn't seem to have any logic; it might come right when I start gaming or after 8 hours of gaming. Record is 6 times a day but it may also wait for 7 days while I think I finally fixed it and then reappears. While Im aware that 80c might be a bit too high, BSOD presents itself also with lower temperatures. However, older (speaking of 5-7 years) games are mostly not crashing. Watching movies or surfing in the web doesn't crash ever.

I also got some debugging help from another forum, but 2 weeks of sending dump files resulted this:

"well, MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION is considered a hardware error.
I am not sure how to decode the MCA_EXCEPTION structure reported
0: kd> dd fffff80000ba8bb0
fffff800`00ba8bb0 00000001 00000000 d8a446a2 01d05762"


I'll paste few examples from WhoCrashed and the .zip file from DM Log Collector:


[FONT=Segoe UI, Arial]On Thu 16.4.2015 0:23:57 GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\Windows\memory.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: [FONT=Segoe UI, Arial]hal.dll[/FONT] (hal!HalInitializeBios+0x1500)
Bugcheck code: 0x9C (0x0, 0xFFFFF80000BA6BB0, 0x0, 0x0)
Error: [FONT=Segoe UI, Arial]MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION[/FONT]
file path: C:\Windows\system32\hal.dll
product: [FONT=Segoe UI, Arial]Microsoft® Windows® Operating System[/FONT]
company: [FONT=Segoe UI, Arial]Microsoft Corporation[/FONT]
description: Hardware Abstraction Layer DLL
Bug check description: This bug check indicates that a fatal machine check exception has occurred.
The crash took place in a standard Microsoft module. Your system configuration may be incorrect. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver on your system that cannot be identified at this time.


[/FONT]
[FONT=Segoe UI, Arial]On Wed 15.4.2015 22:37:51 GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\Windows\Minidump\041615-3915-01.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: [FONT=Segoe UI, Arial]hal.dll[/FONT] (hal+0x12818)
Bugcheck code: 0x9C (0x0, 0xFFFFF80000BA6BB0, 0x0, 0x0)
Error: [FONT=Segoe UI, Arial]MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION[/FONT]
file path: C:\Windows\system32\hal.dll
product: [FONT=Segoe UI, Arial]Microsoft® Windows® Operating System[/FONT]
company: [FONT=Segoe UI, Arial]Microsoft Corporation[/FONT]
description: Hardware Abstraction Layer DLL
Bug check description: This bug check indicates that a fatal machine check exception has occurred.
The crash took place in a standard Microsoft module. Your system configuration may be incorrect. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver on your system that cannot be identified at this time.


[/FONT]
[FONT=Segoe UI, Arial]On Wed 15.4.2015 21:55:36 GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\Windows\Minidump\041615-4742-01.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: [FONT=Segoe UI, Arial]hal.dll[/FONT] (hal+0x12818)
Bugcheck code: 0x9C (0x0, 0xFFFFF8000448BBB0, 0x0, 0x0)
Error: [FONT=Segoe UI, Arial]MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION[/FONT]
file path: C:\Windows\system32\hal.dll
product: [FONT=Segoe UI, Arial]Microsoft® Windows® Operating System[/FONT]
company: [FONT=Segoe UI, Arial]Microsoft Corporation[/FONT]
description: Hardware Abstraction Layer DLL
Bug check description: This bug check indicates that a fatal machine check exception has occurred.
The crash took place in a standard Microsoft module. Your system configuration may be incorrect. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver on your system that cannot be identified at this time. [/FONT]


LASSI-PC.zip is uploaded here:

View attachment 356483

At this point I have used over 100 hours and 4 months trying to find out what is wrong and Im out of ideas. So if someone has ANY ideas I would really appreaciate it.

 

[essenbe]

hello, Lazzi and welcome to the forums. I'll try to help you, but would you please upload the BSOD Posting Instructions here. I can't download the file you linked to without an account, plus we prefer them here. This will tell you how. http://www.sevenforums.com/bsod-help-support/96879-blue-screen-death-bsod-posting-instructions.html

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/9733-screenshots-files-upload-post-seven-forums.html

Also, please open an elevated command prompt ( click start, type cmd in the search box, right click on the cmd entry and select run as administrator) in the black box that opens, copy/paste sfc /scannow. If you decide to type it, notice the space between the sfc and the /. It is a system file checker which will scan your system files and attempt to correct any missing or corrupt files. What we want are the results to say windows found no integrity violations. If it says files were found but could not be repaired, close the box, reboot and run it again, after opening the administrative command prompt. You may have to reboot and run it three times for it to repair all system files. If it can't repair them after 3 reboots, let us know.

And also give as detailed a description as you can about your hardware including the Case, PSU and CPU Cooler, and place them in your system specs. These are the instructions I usually give and maybe it will help you.

Please fill out your System Specs​

   Information

Your System Specs will help us to help you, and doing it in this manner will make them available to all helpers in every post and keep us from hunting for them. We ask that you fill them out in as much detail as possible including Desktop or Laptop, Model number if it is an OEM computer and all components with the Manufacturer and Model number if possible.

If you will go to your last post and click the 'System Specs' in the bottom left of the post, you will find a link to update your system specs. Please fill those out in as much detail as possible, making sure to click save at the bottom of the page. If you would like to know what we would like, you can click 'My System Specs' at the bottom left of this post to see mine. If you do not know what your components are, this will help you accomplish this task. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/180324-system-info-see-your-system-specs.html​

 

[Lazzi]

Alright I updated my system specs, uploaded that zip correctly and ran sfc /scannow again; didn't find any problems!

As an added info, this package was a bit over my budjet so I didn't buy any sound card or keyboard yet. Heatsink is also stock. Im planning to buy them and Windows 8 in 2 months when my exams are over, but since this build is at the moment so unreliable, I really would like to find what is wrong before spending any more money.

 

[essenbe]

Lazzi, in your system specs, you listed the model/Manufacturer as WIC. Could you tell me exactly what that is please. You have 5 dump files which is what we use to debug the system. They are all pretty consistent that it is a Machine Check Exception, which basically means the machine shut down to protect itself from Damage.

BugCheck 9C, {0, fffff8000448bbb0, 0, 0}
Probably caused by : ntkrnlmp.exe ( nt!KxMcheckAbort+6c )
Followup: MachineOwner

All but one listed that the BSOD occurred while using aow3.exe which I believe is Age of Wonders.

One listed the cause as

BugCheck 9C, {0, fffff80000ba6bb0, 0, 0}
[COLOR=red]Probably caused by : intelppm.sys[/COLOR] ( intelppm!MWaitIdle+19 )
Followup: MachineOwner

Intelppm.sys is the Processor Driver and usually comes in a Windows Update. Please make sure your Windows Updates are up to date and are all installed. If you don't already have a CPU Temp monitoring program, please get one which will monitor your system at all times. I would like to know your CPU and GPU temps at all times, particularly while doing things stressful to them, like Gaming.

I also noticed a lot of errors in TS3Client which I believe is Team Speak 3, VLC and Nosgoth.

I would like you to reinstall your Graphics drivers, but do it by this process. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/327414-nvidia-drivers-avoid-problems.html. Please only install the Graphics driver and the PhysX driver. Nothing else.

Also, if you are overclocking anything, please set everything back to default levels. Also, please make sure your CPU cooler is installed properly. You should be able to turn off the machine and grab the CPU cooler with your hand and make sure it is secure. You should be able to, whit slight to moderate pressure not be able to get it to move. Also make sure the CPU Cooler fan and all fans in the system are turning as they should.

If needed, you should be able to take the side panel off the case and blow a house fan directly into the case and see a difference in temps.

You should be able to go to your Motherboard's Web Site (Motherboards | Z97-K | ASUS Global) for your board and make sure all drivers are up to date. Also please try to make sure the firmware for your SSD is up to date.

Try these things and see if you notice any difference in how the computer operates. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.