Solved BSOD After Video Streaming and Playing Games

[burntoast]

Hi, everyone. Just when I thought my BSOD issues from last year were solved, they've seemed to pop up again. This time, I'm mainly experiencing issues with "IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL" and ntoskrnl.exe. I'm hoping that it's a software error like a driver rather than a hardware one. These BSODs mainly occur after a lengthy amount of time streaming videos and playing computer games.

I'll be sure to stress test my CPU, RAM, and GPU soon. For now, attached are my SF Diagnostic files. Thank you in advance.

 

[Thedoctor44]

Normally with these dumps I would say a system driver is using wrong pointers but because it's so consistent I think otherwise.

BugCheck A, {[COLOR="Red"]3[/COLOR], [COLOR="Blue"]2[/COLOR], 0, fffff800032d7785}

Given that the address being referenced was 3 it's pretty clear that it's invalid memory, I believe the first accessible address which is used for user mode at boot is 0x10000 although I might be slightly off with that one.

Again another IP misalignment...

BugCheck D1, {[COLOR="red"]1[/COLOR], [COLOR="blue"]2[/COLOR], 0, fffff88001887e85}

Again an invalid memory address was referenced.

BugCheck [COLOR="red"]9C[/COLOR], {0, [COLOR="Green"]fffff88002f6db70[/COLOR], 0, 0}

2: kd> [COLOR="Green"]!mca fffff88002f6db70[/COLOR]
[COLOR="Red"]Machine Check feature not present[/COLOR]
CP  F/M/S Manufacturer  MHz PRCB Signature    MSR 8B Signature Features
 2  6,58,9 GenuineIntel 3400 0000001200000000                   21193ffe

On X64 systems to use the !mca command I believe I need to acquire private HAL symbols which I'm struggling to find at this moment in time if they're available to the public.

A machine check exception from my experience is quite rare as it's not common for one to be called if its bad RAM.
Nevertheless I think its best we test RAM first.

   Information

Download it here:

Memtest86+ - Advanced Memory Diagnostic Tool

Which one should I download?

You have two options to choose from, you can either download the ISO version then burn it do a CD and boot it from there.
The other option is downloading the auto installer for USB sticks, you then boot from that USB stick.
Be warned though, it will format your USB then install the files needed to make it bootable so any files left over will be wiped off.

So how does it work?

It works by writing a series of test patterns to most memory addresses over 9 tests, it then reads the data back to compare it for errors.

The default pass does 9 different tests varying in access patterns and test data. A tenth pass is optional from the menu which writes all the memory in zeroes then sleeps for 90 minutes and compares it to see if any address have changed, this takes 3 hours per pass each time.

My memtest86 isn't booting! What should I do?

This can be caused by a number of different reasons, common ones include your BIOS not setting using the correct settings, you might want to change your boot priority order.
Other causes include your motherboard not supporting bootable USB sticks in which case you'll need to use a CD (or floppy drive).

Any other issues you might want to look here:

FAQ : please read before posting

If bad RAM isn't found then I suggest you remove these programs as I've seen uncountable cases where these have caused BSODs.

Start Menu\Programs\ASUS\[COLOR="red"]AI Suite II[/COLOR]	Public:Start Menu\Programs\ASUS\AI Suite II	Public
Start Menu\Programs\[COLOR="red"]DAEMON Tools Pro[/COLOR]	Public:Start Menu\Programs\DAEMON Tools Pro	Public

AI Suite is bloatware that can even set improper BIOS timings, try removing the CMOS battery then placing it back in which might be the cause of the problem.
Daemon Tools causing BSODs by using a bad driver that likes to misbehave in random ways, mainly using bad pointers and accessing memory it shouldn't.

 

[burntoast]

I've tested my RAM using Memtest86+ and it found no errors after two hours (two passes). This is consistent with results in the past, so I'm confident that my memory has no issues. For my CPU, I ran Prime95 a few days ago without incident, although the temps were getting a bit high under load (85 F max).

Concerning AI Suite II, the only tools that I have installed within it are FAN Xpert 2 and Sensor Recorder. My system overclocking is done solely in the BIOS and I don't have any tools installed that override these settings. I would prefer it if I didn't have to uninstall this program since I don't recall any viable alternatives for managing my fan profiles. Still, I'll try uninstalling it just in case.

Concerning Daemon Tools, I haven't had that program open as an active window or anywhere on the taskbar, tray icon or otherwise, when these recent BSODs have occurred. The install date for this program is December 2013 and the recent BSODs have started on 6/21/14 at the earliest. I didn't experience any BSODs in between these dates when I actively used this program. For now, I've uninstalled the program in case it's causing issues.

Some system quirks I've been having include the fact that my mouse and keyboard sometimes stop working entirely. They've been connected to my USB 3.0 ports, so I've hooked them up to my 2.0 ports instead. Along with my web flash player plugin crashing after streaming videos, my Firefox browser will sometimes crash as well as my Windows desktop manager. Games that I've been able to run indefinitely without crashing now crash anywhere between a few minutes to over an hour of playing.

If anyone else could try finding out the cause of my BSODs, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Edit: New SF Diagnostics files have been attached with dumps from last week.

 

[burntoast]

Since it's been over 24 hours without a reply, I'll explain what I've done in order to alleviate my problems.

Even though it probably doesn't help, I've given my system a cleanup by disabling many unneeded startup programs via msconfig. I ran Kaspersky TDSSKiller in case a rootkit was to blame, but none was found. I've read this thread on debugging BSODs and tried following the instructions there. Enabling Driver Verifier did not help since my system performed normally for about an hour. Therefore, third-party drivers are probably not at fault.

Some progress was made when I decided to update my BIOS. It went well without a hitch, but it reset my overclock and everything else back to factory defaults. I set everything back very closely to what I had before and a BSOD appeared immediately when starting up Prime95's workers. Going back to the BIOS, I set the CPU voltage slightly higher, became able to run Prime95 a little bit longer, and repeated these steps until I could run Prime 95 without crashing for a while.

I'm still experiencing BSODs and I can't pinpoint exactly what is causing the BSODs. Both my CPU and GPU are overclocked and my RAM is running at stock timings. I'll try reverting both overclocks for the time being and see if that stabilizes the system.

Edit: Clocked my CPU down to 4.4 GHz and haven't had a crash for a full day.