Crashing issue

[Dkelly40]

My system is crashing randomly straight to the bios screen.

There is no BSOD or error message.

I can game for hours playing FFXiV or Borderlands with no issues then log out to watch a youtube video and end up staring at my bios screen in a split second.

It also happens when I am gaming. It can happen within 10 minutes of boot up or after 4 hours of gaming. Very random.

This is a new system (had it for about a month now) that I built.

There is nothing in my system health report.

I'm wondering if my power supply is faulty.

Windows 7 64 bit
Intel DP55WB Motherboard
Intel Core i7 875k proc
Intel BXXTS100H DHX-B LGA 1156 CPU Cooler - Copper Base, Aluminum Fins
OCZ OCZ3G1333LV4G Gold 4GB PC10666 DDR3 1333MHz
XFX Radeon 5850 1Gig Vid card
Ultra LSP650 650-Watt Power Supply

Thought I would run it by the experts before I go out and get a new PS.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Lemur]

When you say straight to bios, do you mean a blue screen, or the computer reboots and you see the bios? If the power is just cutting out, it could be a bad psu. And since it can happen minutes or hours, I doubt it's overheating. If it's a blue screen, report back. Otherwise, I'd get the psu.

 

[Dkelly40]

Thanks Lemur.. it's not a blue screen.

It is really strange.

I can be gaming and then literally in about two seconds I am staring at the bios launch screen and the PC reboots.

No error message at all. It just goes to bios super fast and reboots.

My theory so far is that the power supply just stops supplying enough power to run everything.. but no clue for sure.

I'm sure it is not a heat issue.

Never seen or heard of anything like this.

I will pick up a PSU tomorrow and see if that fixes the problem.

I appreciate the reply!

 

[Bombs]

I've encountered the same problem since installing Final Fantasy XIV and am currently at a lost trying to figure out how to fix it. I've built my computer in March and did not have any problems with it, then I installed the Final Fantasy XIV beta last month and the computer started rebooting in the same way you are describing, except it never happened while playing the game. I can play the game for a couple of hours, then stop playing and maybe 30 minutes later it will reboot straight to the BIOS screen, with the only message in the event log being unexpected restart. It will also reboot if I don't play the game after a fresh power on.

This seems 100% random since I cannot reproduce it. I've run some stress tests and that doesn't seem to make it reboot, and it also seem to run fine in Safe mode. Tried disabling all start-up processes and non-windows services with MSConfig and it still crashes. When I initially got the problem with the beta, I formatted and the computer stopped rebooting and ran normally up to two days ago when I installed the Release version of the game.

I was wondering if changing your PSU fixed your problem, as I don't have any spare PSU around to test my system with.

 

[Dkelly40]

It wasn't my power supply. I took it in to best buy and had them test it for me.

I formatted my drives and reinstalled and I was still getting the crash to the bios launch screen randomly.

I went out yesterday and bought new ram and I am no longer having the issue.

I don't plan on installing FFXIV again though, so I can't confirm for you if it was my old ram or the game which was causing my issue, sorry.

What video card are you using? a Radeon?

 

[Bombs]

I'm using an XFX Radeon 5770.

I just finished formatting my PC and re-installing Windows 7. and it just did rebooted while doing some windows update. Which means FFXIV wasn't the problem after all, just a coincidence. I'll try running memtest for a while and see if anything comes up. I'm guessing this should be PSU or RAM related as well, just wished I had some spare parts around since there's no store I can go pick up the parts from locally.

 

[Dkelly40]

Just toss up all your system specs if you don't mind, that way we can compare them and check for similarities.

Mine are in my first post except now instead of the OCZ ram I have 8 megs of Corsair ram.

 

[Dkelly40]

The strange thing is my ram tested fine.. I just decided I was going to swap out parts till I replaced what was bad and my ram was the obvious first choice.

 

[Bombs]

If you click on the small "My system specs" text on the bottom left corner of my reply, they should be there. Just in case, I'll include them in the post as well :

System Manufacturer/Model Number Custom
OS Windows 7 Professionnal x64
CPU Intel Core i5 750
Motherboard Gigabyte P55A-UD3
Memory G.SKILL Ripjaws PC3-12800 4GB 2x2GB DDR3-1600
Graphics Card XFX Radeon HD 5770
Sound Card On-board
Monitor(s) Displays Dell UltraSharp U2410 24-inch Widescreen Flat Panel Monitor
Screen Resolution 1980x1200
Keyboard Logitech G15
Mouse Logitech Performance Mouse MX
PSU OCZ Z-Series 550W 80+ Silver Certified
Case Antec Three Hundred
Cooling Stock fans for CPU, case and GPU
Hard Drives WD Caviar Black 1TB SATA3 7200 RPM WD Caviar 1.5 TB Green Edition 7200 RPM Maxtor 350GB
Internet Speed 25 Mb

 

[CarlTR6]

The strange thing is my ram tested fine.. I just decided I was going to swap out parts till I replaced what was bad and my ram was the obvious first choice.

Just out of curiosity, when you tested your RAM, what program did you use and how many passes did you run?

 

[Dkelly40]

I used the windows memory diagnostic and I ran it twice.

My PC has been up and running now for over 24 hours without dropping to the bios screen so I am pretty sure my problem is resolved (fingers crossed here).

 

[CarlTR6]

I hope you don't have another incident.

I asked my question because most of us here don't have a lot of faith in the Windows memory diagnostics. I don't think it stresses the RAM enough. We use and recommend Memtest86. Here is a tutorial by Jonathan King on how to use Memtest:

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

 

[Bombs]

Well, seems my PC is still restarting. Ran Memtest86 for 2 hours and a half, 4 passes 0 fails. I took out some of the extra HDDs to see if it's the PSU, and it still crashed. Now trying my RAM one DIM at a time. Weird thing I noticed is that it never rebooted on me while playing, only when idling or using normal apps.

 

[CarlTR6]

You need to run Memtest for at least 7 passes.

 

[Dkelly40]

I hope you get it sorted out soon Bombs.

It sounds like the exact same issue I was having except for the fact your rig would never crash to the bios screen while gaming.

That may have just been happenstance though.

If you have any place you can order ram that has a 15 or 30 day return policy you can always order some and then return it if it does not solve your issue.

 

[Bombs]

Well, I think my problem might actually be my video card. The computer crashed using either Ram DIM alone, took out the extra HDDs and it still crashed. Updated my Bios (mine was actually pretty old), sped up my Sata drives access but still crashed. Replaced my vid card by a Nvidia 7600 GT I had lying around and it hasn't rebooted yet. I'll keep this set-up for the week-end and if it doesn't reboot, I'll look into filing an RMA for my vid card (it's only around 6 months old). If it does crash, I'm gonna try running Memtest over night to let it do 10+ runs.

 

[Dkelly40]

I found this thread Bombs relating to ATI driver issues

ATI 5850 Win7 Driver Issues? - drivers - windows-7

There is a work around in there for the issue that does not effect performance or stability.

Worth trying out maybe

 

[Bombs]

I will try it on, although the computer did the same thing last night with my other GPU. I'm still thinking it's a PSU issue, but can't really do anything about it till the start of the week, so I'll keep trying other things like an overnight Memtest86 and adjusting my idle GPU clock speeds.

 

[Bombs]

Just a quick update :

I got my new PSU yesterday and the computer hasn't rebooted yet. So it looks like the problem was the PSU after all.

 

[CarlTR6]

That is great news. Thank you for letting us know.