Laptop has frequent freezes, BSODs, sudden reboots - apparently random

[Iphi]

Hi,

I have bought a new MSI GE60 2 OC laptop with a Windows 7 Premium Home Edition (64 bits, SP 1).
I have filled my system specs when registering here but if I need to post them in this thread please let me know.

I have been encountering frequent, awful crashes. These take 3 forms and all seem to happen completely randomly; I have not been able to identify any pattern.

- most of the time my computer freezes with no option for me but to hard reboot it by holding the power button down or unplugging it if the battery's out (happens up to 10-12 times a day... I fear for my machine at this point). The screen often displays artefacts (long rectangular, black-and-white shapes forming lines stretching from the left to the right of my monitor); these sometimes move and "shimmer". If the PC is plugged on the A/C, but the battery is in, and I unplug it, the moving artefacts become still. If a sound is playing before the crash, the speakers blast full-volume static noise. Sometimes I feel a slight jolt inside the machine under the keyboard, but maybe it's just my imagination + the surprise of sudden artefacts and static noises, and/or the hard drive stopping (?). The fans keep working right. After the hard reboot I have no record of what happened before.

here's what the monitor looks like when it happens (not my actual monitor)

- I also get BSODs. I mostly get BUGCODE_USB_DRIVER, kernel power state failure, driver power state (?) failure, and IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL 0x0000000A. The reason why I don't know more about these is because I can't get any minidump files. I went to Advanced system properties and configured it to record the DMP files but they don't appear anywhere (not in C:\Windows\MEMORY.DMP, not in the Minidumps folder...). Sometimes I don't have an error code on the BSOD, these times it's often a STOP: 0x0000007F.

- sometimes the PC just reboots without warning (back screen, then BIOS, then normal windows start-up).

-sometimes I have no sign of a crash, but windows won't shutdown or start. I'll be "stuck" on the last shutdown screen (the one with nothing but the blue rotating thing and the "Powering off..." message, not sure in English - in French it's "Arrêt en cours...") or on the "Windows starting up..." ("Démarrage de Windows...") with the blazing logo. When I get stuck there, there is no freeze (the animated graphics work fine), but after 2-3hrs of this I get either a BSOD or a sudden reboot.

__________________________

All of these crashes seem to occur more and more frequently. I can hardly get 1-2 hours of running time now. Maybe one day I'll get more, but then I'll get 5-6 crashes in 30mn. I worry that the numerous hard reboots are damaging my computer, of course.

At first I thought it was a driver issue, so I updated everything, and when problems didn't stop I reinitialized windows and reinstalled all drivers from the MSI website. Didn't fix anything.

I realize I'm not giving you guys a DMP file, if I could start by getting these to be written that'd be nice... but keep in mind that the freezes I get most often don't throw a BSOD. No record of anything. Is a events viewer file useful? I have an errors.evtx log. I also have a ZIP file that I got using DM log collector. I'm attaching the latter to my post, the former is "invalid" for the forum but if you want it I'll upload it somewhere.

If some of you might help me and give me some guidance there, I would be very glad. I hope my PC is not screwed beyond hope, but at least I'd like to know what's going on. In any case thank you for your time and for all the help you give on these forums.


Iphi

 

[Boozad]

Unfortunately there are no dump files in your logs to analyse. Can you try running the tool again?

 

[Iphi]

I did run the tool again, to no avail it seems (see new attached zip).

I don't think there's a single minidump file on my computer right now. I don't know why it won't save them (see image attached, it show how the system is supposed to write in C:\Windows\Minidumps).

Do you know a way to work around this issue first so that I can provide a minidump file next?

Edit: attached the second zip file.

 

[Iphi]

Here is the SF diagnostic tool ZIP file, but I doubt there are any minidumps. I still can't figure out why they won't be saved.

 

[Iphi]

And here is a new dm log collector file, I'm uploading this because it has way more information in it than the previous file (or so it seems). Though I still can't find any memory dump files, this time DM log told me a crash dump file was loaded successfully.

 

[Boozad]

Yeah there's still no dump files. Can you do the following:

:ar: Run chckdsk http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/433-disk-check.html

:ar: Open an elevated command prompt, type in sfc /scannow and hit enter.

Post back with the results.

 

[Iphi]

First of all thanks for your help and your patience. This forum is what I cling to when I think about my computer these days.

I'm writing from a borrowed computer now because the check-disk tool has stopped running. I scheduled it for the next reboot, the PC rebooted, and went on to stage 2 out of 3 (60%); it's done analyzing files and trying to get through indexes right now, but it's been ~45mn since it won't show any progress anymore. I fear there's been a freeze.

Is there something to do? Should I hard reboot the PC and retry chkdsk? Should I infer from a pre-windows-start up freeze that the failure comes from hardware?

 

[Boozad]

Give it a while longer and report back. I'm not sure how long the procedure takes as I've never performed it myself.

 

[Iphi]

The laptop has just rebooted on its own; the screen went black and it booted with a "didn't shut down properly" message... I have it running on safe mode right now. By the way, the BSODs and freezes happen in safe mode too, but much less frequently.

 

[Boozad]

Can you reboot properly into Windows?

 

[Iphi]

Yes, I did reboot into windows. Upon rebooting though, it actually performed the chkdsk, in a very short time now. I've done as you asked and sfc /scannow is running in an elevated command prompt.

 

[Iphi]

The sfc command has finished running, the only result is a line saying no errors were found.

 

[Boozad]

Well at least that's good news. We need to get your dump files saved though, I'll look further into it.

 

[Iphi]

Thanks. I'll leave all of this behind for tonight but I'll get back to it tomorrow.

 

[Boozad]

Did you run SeaTools?

 

[Iphi]

I did not. Did I miss something from the report BSOD error how-to thread? I'll take a better look.

--

On the other hand I found a minidump file from the 11th of June in my Windows.old directory. I did a system re-installation when I first had my issues so that's why there's a C:\Windows.old; but inside of it, I found a minidump file (MEMORY.DMP). Because I had had the same problems as I have now, I copied it and used DM log collector on it, here's the result in an attached file ->

 

[Boozad]

Try this too :ar: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/174459-dump-files-configure-windows-create-bsod.html

 

[Iphi]

Yes, I tried all of these methods to configure my windows to create a small memory dump on BSOD.

I have a SF Diagnostic tool ZIP file with a MEMORY.DMP file inside now. It's very large, though (131 megabytes). How should I attach it?

 

[Iphi]

Hi,

I'm "bumping" this, sorry about it. My problems persist.
Main difference since last time: my PC has started generating minidump files on BSOD (still not on the "graphic" crash, when I have to hard reboot, but I have had two BSODs this morning). So here goes in attached files.

Can you help me?

Iphi

 

[Boozad]

Your Intel Graphics driver is being flagged.

fffff880`0b3afb18  fffff880`068caf38Unable to load image igdkmd64.sys, Win32 error 0n2
[B][COLOR=Red]*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for igdkmd64.sys
*** ERROR: Module load completed but symbols could not be loaded for igdkmd64.sys[/COLOR][/B]
 igdkmd64+0xc9f38

Check for updates at the Intel Download Center here.

2: kd> lmvm igdkmd64
start             end                 module name
fffff880`06801000 fffff880`06c21000   igdkmd64 T (no symbols)           
    Loaded symbol image file: [B][COLOR=Blue]igdkmd64.sys[/COLOR][/B]
    Image path: igdkmd64.sys
    Image name: igdkmd64.sys
    Timestamp:        [B][COLOR=Red]Wed Nov 13 15:26:34 2013[/COLOR][/B] (52839A2A)
    CheckSum:         00413411
    ImageSize:        00420000
    Translations:     0000.04b0 0000.04e4 0409.04b0 0409.04e4

:ar: Download and run MemTest86+ to test your RAM. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/105647-ram-test-memtest86.html

   Note

Run MemTest86+ for at least 8 passes. Ideally set it off before you go to bed and leave it overnight, we're looking for zero errors here. A single error will show something's going bad with your RAM.

Report back with the results.