Monthly BSOD, Hardware Failure, No Idea what it is!

[RayzTheRoof]

For the first time ever, I built a PC in late July. Since the first week of owning it, I have gotten the same BSOD once a month, at least. The BSOD's almost all occurred while gaming as well. I also have experienced 5-10 PC freezes, and I am at a loss. I have run Prime95 and Intel's diagnostic program, and the CPU has passed both fine. I have yet to run Memtest though, mostly because I am a bit fearful of stress testing and don't really know how long to do it for (surprised I even did any with my CPU) and just am worried that pushing it to it's max will shorten its life. I have not stressed tested my GPU, and figured it wasn't the problem as the GPU is at full load a lot of times during most days and these blue screens occur about once a month.

My hard drives seemed to cause a problem because of the frequent freezes. I also cannot put my PC to sleep, because it almost always freezes at the welcome screen when it wakes. I ran SeaTools diagnostics for my hard drive, but it froze my PC instantly. I have two of the same hard drive, but it only freezes at this moment when I have both hooked up. I cloned my main drive to my secondary drive and tried booting with each one hooked up individually. In both cases, I did not freeze when running SeaTools. Both drives also passed its diagnostic tests.

So, here I am, at a huge loss. I have tried several other forums, but people rarely answer and mostly just say to update drivers, which I have already done. I don't know what else I can do. I uploaded the crash dumps in case anyone wants to have a go at it, I really hope there is something I am missing. Thanks for your time and help.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Hello and welcome Rayz mate the memtest would be a good run

MEMTEST

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/105647-ram-test-memtest86.htmlthis one you will need to make a bootable disk set the BIOSto optical (or USB if preferred) boot the machine and let it run for at LEAST 8passes unless the errors come up straight away. Takes fair time to complete andsome leave it running overnight.


But first run these and delete any rubbish you find with the malware scans the ADW just run the Clean button when done.


http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1538-sfc-scannow-command-system-file-checker.html

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/433-disk-check.html< DO NOT runon a SSD

http://www.superantispyware.com/

http://www.malwarebytes.org/products/malwarebytes_free/

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/adwcleaner/

download from bleeping computer

 

[RayzTheRoof]

Can the freezing issues I mentioned, especially since I can replicate one with SeaTools only with both drives plugged in, be indicative of anything though? And can memtest run the risk of damaging RAM from stressing it? I also don't have much cooling focused on the RAM and am worried about too much heat damaging it too.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

No mate from what you have told us it sounds like you have a dodgy drive or at least one of them. Try unplugging the non OS drive and see what happens.
The memtest is ok to use and no I have never heard of it damaging the sticks as it only tests the chips by read / writing info to them and if that doesn't conform with the correct parameters it will show up as an error. It really is no different to the normal use of the sticks except as I said the amount of info that is put through during the test.

 

[RayzTheRoof]

Thanks for the info. I have tried using only one drive but I can't replicate a bod since it happens only once a month. Idk what u can do otherwise to test it.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Ray you say it only happens once a month is that a regular time or random? That in itself sounds very odd to me if it is a regular say around the 1st of each month it sounds very much like something has been planted in the machine or you have a setting on some software that is triggered at monthly intervals.

 

[RayzTheRoof]

Oh no. It just happensonly in roughly one month intervals

 

[ICIT2LOL]

So it is intermittent then within the monthly time frame?

Look I am out for just a while in a minute but will respond in due course.

Can you run Speccy for us and give us some temps and info like that please?
Speccy - Download

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

 

[RayzTheRoof]

Running memtest at the moment, halfway through my 4th pass after running it for 6 and a half hours so far and no errors =/

Also I think I can rule out heat as a problem. My idle temps are about 30-34 Celsius for CPU and motherboard, and about 27 for GPU, and low 30s for HDD's. While gaming, which is when the crashes usually occur, the cpu temps are high 40s to mid 50s. Sometimes it can go higher, but not often. GPU can be between low to high 60s.

Praying a RAM stick fails.

 

[RayzTheRoof]

Also, are 4 runs enough?

 

[RayzTheRoof]

I stopped after 4 and a half passes with no errors. What to try next?

 

[ICIT2LOL]

No mate you have to run at least 8 passes I know it is tedious but it need that many to get any results. If the errors do come up before the 8 passes have been done then you can stop and then you will have to find which stick it is that is failing.

Sorry mate there is no easy way around that test.

 

[RayzTheRoof]

The good news is it may very well be the hard drive. It crashed after barely playing the other day, and the same thing happened today after a half hour. Switched drives and play for hours with no issue.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Sounding good Ray maybe you could run a test on the drive that is bung - SeaTools for Windows | Seagate

Another one is a physical surface test with Partition Wizard Best Free Partition Manager Freeware and free partition magic for Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Vista and Windows XP 32 bit & 64 bit. MiniTool Free Partition Manager Software Home Edition. see pic

 

[RayzTheRoof]

Thanks, I will give that a go. I want to try using this good drive with the SATA port the possibly bad one was hooked up to, just incase it is a weird mobo issue. The only reason I suspect that is because of the freezing when opening SeaTools when both hard drives were plugged in. Just seems odd to me.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Hopefully it isn't a mobo thing mate and the bad drive could just be interfering with the system in all probability.

 

[RayzTheRoof]

And it looks like it was not the drive, as I just crashed again. Hooray.

Edit: While watching a video in VLC. Doesn't seem like it was too demanding of any resources or even of my HDD.

 

[RayzTheRoof]

It is also worth noting that I am running the OS on a new SSD and the file I was playing was on the HDD, the one I assumed was good...I really am stumped.

It also sucks that this happens only about once a month, and is nearly impossible to reproduce.

 

[RayzTheRoof]

Passed Memtest86+ again, 8 passes and 0 errors. I do not believe it can be the GPU as I push this thing to full load for really long periods of time with no error, and it is weird that this BSOD happens once a month. The CPU was not in heavy use either during the last crash, so I figured it could be the RAM since the system would be using some of it at least for Windows. So now I am confused and really do not think it can be any of my components. Unless it is the motherboard, but I have no idea how to test that.

 

[RayzTheRoof]

Is this forum dead or something?