Pc cannot display a blue screen upon crash, system locking up randomly

[Diddy7Kong]

I felt this section was appropriate because it is bsod related. Anyways, i built a pc earlier this year, and recently it has been freezing up with an annoying vurrrrrr noise if sound is playing when the crash occurs, is a silent crash otherwise. So whenever this system crashes, no blue screen is shown, and the event log shows nothing, except the dns saying the system cannot find the file specified, which i doubt it would be the cause of the crash because the same events were logged during the window of time when i had no crashes prior. I had exactly one crash i know is supposed to show a blue screen which was a NOT_EQUAL_OR_LESS stop error that didnt display the blue screen. So i cannot diagnose my pc, starting to think it was the board or ran, but memtest showed passinf results, the crash also seems to happen quicker if my E drive hdd is being accessed, however it has no programs on it, so I have ruled out it being some program on it. My question, is how would one resolve the lack of a blue screen on crash issue and at this point im at a brick wall here and am considering buying another computer as i've got no leads on what could be causing the crashes

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Hello Diddy7Kong mate just what memtest did you use as we only recommend this RAM - Test with Memtest86+ and it MUST be run for at least 8 passes any less and you may as well not bother.

Plus some more specs please or at least the laptop model number - I mean the OS hard drive etc etc

What I am a bit confused by is you say you built the PC and give it as a laptop in the specs??

 

[Diddy7Kong]

Hello Diddy7Kong mate just what memtest did you use as we only recommend this RAM - Test with Memtest86+ and it MUST be run for at least 8 passes any less and you may as well not bother.

Plus some more specs please or at least the laptop model number - I mean the OS hard drive etc etc

What I am a bit confused by is you say you built the PC and give it as a laptop in the specs??

Hi, yes, the memtest you linked was the exact one i used.

the part where i mentioned the laptop, was when i took my boot drive and tested it with different hardware (namely a laptop) and had no issues there. the issue is happening with a custom built desktop with the following parts:

Asus M5A99FX PRO R2.0 ATX AM3+ Motherboard
Kingston HyperX Fury Blue 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1866 Memory
Sapphire Radeon R9 380 4GB NITRO Dual-X OC Video Card
AMD FX-8350 4.0GHz 8-Core Processor

OS is installed on AMD 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive
Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (for data and installing programs to)
Western Digital Green 2TB 3.5" HDD (extracted from an external USB2.0 housing (Disk was originally an external HDD)) [this disk holds all my video captures]

I am running windows 7 home premium 64 bit (16GB installed RAM)

the BIOS on the MOBO is currently at their defaults

i'm not sure where to go on the system to fetch the system specifications in detail, if any information requested is missing, let me know (and where i can fetch them)

because all crashes were not spawning a blue screen, me and some friends thought the MOBO or RAM was bad, though I forced a problem that does display a blue screen to test if the system even displays crash errors that happen in software and that hadn't displayed one either meaning that there's still a chance it's something evading my usual troubleshooting steps, leaving me with no indication of why it crashed.

Windows is currently configured to perform a kernel dump on crash, write an event to the log, and restart, though no dump is written and the log remains free of any crash events throughout the crashes

upon a suggestion a friend gave me, the crashes occured *faster* if a disk read operation took place at all on disk E:\ (which is the 2TB WD green HDD) since the last bootup

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Ok mate now as long as you ran that memtest for the minimum 8 passes and it returned no errors the RAM should be ok.
Now for the specs you can use this which is what I find a very handy tool.
Using HW Info
PART A:
You can test the volts on the PSU with HW Info HWiNFO, HWiNFO32/64 - Download < download the right bit version and close the right hand window select Sensors and scroll down to the power section where you will see what the volts are doing see my pic. In my pic the section (Nuvoton) with VBATT as a dead give away you are in the section for the rail voltages. There are other section titles and one that pops up often is ITE (sometimes the usual one for Gigabyte boards)
Now the voltage on the different rails have to be within 5% =+/- of what is required or the machine will not work properly if at all.
Limits +/-
12v = 11.4 – 12.6v
5v = 4.74 – 5.25v
3.3v = 3.135 – 3.465v
The Power good signal voltage at pin 8 on the 24 pin plug (grey cable) should be the same as the 5v rail reading/s
See this for the rail voltage info
PSUs 101: A Detailed Look Into Power Supplies (Section 2.)
The original right hand window shows the machine running and is handy for that but for looking at the components in some detail close it and use the main left hand side panel
FOR OTHER COMPONENTS
PART B:
Open each small square with + in it on the section the components are in and then click on the individual component/s (it will highlight in blue) - in the right hand side will appear all sorts of details including brands speeds and other essential info that particular device. See pic for example.

Use PART B: to see what is in the machine it will give you brands and specs in great detail (not needed here) so you just need to click on the different components to see what you have in the machine. I have attached some pics as examples.

If you are wondering what PART A: does it checks out the volts from the PSU it might be worth doing thta to see if it is ok because the PSU is often overlooked as a problem component when in fact if it is not functioning properly then whatever it supplies also will not function properly.

Now you might follow these if your machine is saving dumps
Dump Files - Configure Windows to Create on BSOD
&
Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) Posting Instructions

I would also disconnect the larger drives too because as you mention the problem arises when you are trying to access those devices.

 

[Diddy7Kong]

ok, the problem drive has been since removed, in the meantime i will be seeking the other stuff mentioned in your post,
currently, the system is unable to save dumps despite their setting being turned on

(*registry entries were changed since the initial build to point the default user folders like desktop, photos, documents, default program directory the D:\ counterpart ( i matched the paths exact on a 1TB HDD which is in good shape ) ), all other entries were left at whatever they started out with. worth mentioning this in the event its important to anything

 

[Diddy7Kong]

Screenshot by Lightshot
Screenshot by Lightshot

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Ok mate the PSU looks good and it will be good to see what the memtest comes up with.

Am not real sure of what that means with the reg changes but it seems you know what you want in that respect - as I think I mentioned maybe you have changed a reg entry that you did not mean to change but only you can see what that may be.

Now it might be worth doing these if you haven't already because it is a problem without those dump files
SFC /SCANNOW Command - System File Checker
Disk Check < if necessary include the /f and /r in the command line as per Option2
Run these in safe mode and the sfc often best run for two to three runs – you can leave out the /r switch in ckdsk if you feel it not necessary

 

[Diddy7Kong]

Ok mate the PSU looks good and it will be good to see what the memtest comes up with.

Am not real sure of what that means with the reg changes but it seems you know what you want in that respect - as I think I mentioned maybe you have changed a reg entry that you did not mean to change but only you can see what that may be.

Now it might be worth doing these if you haven't already because it is a problem without those dump files
SFC /SCANNOW Command - System File Checker
Disk Check < if necessary include the /f and /r in the command line as per Option2
Run these in safe mode and the sfc often best run for two to three runs – you can leave out the /r switch in ckdsk if you feel it not necessary

alright, the disk check turns out clean on disks C:\, D:\, J:\, (and E:\ (the problem drive))
I'll retry the sfc scannow command, i ran it before and it found and fixed corrupt or missing files, but i never thought to do it from safe mode, I'll report the results tomorrow