Random and Indiscriminate BSOD

[3cl3ctic]

Installed WIN7 x64 a number of weeks ago, and at the same time engaged onboard RAID which I suspect may be playing a part.

BSOD is random and indiscriminate - at both high and no load - ntoskrnl.exe features in almost all of the cases (see Crash list attached)

I am scouring the ether for solutions - currently chasing down antivirus fragments which potentially are also involved..., any other suggestions are welcome

 

[H2SO4]

An eclectic collection indeed

Welcome to SF, and I regret having to kick off this association by telling you that your hardware is stuffed almost beyond any doubt

The minidumps show a variety of very weird crashes, many of which are in routines that deal with physical memory. Suggestions:

1) Don't overclock.
2) Ensure adequate cooling.
3) Update the BIOS.
4) Run memory diagnostics (MDSCHED, memtest86).
5) Upload any dumps from subsequent crashes after all that.

You may conceivably have software issues superimposed over the hardware unreliability, but I can't see any obvious evidence of that in the latest 10 or so dumps. I'm relatively confident that your RAID setup is not the cause of all this, but uninstalling the AV is a standard troubleshooting step which should be attempted.

Good luck.

 

[3cl3ctic]

Nice call on the hardware.....!
Bios was already updated and the system isn't overclocked...., ran MDSCHED and got hardware errors - CPU temps were all ok, but just on spec checked the contact between the cpu fan which was fine..., but the northbridge was disturbingly short of grease...! :shock:
Should have rerun the MDSCHED after this - but went ahead and memtested every DIMM, and DIMM slot with no errors replaced all the RAM and.....,
Went back and ran the MDSCHED for a clear result.
I feel sure it was poor conductivity on the northbridge causing voltage fluctuations in RAM - time will tell.

Appreciate the diagnosis - nice work - will report back if there are further issues!

 

[3cl3ctic]

Alas poor Yorick...., ever the optimist......,

Any suggestions as to troubleshooting hardware issues...?

At least it seems to be narrowed down somewhat....!

 

[H2SO4]

Alas poor Yorick...., ever the optimist......,

Any suggestions as to troubleshooting hardware issues...?

At least it seems to be narrowed down somewhat....!

Unfortunately, minidumps are not a good way to gauge which hardware component is broken - they can only reveal that something is throwing a spanner in the works.

My guess is it's your RAM, purely by the fact that it always seems to be physical memory access where we clonk out. If course, just about every other significant hardware component is involved in getting info to or from the RAM (motherboard and processor in particular), so it's impossible to be certain.

It's always gratifying when memory diagnostics don't pick up anything, but it's also far from conclusive. The collection of OS+apps is also one big memory diagnostics utility, and in your case the minidumps suggest something is wrong.

You're quite sure it's not over-clocked or under-cooled?