Random(?) BSODs becoming more frequent

[cooltouch]

My computer never used to get BSODs but in recent months they became occasional occurrences, but recently they're almost daily, and sometimes multiple BSODs a day.

I followed the instructions that the forum has laid out for this. And I've attached my machine's zip file.

My suspicion is that it is my video card. I added the card to my computer a couple years ago when I bought a monitor that was HDMI only, and my computer had no HDMI port. So I bought just an economical card from Amazon -- about $40. This computer has used two monitors for years. With this new card, in addition to the HDMI connection, I was also using the digital port (whatever that thing is called, I can't remember) for my second monitor. Everything was fine until a few months ago, when I discovered that I could no longer get a picture on my second monitor. At first, I thought the monitor had gone out, so I replaced it with a working spare. And it didn't work either. I also have this monitor hooked up to my cable TV. I noticed at about this same time that the monitor no longer recognized the 2nd HDMI port that was hooked up to my TV's set-top box. So anyway, that's why I think I have a video card that is going, or has gone, bad. Can this be causing the BSODs? I dunno, but it sure seems likely to me.

 

[wither 2]

According to the information provided, you have an NVIDIA GeForce 210 graphics card (from 2009) which has a dvi, displayport and VGA connection. Each one requires a different type of cable connector consistent with the monitor connection. You didn't say which model number you have for each monitor. I could suggest updating the driver here-

Driver for nVidia GeForce 210 and Windows 7 64bit

however, you said it worked until a few months ago which suggests that the card has gone bad. I don't see anything in the .dmp files which confirms that. My suggestion would be to replace it.

 

[Snick]

You could stress test your graphics card if you wish FurMark > Home - Geeks3D

I agree with wither 2's analysis & conclusion.

 

[cooltouch]

Thanks for the responses. I have good quality cables for each monitor, one HDMI and one dvi, I suppose it is -- the rectangulr one with a bunch of pins.

I'm glad y'all concur with my assessment. That's the only thing I can think it might be. 2009, eh? The card's only a couple years old -- bought it from Amazon. OK, well, I guess it's time for another. Maybe not an NVIDIA this time.

Let me ask another question that might be related to this. Let's say the card is going out. Is it possible that if the card is faulty, it would cause all sorts of spikes in the CPU core performances? I have a music production application that I use a lot and occasionally it, well, for lack of better words, totally craps out. Huge amounts of distortion in both audio and MIDI playback, to the point where I get audio engine dropouts. I haven't been able to figure out what's causing this. The weird thing about it is it'll get like this, where the application becomes unusable, and then suddenly it will clear up, everything's fine, and run perfectly normal for a while, then it will crap out again.

When this happens, the application, called Cakewalk in case you're interested, has a small Performance box in which it has bars for each of the CPU cores. My machine has four cores. Normally, these bars just barely nudge off the bottom, even when I'm running the application. But right now they're bouncing around a lot, often spiking to 50% of the scale there, which is totally abnormal.

If I load the Task Manager, and then click on the Resource Monitor, it shows large spikes in CPU and disk uses. If I click on the RM's CPU tab, it shows these same large spike distributed evenly across all four cores. Sometimes the network will show spikes, but usually it doesn't, so I don't think the network is causing this. I'm at a loss as to why this is occurring. But in light of my having a potentially failing video card, that's why I'm asking -- might it not be the culprit here?

 

[cooltouch]

OK, I downloaded Furmark and ran it for about 15 minutes. It wasn't reporting back any errors. Just that big furry donut bouncing around. How long am I supposed to run it?

 

[file3456]

Big furry donut... That just makes me smile and laugh at the same time. LOL

Anyway, you're probably right about the card, especially if it's cheap. And especially if you weren't having issues until this recent hardware change. Often times going back and remembering what you did to a computer either software, driver update or hardware could lead to why there's a BSOD. The other possibility with today's BSODs could be an anti-virus update or even a Windows "update." Often times "updates" need updates. But this will pertain to Windows 10 more than 7.

Yeah, as mentioned, the correct term you're looking for about the type of connection you had about "digital" is called DVI (Digital Visual Interface).

Run WhoCrashed once and see what it says. Resplendence Software - WhoCrashed, automatic crash dump analyzer

 

[Snick]

Again, great response/reply!

 

[torchwood]

Hi


WMI is reporting multiple failures,
please follow this link,
Services - Restore Default Services in Windows 7

scroll down to Windows Moduler Installer and reset it.

If it throws an error then likely the WMI repository is corrupt, did i see tweaking.com on your system if so
select the repair WMI option.


Roy

 

[wither 2]

Good reply.

I saw that in the event log but didn't bring it up because I didn't think it was the cause of his problems. I also couldn't find a good way to fix it.

 

[cooltouch]

OK, just to update things, I bought a VisionTek card with the Radeon HD 5450 chip and 2 gigs of DDR3 RAM. Spent a bit more on this one -- it was a bit over fifty bucks. I'm hoping that, since my PC's CPU is AMD, it'll get along better with the Radeon chip. It arrived yesterday, and I'm gonna try to set aside some time this afternoon to swap out the cards. (The CPU case is sorta buried on a shelf with about a million cables festooned over, around, and into it. It's a major job just pulling this thing off the shelf)

It's time to tend to this thing though. I have a new power supply and audio card for it in addition to the video card, plus I need to troubleshoot why a couple of older hard drives have suddenly stopped working. I think their cables came loose. Had it happen to a DVD drive. Never used to happen with the old IDE cables.

 

[wither 2]

Note that the graphics card you bought is a legacy card that's no longer supported.

Look at this in regards to the last driver-

https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/faq/gpu-624

 

[cooltouch]

Well, that card was a bust. Incompatible with my system, even though it's AMD based. I'm gonna send it back and try one with an NVidia chip.

 

[wither 2]

The integrated chip on your mobo supports D-Sub, DVI-D and HDMI. Do those ports not work? Just wondered since you added an NVIDIA card and I assume, your monitors were connected to it directly when one quick working.

Why was the new card incompatible?

If buying another NVIDIA card, I would suggest GTX 600 or higher.

 

[cooltouch]

Sorry for the late reply. I don't drop by here that often.

My mobo's chip might support these modes, but its ports don't, or at least one doesn't. It has ports for D-sub and DVI-D, but no port for HDMI.

I don't know why the new card was incompatible. Before returning it, I called AMD support and had a fairly long talk with one of their techs. We tried a variety of things. There was one command (or switch or whatever) the tech wanted to find in the bios that wasn't there, which might have been the problem.

Thanks for the NVidia tip. My only concern is that, if the GTX 600 is too new it might not work with this old mobo -- which I bought in 2009. I'm gonna be upgrading this system with a new mobo, processor, and RAM very soon, so until then I may just go ahead and limp along with this existing card. I'll probably continue to use this system for other tasks, and I can always revert back to onboard graphics and allocate one of my spare DVI/VGA flat screens to it.

 

[wither 2]

I'm using a GTX 560 on this 13 year old system so I wouldn't think it would be an issue. I said 600 and up because NVIDIA disabled hardware acceleration for all prior cards in their latest drivers. I'm using an old driver just to retain it.