Random BSODs, Can't Find a Pattern

[atiomaste]

Hi all,

I've been getting intermittent BSODs with various messages - 13 in the last 2 months according to Blue Screen Viewer. The crashes seem to happen fairly randomly, although when I get MEMORY_MANAGEMENT it does at least seem to be when the computer is in use.

Also (no idea if related) when on the web, randomly some of my Chrome tabs will crash. Never been all tabs, and it seems unrelated to the number of tabs open.

I've updated all of the drivers I can think of, particularly my video card.

Extremely frustrating! Any help is hugely appreciated.

 

[Thedoctor44]

Right, you have a lot of memory management blue screens. I would highly recommend running Memtest for at least 8 passes.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/105647-ram-test-memtest86.html

You also have one pointing to a faulty HDD. I would also recommend running a disk check. You can run an elevated command prompt (Run cmd.exe as administrator) and type chkdsk /f

I would recommend running a full scan of your anti virus to scan for malware.

 

[atiomaste]

Thanks kindly for the advice- i ran chkdsk /f and I'll set Memtest to run overnight.

If one of the BSODs indicates a bad HDD, I'm guessing I should probably just replace it? Or does chkdsk do something that might actually rectify the issue?

 

[Thedoctor44]

No. Disk check will fix most errors you have on your HDD, it depends on whether it's physical damage or not. If the hard drive isn't damaged at all inside then there is no reason to replace it, unless you decide you want one with a larger size.

 

[atiomaste]

Thanks again very much. I (just) finished running Memtest on all 16gb of memory, and it looks like I've identified the trouble stick. My results were:
Stick 1 OK in Slot 1
Stick 2 OK in Slot 2
Stick 3 OK in Slot 3
Stick 4 - Error in Slot 4. Ran Stick 3 in Slot 4, No errors in 8 Passes.

So, I've removed stick 4, and I'm running 12gb now instead of 16 (no big deal to me.) I also noticed while Memtest was running that my memory timing and frequency wasn't what the memory (G.Skill Ripjaws) was supposed to be, so I've fixed that as well.

One last question if I may: My motherboard is set up for 2 separate "pairs" of memory (in order on the mobo: DIMM 1a, 2a, 1b, 2b) and the RAM itself was sold in a 16gb "set" of 4x4gb. Am I hindering my system performance by running this memory in slots 1a, 2a, and 1b?

 

[Thedoctor44]

I'll be honest, I don't know a great deal about this stuff, if you can't tell much of a performance difference and it works fine then I wouldn't worry about it. Sorry about that.