Random BSODs, worse after issues with Far Cry 3

[Mathute87]

Hello, everyone, I'm new here and this has been getting pretty ugly lately, so I'm looking for some help.

So, random BSODs have been happening since I built this PC, nothing too big (and some I didn't even know until today that my wife told me) but it got REALLY worse after installing Far Cry 3, even though I doubt it's only the game's fault.

Thing is, most of these happened at times I wasn't even on the PC. One of the problems I found was that whenever my PC went into suspension mode, every time I "woke" it up, it gave me a BSOD. I unabled the suspension and turning off the monitor options, and never happened again. Whenever the PC stays idle for a long while (hour or so), a BSOD happens.

Lately, and I hope it's on the zip file, the only BSODs I had while playing this game (only game I've had issues with), are the ones from today at 4:37 AM, and I believe one of the 30th. I don't see the ones from the 29th (the day it started happening more frequently), guess the system didn't save them for some reason.

So I ran:

CHKDSK - No negative results
Avast startup analysis - No viruses found
Memtest86+ - No negative results
Checked every driver and they were all updated (I just noticed that I have AMD catalyst 12.09, should I download 12.10 or the latest 12.11 Beta? Could THIS be the problem?)
Opened and cleaned the whole thing. There was dust, but now it's all gone.

And last but not least, Steam found one file from the Far Cry 3 folder that was bad and redownloaded it. I check this everytime I'm gonna play the game, and since then I haven't got an BSOD while playing.

But then I was cooking dinner, and BSOD. Turned it on, 20 minutes went by, was watching some Youtube videos, Shockwave crashed and next thing I know, BSOD. Reboot, can't start Windows, reboot, starts Windows (This has been frequent, haven't been able to try to repair from the Windows dvd), and now here I am. I don't know if the game screwed up something or what, but if you could help me I'd be extremely grateful. Sorry if I wrote too much, wanted to cover everything I've been doing since this started.

Oh, also, Windows won't recognize my antivirus and it warns me I have none, and avast! has been installed since I bought this, but never had this warning before.

My custom system specs and temperatures from Speccy right now:

AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.40 GHz - 46 º C (116.60ºF)
4,00 GB Dual channel DDR3 @ 669MHz
ASUSTeK Computer INC. M5A78L-M/USB3 (AM3R2) - 45 º C (113.00ºF)
AMD Radeon HD 6870 - 28 º C (82.400ºF)
977GB Western Digital SATA - 20 º (68.000ºF)

Thank you in advance

 

[Mathute87]

I've been playing and using the PC for a while since yesterday that I posted this and no BSOD... It's really random, no idea what's up.

 

[Arc]

Apparently it is caused by Avast antivirus.

fffff880`09a10ac8  fffff880`06d26ea1Unable to load image \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\aswSP.SYS, Win32 error 0n2
*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for aswSP.SYS
*** ERROR: Module load completed but symbols could not be loaded for aswSP.SYS
 aswSP+0x9ea1

Description here: Driver Reference Table - aswSP.SYS

Uninstall Avast using Avast Uninstall Utility. Use Microsoft Security Essentials as your antivirus with windows inbuilt firewall, and free MBAM as the on demand scanner.
Download and install those, and then run full system scans with both of them, one by one.

Daemon Tools is one of the most frequently BSOD causer. I suggest to uninstall it, too.

Let us know the results.

 

[Mathute87]

Thank you, I'll try and let you know.

 

[Mathute87]

Ok, after I uninstalled Avast another nightmare started... Every time Windows started, BSOD, PFN_LIST_CORRUPT message. Lot of times. Had to restore my system TWICE, and, funnily enough, Avast is installed again.

Please, help This is killing me. Now it's "kinda" working (15 minutes without BSOD), and I'm running the Malwarebytes scan, but Avast is still installed.

Also, Google Chrome is acting funny, might be a virus.

 

[Arc]

If you suspect a virus, scan the system for possible virus infection.

• Anti-rootkit utility TDSSKiller
• Windows Defender Offline

If still it is crashing, and virus scan results clean, enable driver verifier.

Driver Verifier - Enable and Disable
Run Driver Verifier for 24 hours or the occurrence of the next crash, whichever is earlier.

Let us know the results, with the subsequent crash dumps, if any.

 

[Mathute87]

Should I try uninstalling Avast again before doing this?

 

[Arc]

First do it, we will follow the suggestions that DV will provide.

 

[Mathute87]

Ok, after 4 days I can say I probably solved the issue.

After the constant "MEMORY_MANAGEMENT" and "PFN_LIST" BSODs, one of the times I was able to start Windows it said that I had 4 GB of RAM, but only 2 GB were available. So I took the memory sticks off, tried each of them individually on each slot, and separately they worked flawlessly.

Taking advantage of this stability I removed Avast and Daemon Tools from my PC, apart from a single file that was infected, detected by both MB and MSE from some random folder.

Then placed both memories again, to see what happened.

And I'm glad to say I haven't had any more BSODs ever since. I played Far Cry 3, BF3, Guild Wars 2 and not a single problem. Also I crashed the Shockwave plugin once to see if this affected the PC in someway, or if that was a random thing. It didn't.

Thank you for the help. I believe I can mark this as solved already or should I wait longer?

 

[Arc]

Wait longer. Give it a time before decide that the situation is really stable.