Win7 Ultimate x64, BSOD when waking up from automatic monitor shut-off

[DS1971]

I built this system last week and passed all my preliminary stability testing (20 passes of LinX, 2 hours of Furmark, etc)

Everythings grand, except i've had two hard crashes so far, both related to recovering from the automatic powersaver "monitor turns off after 10 minutes." The first time was two days ago, when it was idle for maybe 20 minutes, and when I walked over to my desk and went to grab my phone I lightly nudged the mouse enough for it to kick back up. Except it didnt, my monitor power light switched from orange (on, no signal) to blue (on, working), and my video card fan immediately pushed itself to 100% for about a minute, then stopped for a few seconds and whirred back up to full blast, with nothing but a black screen despite the power light turning blue. In order to stop it I had to hold the power button for 5 seconds to do a hard shutdown.

I wrote it off as a one-off typical system hiccup as everything settles in until just a few minutes ago, waking it up from the powersaver state multiple times since then. Again, I walked away from my PC for a while and the monitor turned itself off as normal. When I came back and moved the mouse to wake it up, nothing. So I hit keys on the keyboard, nothing. Unplugged/replugged the DVI, nothing. Walked over to my laptop and accessed shared network files on the PC with absolutely no problem, opened and closed the DVD drive and it even made the "reading" motions as if it was trying to autorun a disk. Then I noticed that none of the hotkeys on my Sidewinder X4 keyboard were working (changing macro sets, toggle numlock, etc). The backlights were off but the status LEDs were fine as was the red mouse laser. Plugged in an extra mouse, and it got power just fine, but didnt make a difference.

So I figured it was the keyboard drivers possibly locking up the system and went to disconnect the keyboard and mouse. Instant BSOD, all I caught before the autoreboot was DRIVER POWER STATE FAILURE before it restarted itself. Of course, there isnt much useful in the error logs either. Really hoping this is something stupid like "update your SSD firmware" and not "RMA your motherboard," this build was already a total nightmare Any help you guys can give is appreciated, the minidump/log zip is attached below.

For the record, sleep and hibernate are both completely turned off.

 

[Arc]

Welcome aboard.

First of all, uninstall Daemon tools and Catalyst Control Center.

Next, change the VGA/DVI/HDMI cable that you use to connect the monitor with the computer.

Let us know the situation.

0: kd> !irp fffffa800cbcb010
Irp is active with 3 stacks 1 is current (= 0xfffffa800cbcb0e0)
 No Mdl: No System Buffer: Thread 00000000:  Irp stack trace.  
     cmd  flg cl Device   File     Completion-Context
>[ 16, 2]   0 e0 fffffa800af87ab0 00000000 fffff80002a79ce0-fffffa800d205840 Success Error Cancel 
           \Driver\amdkmdap    nt!IopUnloadSafeCompletion
            Args: 00000000 00000001 00000001 00000000
 [ 16, 2]   0 e1 fffffa800af92c70 00000000 fffff80002a79ce0-fffffa800c42da40 Success Error Cancel pending
           \Driver\[COLOR=Red][B]monitor[/B][/COLOR]    nt!IopUnloadSafeCompletion
            Args: 00000000 00000001 00000001 00000000
 [  0, 0]   0  0 00000000 00000000 00000000-fffffa800a63b550    

            Args: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
0: kd> !devobj fffffa800af87ab0
Device object (fffffa800af87ab0) is for:
 Cannot read info offset from nt!ObpInfoMaskToOffset
 \Driver\amdkmdap DriverObject fffffa800a5478a0
Current Irp 00000000 RefCount 0 Type 0000001c Flags 00003044
DevExt fffffa800af87c00 DevObjExt fffffa800af87f88 DevNode fffffa800a7aa5b0 
ExtensionFlags (0000000000)  
[COLOR=Red]Attached[B]Device[/B] (Upper) fffffa800af92c70 \Driver\[B]monitor[/B][/COLOR]
Device queue is not busy.
0: kd> !drvobj fffffa800af87ab0 7
fffff80002c35fb0: Unable to get value of ObpRootDirectoryObject
fffff80002c35fb0: Unable to get value of ObpRootDirectoryObject
Driver object (fffffa800af87ab0) is for:
fffffa800af87ab0: [COLOR=Red][B]is not a driver object[/B][/COLOR]

 

[DS1971]

Ill do those and we'll see how it goes, thanks.

Is there a particular reason Daemon Tools might cause that instability? I've been using it for years and never had an issue.

 

[Arc]

Ill do those and we'll see how it goes, thanks.

Is there a particular reason Daemon Tools might cause that instability? I've been using it for years and never had an issue.

Demon tool (and Alcohol 120%) mount virtual ODDs, and for doing that, they use a driver called stpd.sys.

stpd.sys, most often than not, specifies a hardware information to be exist, which is not there actually. So they cause a power state failure off and on.

There is a free version of MagicIso. That does the same thing that Daemon does, but does not use stpd.sys.

 

[DS1971]

I uninstalled them and ran chkdsk just in case (which found nothing).

I've let it go idle and turn the monitor off numerous times over the past day anywhere from a minute or two to a few hours, and it's bounced back properly every time so far. I'll reinstall CCC tomorrow and see if it stays stable.

Thanks!

 

[Arc]

Inform us the situation, in time.

 

[DS1971]

No luck, got another bluescreen. This time it locked up while idle and just sat there locked up until I turned the monitor off and then back on.

Removed Gigabyte EasyTune 6, Gigabyte Autogreen, and catalyst control center, we'll see how it holds up.

Edit: also removed Gigabyte ON/OFF charge utility.

Attached is the logs.

 

[Arc]

Both the dumps say the same thing:

.....
*******************************************************************************
*                                                                             *
*                        Bugcheck Analysis                                    *
*                                                                             *
*******************************************************************************

Use !analyze -v to get detailed debugging information.

BugCheck 9F, {3, fffffa800af87ab0, fffff800045143d8, fffffa800cbcb010}

*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for atikmpag.sys
*** ERROR: Module load completed but symbols could not be loaded for atikmpag.sys
*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for win32k.sys
*** ERROR: Module load completed but symbols could not be loaded for win32k.sys
Probably caused by : atikmpag.sys

Followup: MachineOwner
---------

You may try to sweep all ATI driver entries using |MG| Driver Fusion (Driver Sweeper) 1.2.0 Download, and reinstall those, othe rthan Catalyst.

Install the drivers in device manager.

 

[DS1971]

I haven't had time to fully reinstall the drivers, but it hasn't bluescreened last night or any time today. I did however just catch it making an odd noise while idle. It sounded like the video card whirred up the fan for only a few spins, then let it spin down for a few seconds and did it all over again. As soon as touched the mouse and the monitor came back on it immediately stopped. Seems like it might be related considering what happened with the very first freeze, i'll completely reinstall the drivers tonight and see how it goes, but could it just be a defective card?

 

[Arc]

Test the video card then, to be sure.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/100356-video-card-stress-test-furmark.html

 

[DS1971]

Test the video card then, to be sure.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/100356-video-card-stress-test-furmark.html

Ran Furmark again for a solid 10 minutes exactly as those instructions said. No artifacts, not even a hiccup. Temps leveled out after about ~2 minutes at 70C and slowly crept up to 72C going no higher. The only oddity was that Furmark was reporting 63% GPU utilization, occasionally spiking to 97% or 99%, however the GPUZ log confirms that it was in fact running at 100% utilization the entire time.

I also ran 8 instances of MemTest last night, 7 at "1024MB" and the last at "use remaining." Every instance cleared 2000% coverage with 0 errors.

Going to (finally) reinstall the drivers and see how we do I guess.

Edit: Drivers totally removed and reinstalled via Device Manager. Must be as basic as it can get, as the fan no longer lowers its speed below 30% automatically. No crashes yet.

 

[Arc]

Good news.

Let us know if there are further crashes.

 

[DS1971]

No crashes yet, but I just caught it doing the weird thing where it spins the fan up for a few spins and then stops over and over again while idle. However, when I gently moved the case in an attempt to open it up without tapping anything to push it out of idle, it immediately stopped doing it. Maybe that's just an imbalanced fan or something? I'll give it another day or two crash-free before I'm confident it was just a bad driver install.

 

[DS1971]

Well, mystery solved I guess... I just sat down to honestly have my first long gaming session with this new rig. Made it about 3 hours of playing Guild Wars 2 before the whole rig hard shut down mid-game. After that, it wouldn't even POST. I swapped the power supply with a known good unit, same problem, took every component out and tested them one by one. Everything worked right up until I put the video card back in. With the card in, the motherboard gets power, but once you hit the power button it turns on for a fraction of a second before it turns everything right back off, hopefully from motherboard safeguards preventing the defective card from frying everything else. Swapped it with the old HD 5870 in my old rig and of course, the new system POSTs properly and the old one (with the new card in it) only turns on for a fraction of a second before it shuts off again. Just put my RMA request in with newegg, hopefully the replacement card works and the old card didnt take anything else down with it Thanks for the help, as unfortunate as the end result turned out. Hopefully the thread helps some other people identify similar issues and replace their card before it dies on them too!

 

[Arc]

Really good news, and what you have done is the best way to troubleshoot hardware

 

[DS1971]

So...

I got my new video card from the RMA on monday, and everything was working perfectly right up until a few minutes ago when it did it again. Went into idle, and refused to come out. Keyboard lost functionality, mouse lost functionality, and when I unplugged them and plugged them back in the LEDs wouldn't come back on. Had to hold the reset button to restart.

Now i'm wondering if I was sent a *second* bad video card, or was something else the problem all along and the video card failing was totally unrelated.

 

[Arc]

So...
Now i'm wondering if I was sent a *second* bad video card, or was something else the problem all along and the video card failing was totally unrelated.

Better you upload the crash dump.... that would help both of us to decide about the problem.

 

[DS1971]

Unfortunately since it didn't bluescreen when locked up this time, there's no new dump file to analyze.

However, we're also back to really odd fan behavior while idle, and this time I got the chance to catch it in the act. There's two groups of indicator LEDs on the top of the card, two in each bank are always lit and the fans are always spinning. As soon as windows turns off the monitor, *these LEDS turn off and the fans stop spinning entirely*. Its as if the whole card has been turned off to save power, but the big glowing MSI logo dome still stays lit up like the sun. Every minute or so, these LEDs kick back on for between 2 and 4 seconds, the fans spin up to 30%, then it all turns right back off again. This is 100% reproducible at least since the crash yesterday, I don't know if I just didn't notice it before or if its new behavior. I grabbed a video of it with my phone that I can upload to youtube or something, and i'll take some pictures of the LEDs and which ones stay lit up and post them as soon as I have time to pull the whole thing apart today. I also have a GPU-Z log that clearly shows the behavior, when the LEDs are off it records junk data, and then records those 3-4 seconds of spin-up perfectly fine every time.

I've never heard or seen of a card completely turning itself off to the point where the fans dont even spin when the computer goes idle. My old 5870 sounds like a jet engine 24/7, it definitely doesnt shut the whole card down when the monitor turns off. These crashes might have something to do with the card not properly powering back up from this temporary off state, causing current devices to stay somewhat powered but not properly powering newly introduced devices, which might explain why the keyboard/mouse LEDs still work and you can still access the filesystem across the network.

 

[Arc]

Either you have installed any program to control the fans ... that may be the reason behind the fan behavior, or there are some faults.

Are you under warranty? IF so, you may take it to the vendor for a check.

 

[DS1971]

No fan controller software outside of CCC, but I never enabled the overclocking settings to manually control the fans and it does it even if I totally uninstall CCC.

I took my 5870 out of my old PC and put it in the new one, letting windows install just the basic drivers. It works fine, no odd fan behavior when the PC goes idle.

I put my 7870 in the old computer, letting windows install just the basic driver. *it does the same thing*. PC goes idle, fans turn off, lights turn off, every minute or so they pop back on for a few seconds and then go off again.

The odd thing? If I plug it into my TV or my monitor via HDMI, *it doesnt do it*. It only happens over DVI. I swapped out the cable (again) and it didn't make a difference. I guess because the HDMI signal has the power component to it, it just cuts the video signal and doesn't shut down the card itself. But why would the card shut itself off like that to begin with?

I've got those pics of the lights, i'll post them later. Both sets of lights that are lit when the card is on are labeld +-, whereas the unlit lights surround them are all labeled with error codes, so i'm guessing they're just the "yeah, the card has power" debugging lights.

The fact that it does the exact same thing in another PC entirely should logically rule out bent processor pins, motherboard problems, PSU problems, and RAM problems, i'd hope.

It is still under warranty, it *just* got back from RMAing the first card, it's brand new. The newegg reviews for the card apparently have over 25% reporting dead cards and issues though. I think i'm just going to end up sending it back and buying a whole different card unless you can think of anything else that might be the root cause. I really don't want to wait another 2 weeks on an RMA to get back a *third* defective card.