Blue screens, artifacting, and more!

[CCV]

I've spent a lot of time troubleshooting this issue and not really coming up with any good answers to my specific case. This is a long post and I apologize for that in advance!

A couple of weeks ago, a few hours after installing the latest AMD drivers, my system cut to a black screen, and came back with major artifacting all over the screen. We're talking white and black squares, multicoloured squares, tearing, the works. Then it'd cut to black again and sit like that until I powered off, upon reboot it'd get past starting windows, cut to black and sit there.

Switching out to another GPU, during the initial issues fixed my computer and it ran fine. Uninstalling those AMD drivers made everything work but installing older ones or redownloading the current ones broke everything again.

I went through a lot of troubleshooting and found that it seemed like it was the GPU at fault, so I sent it off to be RMA'd (which, the process of was a major hassle btw), results came back saying the card was working fine and had absolutely no faults. So I assumed my power supply must have been failing and not providing enough power (I'd been told that this was most likely the case as I was trying to run my r9 290 on a CX600 which apparently doesn't have enough power in the rails? I don't know much about power supplys to be honest). So I went through some more hassle to get the thing back, bought a new PSU (EVGA 750 G2) plugged everything in and it worked.

That was 8 days ago, today the computer has started showing the same symptoms again, in a repeatable fashion. If I alt tab during Metal Gear Solid V, the computer will either bluescreen or show the video artifacting and shutdown. This will happen every time I do it. I'm sure this could and will happen in other ways, but doing that particular action prompts it every single time at the moment. And while I'll admit this could be specific to that game, I find it hard to believe that this game perfectly imitates an issue I was having months ago.

My system runs cool and doesn't really get loud at all. I've ran CC Cleaner, Malware Bytes, multiple antivirus scans, etc. Usually upon reboot right now when this issue occurs the screen will be covered in artifacts, which will disappear upon a further reboot. Pictures of that are below the specs.

Any ideas at all would be a great help, sorry that this is kind of long

Specs:
CPU: Intel Core i5 3570K @ 3.40Ghz (4 CPUs), ~3.4GHz
Mobo: ASRock B75 Pro3-M
RAM: G.Skill 8GBXL (2x 4GB)
PSU: EVGA Supernova 750 G2
GPU: XFX R9 290
OS: Windows 7 64bit

Screenshots:
http://i.imgur.com/NiPkLTy.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/0kbZ9Ir.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/WbviINa.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/ATi5SNG.jpg

You get the idea..

Here's a log of the bluescreen for whatever help that will be;
http://pastebin.com/KDnabTkr

Edit w/ extra info:
I ran driver verifier and after about 20-30 minutes got a Blue screen, Bluescreenviewer blamed a program I had installed and didn't use much, so I uninstalled it, then ran driver verifier again for about 4/5 hours with no further blue screens. Reading the dump file in windbg it seems to want to blame ntoskrnl.exe (which i believe i saw mentioned briefly on a previous blue screen, and bluescreenview also had as in the red), the other dump files that were generated by the natural bluescreens, do not appear to open in either one of those programs.

The driver-verifier caused dump file is here: http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=07342360503790379131

I also ran memtest for a full sweep which took about 35 minutes and it found 0 errors, and ran a s.m.a.r.t. test that showed my HDD as healthy.

 

[stavrosmast]

If when you have the artifacts you unplug and plug again the cable what happens? Try to unintsall drivers with Display driver uninstaller also try to another monitor and with another cable

 

[CCV]

If when you have the artifacts you unplug and plug again the cable what happens? Try to unintsall drivers with Display driver uninstaller also try to another monitor and with another cable

No change on unplugging the cable, switching monitors arrives at the same result ( http://i.imgur.com/vQw93Ne.jpg )

I've uninstalled via DDU and reinstalled the drivers a bunch of times throughout this process. Uninstalling the drivers returns more or less complete normalcy to the machine, and installing the drivers again (no matter which revision, new or old) returns the issue. My system appears to now be booting up with the artifacting all over the screen on the log in page. I can however, log in, and then the artifacting disappears, presumably until it crashes again.

I will say i've now seen a "Display driver has stopped responding and has recovered" prompt at some point.

I've also updated the original post with the following info:

I ran driver verifier and after about 20-30 minutes got a Blue screen, Bluescreenviewer blamed a program I had installed and didn't use much, so I uninstalled it, then ran driver verifier again for about 4/5 hours with no further blue screens. Reading the dump file in windbg it seems to want to blame ntoskrnl.exe (which i believe i saw mentioned briefly on a previous blue screen, and bluescreenview also had as in the red), the other dump files that were generated by the natural bluescreens, do not appear to open in either one of those programs.

The driver-verifier caused dump file is here: http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=07342360503790379131

I also ran memtest for a full sweep which took about 35 minutes and it found 0 errors, and run a s.m.a.r.t. test that showed my HDD as healthy.

I really don't know what the next step would be and I'd like to avoid blindly shooting around in the dark replacing hardware, and while I've considered just doing a fresh install of windows, my hard drive is sitting at about 750gb of data and I imagine backing all of that up would be an incredibly unfun experience.

 

[CCV]

Sorry to bump the thread so soon after my last post but I saw in other troubleshooting threads related to ntoskrnl.exe causing bluescreens(assuming that that is actually the issue), that usually memory was the fault. I've now ran memtest on both sticks individually and found no faults, the artifacting did not disappear when booting in with just one stick, either.

Alt tabbing from a game specifically into chrome, or opening chrome while a game is running, seems to cause either a bluescreen or a crash every single time without fail, and i'm now getting bluescreens at random in general. These bluescreens do not seem to be creating dump files anymore, either. I doubt that it's chrome in particular that is causing problems since the artifacting happens on the login screen way before chrome can even launch, but worth noting, I suppose.

EDIT: Most recent bluescreen that I was able to get a dump from is blaming atikmpag.sys in WinDbg, and dxgkrnl.sys & luafv.sys in BluescreenView

Here's the dump file: http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=71503876697836273599

 

[stavrosmast]

run malware bytes

 

[CCV]

run malware bytes

As I mentioned in the first post, I've already done this, multiple times. I'm running it again as per your suggestion though I doubt it will come up with new results that it didn't find the previous five or six times.

 

[stavrosmast]

What happens if you boot into safe mode?

 

[CCV]

What happens if you boot into safe mode?

Nothing unusual, safe mode boots up fine.

Uninstalling amd's drivers completely allows the system to boot up normally, until I install the drivers again and then the issues return. It doesn't matter which revision of the drivers I install, either.

 

[unknownofprob]

Run your integrated graphics (use video output on the motherboard), if that works without any issues at all it can only be one of two things; The video drivers or your graphics card itself. Since you tried an RMA what I would do if it does work is 1) backup your data 2) completely re-install windows followed by a freshly downloaded catalyst video drivers, see how that goes without restoring files, if all passes then restore.

If it doesn't work we know the issue lies elsewhere.

 

[CCV]

Run your integrated graphics (use video output on the motherboard), if that works without any issues at all it can only be one of two things; The video drivers or your graphics card itself. Since you tried an RMA what I would do if it does work is 1) backup your data 2) completely re-install windows followed by a freshly downloaded catalyst video drivers, see how that goes without restoring files, if all passes then restore.

If it doesn't work we know the issue lies elsewhere.

Must have clicked best solution here by mistake, the integrated graphics appear to be working fine. I'll see what I can do about doing a fresh install, and report back when I can.

 

[unknownofprob]

-solution un-selected

If you have any important data try and get it backed up prior to doing a fresh install if possible. Old drivers could be clashing with new ones which would make sense out of your issue currently, even though when updating your software AMD removes the old ones it may have failed. However since you did uninstall the AMD drivers something convinces me traces remain of your old drivers, finding that would be difficult.

 

[stavrosmast]

Probobly the amd's bad drivers cause he said its ok without its drivers

 

[CCV]

-solution un-selected

If you have any important data try and get it backed up prior to doing a fresh install if possible. Old drivers could be clashing with new ones which would make sense out of your issue currently, even though when updating your software AMD removes the old ones it may have failed. However since you did uninstall the AMD drivers something convinces me traces remain of your old drivers, finding that would be difficult.

I installed a fresh version of windows (decided I may aswell grab windows 10 and make this as far removed from my failure states as possible while I was at it) everything seemed fine, I was able to install AMD's drivers with no artifacting, crashing, or blue screens. I was able play the game and alt tab out over and over and over with no issue, something that would guarantee a crash last time.. however, once I closed the game I was greeted by this:
http://i.imgur.com/W8bWkTt.jpg

Now, after I closed that window to the left there, the artifacting vanished and my computer did not crash, didn't stutter, had absolutely no issues at all, however this cannot possibly be a good sign. I was just about to come mark this thread as solved before I encountered this, I'm going to try and just use the machine normally over the next few days and see if anything bsod-like happens.

 

[stavrosmast]

win10 are still very unstable tho

 

[CCV]

Well as you can see, similar problems have returned and it appears more or less undeniable that it's a hardware issue.

http://i.imgur.com/EuscR4J.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/bp9dw0Z.jpg

My initial concern way back when this started was that it was a GPU issue, and considering uninstalling amd's drivers and running a different GPU in my system both result in a perfectly stable and functioning machine i'm pretty convinced it is not the mobo, though it might be.

If there is any way to narrow this down between the two and nail which is causing the issue I'd love for some advice. Since I RMA'd the thing already and had to pay for both shipping and the rma costs, I'd like to have some concrete evidence (if possible) that the GPU is at fault.

EDIT: i am occasionally getting into loops of "AMD drivers have stopped responding but recovered"! which is fun! It seems certain now that the card is busted, lets hope I can convince the store that it is the case, despite the fact they already told me it was fine...