Cold boot BSOD

[phidjit]

Some very strange things are going on...

I have a brand new system, E6600, Asus P5N-E Sli motherboard, Corsair 8500 Dominator RAM. I overclocked the 6600 to 3.0Ghz, the ram is at 533Mhz (stock) but I tightened up the timings to 4-5-3-12.

Every time I cold boot (and only after it has been off for a while) I get into Windows, and then it blue screens. Only under these circumstances though. I can immediately reboot, start up two instances of prime95's torture test, and then run 3DMark06 in a demo loop for 3 hours (this is as long as I have tested thus far) and it appears to be perfectly stable.

Has anyone heard of this before? I've been reading through some forums where other people have reported similar issues and are blaming their power supply (I have a OCZ GameXStream 700W) as well as the cold - apparently ram can act funny if it's cold?

Any help on this matter would be appreciated. Trying to find a stable OC which this doesn't occur could literally take weeks as I have to shutdown and leave the system off for ~1-2 hours before this problem re-occurs.

 

[phidjit]

Even though it only occurs the *very first* time I start each day (or after a few hours of it being off, at least)?

 

[akhilles]

I'll prolly get flamed. I had the same old boot issue with a stock s939 rig. It started happening after updating XP to the latest. Basically, XP blue-screened. memtest86 passed with flying colors & 0 errors. What I did to get around this was to run memtest86 for 30 mins before booting into XP. Worked every time. Just watched some sitcom rerun. Oh yeah, my parts were quality & there was no such issue with the older XP.

 

[phidjit]

So it's been a few days of testing, and still no luck.

I backed everything but the CPU back to stock, inc. voltages. I'm going to bring the CPU back down next - although from all the reports I've been reading it's not like a Core 2 Duo E6600 not to make it to 3Ghz.

I wanted to re-iterate that it might have nothing to do with the overclock as after the initial blue-screen and reboot it's stability is rock steady.

I know it's not drivers because memtest and even sitting in bios will freeze up after about the same amount of time. After the initial freeze/bluescreen, again, I can reboot and run memtest all day with no errors.

The only information I've been able to gather on this seems to point to power-supplies not performing correctly at cold temperatures, it's probably ~55 degrees in my study in the morning. I've never had this issue before though. My other machine in the same room is an A64 3500+, 6800GT, 1GB ram, and a corsair TrueBlu 430 PSU.

If I figure anything out, I'll let you guys know. Any new ideas would be appreciated.

 

[Jizumonkey]

Well you've exhausted pretty much every route regarding testing hardware devices.

It is possible that the PSU could be faulty but they would most likely fail at imediate power on (i.e not after a minute or so) due to the power surge at switch on; or they would fail intermittantly throughout the day. However, since you say you can sit in the BIOS or memtest and the same thing happens this also rules out file corruption or a virus in windows as most bsod's are imo.

Have you tried unplugging as much as you can to still reboot (into the bios screen, not windows) and see if it happens again? i.e disconnect any cd/dvd drives, floppy, sound card, unplug LAN lead, USB devices and anything but one stick of RAM.

This will have two benefits, first it will take away faulty devices from the equation and most importantly it will lighten the load on your power supply.

If the problem persists try swapping memory sticks into other ports and swap power leads around to test whether the PSU in unbalanced under load.

I'm sure after all this you will have enough evidence to conclude what is wrong. If the problem still persists then well it has to be the mobo or PSU and you'll just have to take the plunge with RMA'ing one or the other, or borrowing one off of a mate to check!

 

[deuketc]

I am having the same exact problem.. was using windows vista x64 when it happened. have tried a re-install also
using x86 and i still have the problem. i was also overclocking my system but am now using stock for testing which
also has not made a difference. after i reboot my machine its stable!! i can run prime95, crysis, superPI..
tried different video drivers, all updates. my pc was working in this configuration for atleast a year.
only difference is ive added more ram.. i now have 4gb. if anyone knows what this is im dieing to know


Specs
CPU: q6600 (was running at 3.2ghz but now at stock 2.4) + thermalright cooler
motherboard: asus p5k-e wifi
Ram: 4gb + corsair ram cooler
GPU: XFX nvidia 8800gts 640MB + zalman coller
PSU: 640Watt
Windows Vista 32bit home premium

 

[deuketc]

I am having the same exact problem.. was using windows vista x64 when it happened. have tried a re-install also
using x86 and i still have the problem. i was also overclocking my system but am now using stock for testing which
also has not made a difference. after i reboot my machine its stable!! i can run prime95, crysis, superPI..
tried different video drivers, all updates. my pc was working in this configuration for atleast a year.
only difference is ive added more ram.. i now have 4gb. if anyone knows what this is???


Specs
CPU: q6600 (was running at 3.2ghz but now at stock 2.4) + thermalright cooler
motherboard: asus p5k-e wifi
Ram: 4gb + corsair ram cooler
GPU: XFX nvidia 8800gts 640MB + zalman coller
PSU: 640Watt
Windows Vista 32bit home premium

 

[V3NOM]

weird! so it worked before 4GB and now it doesnt? seems like the RAM cant handle low temps...

 

[deuketc]

it did work for a while using 4gb though with the RAM cooler.. to test this i have just removed the RAM cooler and am running just 2GB
(wondered if it was ram compatibility) will test this for a while and see how it goes.. if this works ill then take it back to 4GB.
ill be so happy when i sort this one!!