Game crashes, failed boots, random restarts, hard hangs.

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Sperm_Inside

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Hello,

These are my current system specs>>
MB> GA-P67A-UD7-D3
CPU> i7 2600K
RAM> 2x4 G.skill CL9 1600 v1.5
HDDs> 2x1TB WD blacks no raids (a year old), 1x2TB WD Green (a week old)
GPU> 2 EVGA GTX 570 (but using only 1 right now cause I sent the other to the shop to fix a noise problem it came with)
PSU> NZXT 1000w Gold Plus
OS> Windows 7 x64

Now here is what has been going on since 26/05, While I was playing "World of Tanks" the game froze, sound was stuck and screen turned black with white stripes, I had to force a restart, the minidump was accusing a dll file of nvidia's which when I searched for on the internet it sounded like a random hiccup of Nvidia and it only happened once so I ignored it. But the game started crashing to the desktop since then but not very often, it never did that with my older pc, so I don't know if it's from the game side or my side.

This isn't really the part I care about, here is the real problem.

Yesterday around 8pm, I was about to transfer a 7gig folder from my main disk to the storage disk, as soon as I opened the partition that I was transfering to, I had a blue screen saying only "Unknown hard error", I force restarted and the MB resat the Bios and it restarted again and since then windows wouldn't boot, it kept asking for repair and during that repair it said "System was unable to boot" several times and after the many repair runs it kept saying it failed to fix the problem.

Then I unplugged my storage HDDs and only left the system HDD, booted from windows 7 DVD and tried to repair but still said it couldn't fix the problem, in the report it said there was a problem with ci.dll, so I started "command" tried these commands (bootrec.exe /fixboot, bootrec.exe /fixmbr, bootrec.exe /rebuildbcd) after that I restarted and windows booted perfectly, right after that I shut down the computer, plugged in the 2 other HDDs, windows booted perfectly then all of the sudden, the keyboard wasn't responding (not even it's leds were working) same thing with my mouse, I looked at the HDD led and it wasn't doing anything at all, no small flickers or anything, so I force restarted, it booted like normal, I started to transfer a folder to 1 of my storage HDDs, opened up firefox, it was acting really slow, everything I was doing on it was lagging although nothing was draining the CPU or ram or anything, opened few pages, when the transfer was about to finish, the pc restarted.

After the restart, the event log says "kernal power" event id 41, category 63 and it didn't give me any minidumps. Anyway I went to sleep around 3AM, left my downloads running and was hopping nothing would happen but something sure happened, the event log says at 4:30 AM "The Windows Modules Installer service entered the stopped state." then no new events till 6:45 AM which was a warning saying "TCP/IP has chosen to restrict the scale factor due to a network condition. This could be related to a problem in a network device and will cause degraded throughput." No other events till I had waken up at 10:37 and found the monitor turned off not responding, HDD led completely off, no flickers, basically nothing was responding.

So here I'm don't know what the hell am I supposed to do, I have a decent knowledge regarding windows problems, but this problem is too open and wide, is it 1 of my hard disks? is it the lonely GPU I have right now? is it the ram? is it the CPU? I need some guidance on how to eliminate each of them.


Edit: before the MB resat the Bios, the CPU was overclocked to 4.2GHz and I tested it many times and it was very stable, so when the system hanged after the boot problem was fixed, there was no overclocking involved, there was no heating issue, temps were normal, I have a 1000w plus gold certified PSU.

Awaiting your helpful replies.
 

tlg

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Possibly a motherboard problem because you report that many totally different things are going wrong. On second though, could be a RAM problem.

BEFORE you try anything, do a clean install of windows (yes, thats gona take some time but it would be a shame to replace mobo if it was just windows files having problems). It could also be a driver conflict which will most probably be fixed if you do a clean windows install.
 

smoothdude

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Do you have a backed up image of your system from before everything went bad? Where did you get the bios update for your mobo? Hopefully it was the manufacturer. The reason I say this is because everything you are mentioning makes it seem more like a virus you have contracted. Your forced restart seems to prove that to me as there are viruses out there which target your Master Boot Record. (I am under the impression that you got that problem fixed, right?)

Do you have anyway of check the voltage on your PSU? If not, how old is it?

Hard drives are great as they can tell you when they are going bad, so you can change them before they fail. You know the sounds that they make.

Bad ram can cause freezing, try memtest to check the quality of your ram. Check the voltage of your cpu and see if it is correct, this is a sign of a dying cpu.

Make sure that you have the lastest drivers for your hardware, and see if you can fix your registry. Try ccleaner (which is free) to scan your registry.

Please keep us informed of any solutions that you may encounter. Good luck.
 

Sperm_Inside

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I would be glad if it's the motherboard, I would return it immediately and replace it with Asus Deluxe without hesitation. But I will keep that in mind if I didn't find a problem with other pieces of hardware (the ram for example).

I will not remove windows unless I run out of other options, ever since 2004, I stopped reinstalling windows as a solution to any problem, I always search for the problem and search even more for a fix, when I run out of options, then I remove the windows, that's how I'm able to make it last over a year even if I was faced with serious problems. But I do know that's an option, I will keep it in mind if I run out of ideas.



Do you have a backed up image of your system from before everything went bad? Where did you get the bios update for your mobo? Hopefully it was the manufacturer. The reason I say this is because everything you are mentioning makes it seem more like a virus you have contracted. Your forced restart seems to prove that to me as there are viruses out there which target your Master Boot Record. (I am under the impression that you got that problem fixed, right?)

Do you have anyway of check the voltage on your PSU? If not, how old is it?

Hard drives are great as they can tell you when they are going bad, so you can change them before they fail. You know the sounds that they make.

Bad ram can cause freezing, try memtest to check the quality of your ram. Check the voltage of your cpu and see if it is correct, this is a sign of a dying cpu.

Make sure that you have the lastest drivers for your hardware, and see if you can fix your registry. Try ccleaner (which is free) to scan your registry.

Please keep us informed of any solutions that you may encounter. Good luck.
There are system restore points, but no full images.
I got the bios update directly from the official site. F4
I don't have any viruses, at least MSE never reported any to me except false positives.
I fixed the booting issue with the commands I mentioned, no other booting problems happened since then.

The PSU is a month old.
This is it's page
http://www.nzxt.com/new/products/power_supplies/hale90_1000w

I never had an HDD dieing on me, not once since I bought my 1st PC, although I run my pc 24/7.

Since I posted this thread, some1 else where suggested to me that MSE could be causing the corruption on data cause similar problems happened to him too and he had the same MB as mine, so I removed MSE, installed KAV 2011, it worked fine for a moment, it updated fine, it did some scans then moments later it wouldn't run, I tried to repair it but it said "Error 1406.Could not write value etc etc" to registry, I tried to remove it, it wouldn't for the same reasons, anyway I restarted and tried to repair, it got repaired and asked to restart a couple of times during the process, it then updated normally and has been working fine for 4 hours so far, no other errors or problems happened since then.

I downloaded memtest and I will burn it today, later if anything goes awry again today I will remove a stick and test each, if it's not a problem with any of them I will be forced to install a new windows and see what happens.

Right now all voltages are at stock, I haven't changed anything in the bios since the MB resat itself except for the loading sequence, haven't touched voltages or overclocked.

I have the latest drivers and ran ccleaner like 3 times and fixed all that could be fixed but I don't think it found any problems related to what was going on.

So far the system is working fine, if it acts up again tonight, I will test the rams and tell you what happens.
 

jktz122

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i had something slightly similar in middle of useing it my pc simply stopped and when it restarted it tried start up recovery which didnt work so i did the restore from a previous working point and then my av (norton) told me i had a malware
in any case the startup recovery error log pointed to a bad boot sector possible a curropted mbr this morning i ran a full norton scan and a microsoft malware removal tool scan
im convinced i somehow had a "virus"or something im still not convinced im out of the woods
 

Sperm_Inside

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Personally I'm pretty sure I don't have any viruses, but so far my system has been fine since I removed MSE, I'm still waiting for a re-occurrence of the problem (or the lack of) to do further testing (Rams and if it wasn't it then a new windows, if it wasn't it, then it might be the processor).

I'm taking it step by step, hopefully it doesn't turn out to be a hardware problem at the end.
 

Sperm_Inside

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Okay so, I went to sleep around 2.30AM, everything was fine all day, I just wake up 12.12PM, screen wouldn't turn on and HDD leds were off, not flickering, I force restarted, the event log shows that the last activity was at 8.53AM, the next activity is timed at 12.12PM when I restarted and it's an error saying that "The previous system shutdown at 10:22:26 AM on ‎5/‎31/‎2011 was unexpected." which means the windows was still aware even after it stopped logging activity at 8.53AM, it knew somehow that the whole system was suspended or stopped or whatever happened to it at exactly 10.22AM and it reported it after 2 hours from then!

All hibernate or sleep options in windows are disabled, also I just disabled the ones in the bios, I'm getting a feeling that it was all about the sleep/wakeup problem this board had with a previous bios version, what I don't get is that I have the latest official bios which supposedly fixed these problems, I could revert back to F2 bios, but it had problems with the power button which is why I updated the bios in the first place.

Also nothing happened at all while I was using the computer yesterday, so that issue seems like is triggered by idling, although the system wasn't completely idle, it was downloading stuff for me which is supposed to prevent any kind of sleeping or hibernating..

EDIT: I just reverted back to the original Bios, which is F2, I think this problem is caused by that stupid ACPI suspend, it can't be disabled and I don't ever need suspension or hibernation or sleeping, anyway I left it at default which is S3(STR), I wish there was a way to disable that stupid thing, I'm hating this motherboard more and more everyday, I knew I should have waited for the Asus Deluxe. Will let you know if it suspends again.

EDIT1: I just remembered another issue of F2 bios, constant flickering of the HDD Led and HD activity, one small flicker and HD noise per second..
 

Pompeii

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I'm fairly confident that what you have described is a hardware problem, not software. As far as what it could be, there are four possibilities:

1) Processor
2) Motherboard
3) Memory
4) Overheating

A bad processor is unlikely. They have a very high degree of quality control (more than other components such as the motherboard and ram), and defective processors are binned and sold as with cores disabled or lower clock speeds. When a processor is in your system, the motherboard often acts as a buffer, and any damage will most likely occur to the motherboard before the processor. To put it simply, I have never seen a processor fail - but I have often seen the processor take the blame for a motherboard failure due to misdiagnosis.

Memory is also unlikely. While it traditionally has a much higher failure rate than other components, the fact that both your keyboard and mouse lost connectivity points to the motherboard.

Overheating is also a possibility. Overclocking your processor puts stress on a large variety of components, many of which don't have temperature sensors. I ran into this situation myself only a few days ago, where my liquid cooling on the processor caused a lack of air circulation directly around the cpu socket. All temperature sensors were reporting in safe ranges, yet my computer was unstable and would bluescreen while playing even low end games. I troubleshooted the drivers on my computer for two weeks before determining that my motherboards poor design relied on the cpu fan/heatsink to circulate air through the passive heatsinks around the cpu. Removing the liquid cooling on the cpu and installing the original heatsink and fan fixed the problem.

If after examining your system there is no air circulation or overheating issue, I am fairly confident that your problem is due to the motherboard.

I'll be watching this thread, if you have any more information, please post it.
 

Sperm_Inside

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Thank you for your input, 12 minutes ago while I was browsing, just simple browsing, the system froze, that's the 1st time it freezes while I'm using it. The keyboard leds were stuck, the mouse pointer was stuck, no HD activity etc.

I'm pretty sure the CPU cooler is seated perfectly on the processor, back when it was overclocked it never went over 50, I haven't overclocked since the MD resat the bios nor after I reverted to an older bios so it's all default now except for booting order, no other hardware is reporting any abnormal temps, both black WDs are reporting temps of 41, the green is reporting 36, my GPU is reporting safe temps as well, while idle it's around 40s, while loading it's around 70s.

My MB has it's own cooling system for the chipests and the surrounding area of the CPU socket, I have no reason to suspect these areas require extra cooling from the cpu fan, unless they never intended for users to do any sort of overclocking on this "enthusiast" motherboard.

Here is a picture of all the current temps while writing this.
http://s3.postimage.org/gnhz37jq5/2011_05_31_191606.png

I know you are suspecting the MB, which I really don't want it to be cause it will be hard to prove to the shop I bought it from, I know how they work, they would test run it, find it working fine for a couple of hours then tell me that there is nothing wrong with it, it must be your other components.
It's going to be hell to prove, cause it's random, so I will stay positive and leave the MB for last. I will go ahead and check each ram now, hopefully it would be 1 of them.

Will keep you posted, I don't know why the forum didn't send me a notify me about your reply, it should have.
 

Pompeii

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There are some utilities that may help you determine exactly what is going wrong.

1) WhoCrashed is a program that will analyze your blue screen memory dumps and tell you what the faulting module is. If the problem is driver or OS related, this will give you some more insight as to what is going on.

2) Memtest86+, which you already know about, will help you diagnose faulty memory modules.

3) Ultimate Boot CD will help you stress test system components independent of windows. This will eliminate any software/driver issues that you may be having from the testing process.

Both memtest86+ and the Ultimate Boot CD are time consuming system tests, and it's best to run them overnight if possible. If you need help running or burning these utilities to a disk for use, just let me know and I'll help you along.
 

Sperm_Inside

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About Whocrashed, I didn't get any minidumps, the "write debugging information" was set at "kernal memory dump" all that time so I just corrected it moments ago to "small minidumps" so that when the next crash or whatever problem happens, there will be something to investigate.

As for Memtest, I already burned it and it's ready to be used.

Ultimate Boot cd, heard about it few times but never really needed it for anything, I'm downloading it now.

Thank you for your support, will let you know whatever happens next.

Edit: I just ran Whocrashed and it only picked up the Nvidia crash which was 5 days ago, 3 days before all other issues started
On Thu 26-May-11 1:41:15 PM GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\Windows\memory.dmp
uptime: 8 days, 07:20:29
This was probably caused by the following module: dxgkrnl.sys (dxgkrnl!TdrResetFromTimeout+0x214)
Bugcheck code: 0x116 (0xFFFFFA800A4E04E0, 0xFFFFF8801061A970, 0xFFFFFFFFC000009A, 0x4)
Error: VIDEO_TDR_ERROR
file path: C:\Windows\system32\drivers\dxgkrnl.sys
product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
company: Microsoft Corporation
description: DirectX Graphics Kernel
Bug check description: This indicates that an attempt to reset the display driver and recover from a timeout failed.
The crash took place in a standard Microsoft module. Your system configuration may be incorrect. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver on your system which cannot be identified at this time.

So, sadly it didn't pick up anything that happened after that since there were no dumps for it, hopefully from now on, the system will write dump files.
 

Sperm_Inside

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Ran memtest for 9 and something hours, both ram sticks passed 14 tests without a single error.

Now, how do I test the motherboard itself ?
 

Sperm_Inside

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Remove temp files, run disk checkup and fix registry errors... this may help you..!
All done, doesn't change anything unfortunately..

Another freeze happened in less than 2 hours after I logged into windows (after closing the memtest).. No dumps, I just turned on the monitor and there it was, frozen desktop as usual, nothing moves or responds..


Some people seems to be suggesting that disabling the GPU driver might fix the freezing issue, but then that means no more gaming lol.. What do you think?

EDIT: I have a few tricks up my sleeves, I will completely remove the latest Nvidia driver, install an older 1, perhaps the 1 on the CD then wait for the freezing, if it doesn't happen then it was from the driver, if it does, I will remove the driver and the card itself, install the old 5850 I have and see what happens.
 
If you want to try to rule out Windows and driver issues, run the system in Safe Mode for a while.

This may also be a power supply issue. I had a system that had startup issues, would get a power light but no display. When I listened to the PC, the power supply was making a whining noise. At times I could get it to start up for a day, then next day no power again till I reset the BIOS and unplugged the power supply. Then sometimes it would turn on, sometimes not for another hour after that.
 

Sperm_Inside

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Minutes after my last reply, it froze again on me, I decided to remove the windows entirely and install a new 1, installed the latest main drivers and the GPU driver from the CD, now updating windows etc.

As for the PSU, no weird sounds are coming from it or anything, it's doesn't show any signs of problems especially when I use the computer heavily (run heavy tests), I don't think it's a PSU problem since the system just freezes while inside windows but doesn't turn off or restart on it own during heavy tests, the only thing I can say about the PSU, is that the back side of the case is a bit electric when I touch it while the pc is on, the whole case is metal anyway so that's understandable.

Anyway, will let you know if anything happens on this new installation.
 

smoothdude

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I am going to have to agree with Pompeii on this one as I have never seen a CPU fail as they are well protected. If your ram checks out okay, it would leave me to believe it was the Mobo. Have you changed any of the clock frequencies or voltages in the BIO? Did you add any new hardware to your system before the system freezes?
 

Sperm_Inside

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I never touched the voltages when I overclocked after I assembled the whole system, I only disabled some features like C1E, EIST, C3,C6 state, CPU thermal monitor, upped the Multiplier to 42 and never touched the BLCK, also I sat the CPU volt to auto which made it 1.30v, finally of course I sat my rams to 1600 which is it's rated speed. It all ran fine for 3 weeks.
Currently nothing is overclocked, I haven't touched anything beside the booting order, rams are running at 1333 by default.

About a week and half before all this crap started, I installed a new WD20EARS 2TB green HD, removed 1 of my 2 GPU cards cause it was making a ticking sound since day 1 (but it's performance was flawless) and sent it to the shop, then I put the 2nd GPU in it's place and everything ran fine up until 26 May while I was playing a game, the game hanged, sound hanged then the system restarted, it gave me a minidump which accused a notorious dll file of nvidia driver, anyway I let it go and no other problems happened till 3 days later, on the 29th, I was about to go to my uncles wake, so I wanted to transfer a folder I had just downloaded, from my main disk to a 2nd disk (not the new disk) then I got a blue screen with just 1 sentence "Unknown hard error", I force restarted, I was welcomed with the MB resetting the bios and asking me to choose a profile, then it restarted and now you can read all what happened ever since then from the 1st post and downward.
 

Sperm_Inside

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Yay, got my 1st freeze on the new windows, now I have eliminated the windows, the newest nvidia driver, MSE from the list of possible software causers, next step is removing nvidia completely and removing the card itself then installing an ATI card (to eliminate that the card itself is defective or not), if I still get a freeze then will try another PSU and/or send the MB to the shop.


Edit: installed the HD5850 I have, which reminded me of the terrible noise of it's fan, oh and the very high idle temp of it which is sitting at 60c when the fan is on auto, I was about to send this card to the shop to get it fixed before all these problems started, it's a good thing I took my time. Updates on any new freezes next, stay tuned.
 

Sperm_Inside

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@smoothdude I only went to safe mode to run drive sweeper, didn't stay in it for longer than that.

Something new just happened (or could be related to an issue with F2 Bios), I downloaded the latest amd driver, installed it, it required a restart so I let it do it, the windows restarted the system, right after windows turned off, all of the sudden the MB shut the power, then powered on, then shut the power then powered on and here I'm writing this now.

This could be nothing (an F2 bios issue) or could be a new symptom.

Edit: Never mind, I'm pretty sure it's related to the F2 bios issue, I remember it doing that back before I updated to F4 then it was gone and only came back when I reverted back to F2 bios.
 

Sperm_Inside

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So guys, it's been 3 hours since I installed the AMD card, nothing bad happened so far "aside from the re-restarting issue caused by the F2 bios", no hard hangs yet.

However the eventlog has shown few errors saying Event ID 11 "The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Harddisk3\DR3." 5 times in a row, 2 hours later just a warning about Tcpip after I started downloading some torrents "TCP/IP has chosen to restrict the scale factor due to a network condition. This could be related to a problem in a network device and will cause degraded throughput." I thought Windows 7 removed tcpip limitation!, other than that, no issues so far thank God.

Now, I would like to know which HDD is supposed to be Harddisk3!! There is Disk0, Disk1 and Disk2 (the green one).. So, who is Harddisk3??

Edit: oh guess what, it froze yet again, now that rules out the Nvidia card, I just removed the newest disk aka "the 2T green", I ran all official diagnostics and checks on all disks before and non showed any problem, but either way, now I will see what happens without the newest disk, if I get another freeze then I truly have 1 last thing to test and that's the PSU, I have my old PSU (Thank God I haven't sold it yet) it's OCZ Fatal1ty 700w, if it still freezes with that PSU then I truly have tested everything that could have been tested and only then I will send the damn MB to the shop.

Edit1: You guessed again, it wasn't the newest HDD, so I just removed the PSU, placed my old PSU, removed the 2nd HDD, now running only with my system HDD, now I've ran out of options, 1 more freeze and I take it apart then send that nightmare to the shop and install my good old AMD system which worked perfectly for a year at less than 1/3 of the price.
 

Sperm_Inside

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Okay, after I changed PSU and removed the 2nd HDD, I left the system running safe mode, I slept for 8 hours and it didn't freeze, right now I'm in normal windows, if it freezes then we are back to square 1, I will have to eliminate software, if it doesn't freeze then it was the 2nd HDD causing all this (entering a partition of the 2nd HDD was when the 1st problem started (BSOD "Unknown Hard Error")..

Edit: Yup, it froze in windows, so now back to square 1 like I never did anything at all in the last 5 days, running safe mode with networking now to at least eliminate it's driver.
 

Sperm_Inside

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You can close this thread now, it's not "Solved" but I already have dismantled the entire system, going to send that MB to the shop and probably sell the rest, I shouldn't have gone back to intel, I forgot how nightmarish it was, now I wish I could change my nickname, I don't want anything "Inside" anymore...
 

jenojaxx

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Well let me say this after 40 months or so . I have similar problems but not to such an extent and on AMD platform .
I ordered an SSD and i'll see if that helps cause i suspect my HDD's are used up , considering the amount of torrenting......and the fact that my HDD's are as cheap as it gets.
 
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