In the meantime while I procrastinate away from monitoring stuff, I've written a long ol' story about all my computer problems. tl;dr MY COMPUTER DOESN'T WORK!
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This is my first build. I knew very little about hardware or setting up computers before this. Despite being surrounded by computers my entire life it's a very different experience to buying a manufacturer build in a shop, so every step of this process has been a learning curve. I'm still learning things and there are probably things I feel like I know that I'm actually totally wrong about. This is the process I've gone through with this computer and I've tried to include everything I can remember and in chronological order.
First things first, I installed Windows 7 onto my SSD. After I installed Windows 7 for the first time it became apparent that the wifi receiver I was using was not good enough to pick up my wifi at the range I was trying to operate at. For some reason this caused most of my drivers and peripherals to fail and occasionally my USB ports would totally stop working. This meant I had to set up everything myself that I didn't have a driver disk for. After managing to get a grip on the more important things that needed to run and finding a new wifi receiver that works, the first thing I did was download and install Steam and download Skyrim, since gaming is the main reason I bought this computer. I started a new game and the game played for about two minutes before the screen went black and the computer became unresponsive. This was the first time my computer BSOD'd. On every occasion on this install of Windows, my computer would never restart itself after a BSOD; I would always have to hard reset it myself. After I restarted my computer I tried again but it produced the same result. I don't remember exactly what I did immediately after that but I did a lot of reading on forums about what the problem might be and I learnt about BlueScreenView. BlueScreenView showed me that the BSOD was caused by my Nvidia and DirectX drivers. As a result I installed Driver Sweep and did a clean reinstall of DirectX and my Nvidia drivers. I tested Skyrim again but it still BSOD'd. Shortly after that I discovered that the computer would BSOD during the system rating assessment found on the Control Panel. It would always happen during the 'DirectX 9 Texture Load Assessment'. I sent an email to Amazon (who I bought my GPU from), briefly describing my problem and they told me to return my GPU to them and they would send me a replacement. When I received the replacement I took the opportunity to do a clean reinstall of Windows and reformat of my SSD because it could help remove some of the problems that were caused by the driver failure at the beginning of the process. I also took this opportunity to open up the case and make sure the USB cables were inserted correctly and reseat my RAM.
On this second attempt I made sure that all my drivers were installed and functioning correctly before I installed any other programs or tried anything particularly testing. After everything was installed I ran the System Assessment on the Control Panel because this was something that had caused my computer to BSOD before. After a few tense minutes it actually completed it. Feeling optimistic, I downloaded and installed Steam and Skyrim once again. At this point it was pretty late so I decided to leave the excitement of the Skyrim test until the next day, so I logged on to Netflix and started watching something on there. After about 10 minutes my computer BSOD'd totally out of the blue. I checked on BlueScreenView the next day and it was showing, once again, that it was the Nvidia and DirectX drivers causing the problem. I got onto the people I bought my motherboard, CPU and RAM from and they told me about ASUS PC Diagnostics, which would test my CPU, RAM and GPU on various different levels. I ran the full test and it came back with no problems. They also told me about memtest64, which would test the RAM in much greater detail. This, similarly, returned with no fails after one pass. They also told me about OCCT, which would test my GPU on a very intense level. The 'full test' takes a minute to 'monitor' (I can only assume voltages and temperatures of hardware) before it tests the GPU for an hour. I left the test to do its thing while I did something else. When I came back an hour later I discovered it had BSOD'd after only two minutes of the test running. Even though at this point I knew it wouldn't work, I ran Skyrim regardless. It still BSOD'd but it ran for maybe a minute longer than before. I sent this information back to the seller and they said they would issue a refund for the motherboard, CPU and RAM. I sent it back to them but decided against buying the same set again. I figured it would be worth spending £20-30 more because on budget combos like mine it can make a lot of difference. Now I have the motherboard and RAM listed above and I felt much more comfortable with these. Although I was slightly terrified I might do something horribly wrong, I rebuilt the computer myself. I knew I was being stupid but I was worried the computer might get a little confused with the jump from an ASUS to a Gigabyte motherboard so I did another clean reinstall of Windows and reformat of my SSD. I also changed all my SATA2 cables to SATA3 and reformatted my HDD.
This time I took a similar approach to last time, making sure all the drivers were installed and functional before trying anything else. The only thing I did differently was install my GPU drivers through Windows Update instead of the Nvidia website because I'd seen on a couple of forum threads that this can help some people. However, I noticed, although not surprisingly, that it only installed the same driver version that was on the support disk (v320.49). I then went to the Nvidia website to check for updates and I found a new driver version had been released only the day before (v327.23) so I installed that. With my driver set completed, I ran the System Rating Assessment and it completed. Again it was pretty late so I settled down and watched some ITV Player, hoping it wouldn't BSOD. It managed to play video for over an hour without BSODing. The next morning, feeling optimistic, I installed Steam and downloaded Skyrim. However, this time I noticed that when you run Skyrim for the first time, Steam installs its own DirectX drivers. I went on to play Skyrim for about 5-10 minutes (all the while getting my hopes up) before I got the same old BSOD errors caused by the Nvidia and DirectX drivers. This was, however, the first time the computer restarted itself after a BSOD so I felt like some kind of progress was being made. When it restarted I tried the System Rating Assessment and it BSOD'd again, although it was later in the process than on previous occasions; also potentially some progress being made. I read up on why Steam installs its own DirectX and it was something about Microsoft having a problem with redistribution. I forgot the details almost immediately. There is apparently no way around these DirectX installs. I used a program called TikiOne Steam Cleaner on a whim because it's meant to clean up junk Steam installs. Needless to say, this made no difference to the BSOD situation, with the computer still BSODing after about 5 minutes of playing Skyrim. I've since tried every stable version and one beta version of the drivers listed on the Nvidia website that apply to my GPU but they all produce the same result.
I don't have the dump files for my previous two installs of Windows but the drivers causing the problem this time around (and probably the same causing the problems before) are dxgkrnl.sys + dxgmms1.sys + nvlddmkm.sys. According to BlueScreenView they all have slightly different to/from addresses each time but they are always 'caused by' dxgkrnl.sys+5d05.
So, here I am now. The unavoidable Steam installs are seemingly causing my computer to BSOD, even outside of Steam. The only hardware that could be responsible which can be replaced would be the PSU. It would explain why I have sudden outages during times of high performance but it doesn't explain why it doesn't happen before the Steam DirectX installs are forced upon me. I can't imagine it's a hardware fault outside of the PSU considering I've gone through two GPUs, two motherboards, two CPUs and new RAM with identical problems. My PSU is also definitely powerful enough to support all my hardware. So then that would point to the drivers but I would argue against that because I'm not going to be the only person on Steam using an ASUS Geforce 660TI and if Steam forced drivers on people that would stop their computer functioning properly then that would be totally ridiculous. I feel like I'm at a fork in the road that's also a dead end.
It is drivers or my PSU?
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