Random BSOD's. Tried everything I can think of, and now I'm really stumped.

[The Wild Turkey]

Hi,

I'm really stumped on what's causing these BSOD's. They've been occurring randomly, mostly when the computer is idle. I've run through all the troubleshooting steps I know of for BSOD's, and still I'm getting them at random times.

The problem

I've had my current build for a good 10 months or so now, and up until now it's been very stable. My specs are:

i5 4670
Gigabyte z87x-ud3h
8GB G.Skil F3-12800CL8D-8GBXM (2x4GB)
Radeon HD6970 (I think it's an XFX or something similar)
1x Kingston 60GB SSD, 1x Samsung 840 120GB SSD, 1x Hitachi 3TB, 1x WD 1TB
Seasonic 760W

For Christmas I got an extra 8 GB of G.Skill rams (verified it's the exact same model number as my existing sticks) and installed them the next day. Things were fine for about two weeks. The computer saw some pretty good use with me gaming and my wife also streaming tv shows to the TV.

However, since last weekend I've had 9 or 10 BSODs. Besides installing the new RAM sticks, nothing had changed for some time. My last Windows update was in mid December, and all my drivers were up to date as of a few months ago.

I missed the STOP codes on the first couple of BSODs, but so far I have recorded:

0x000000D1 Driver IRQL not less or equal, caused by afd.sys
0x000000C4 no further details
0x0000001A Memory management
Another 0x000000D1 Driver IRQL not let or equal, caused by dxgmms1.sys
A third 0x000000D1 Driver IRQL not less or equal, caused by atikmdag.sys
0x0000007E, caused by dxgmms1.sys
0x0000000A IRQL not less or equal

These have all been over the space of two weeks. Most of the time that they occurred, the computer was sitting idle or just net browsing. It's also occurred twice whilst I was gaming (once whilst the game was paused) and the last two have been as soon as I initiated shutdown.

My troubleshooting steps

My initial thoughts were that the new RAM sticks were faulty. I pulled them one at a time and ran the system for a period of time, but would still encounter the random BSODs. I then cycled the sticks through the various slots, leaving one empty to check if it might have been a faulty slot, but still received BSODs.

I have ran memtest for three nights straight, but it found no errors.

I ran sfc/ scannow, with no problems.

I have reinstalled my chipset, intel management engine, audio, graphics and network drivers, making sure they were the latest available ones from Gigabyte and ATI. Still I got a random BSOD.

In frustration, yesterday I ran memtest for 22 hours straight, and it still found no errors. (Photo for verification.)

I'm completely stumped on what the cause might be. Memtest is reporting there's no problems with my RAM, and my mobo hasn't had a problem before. My googling hasn't helped, as the various .sys files seem to be related to different drivers and functions with no common connection.

In summary; memtest finds no problems and all drivers are up to date, but still getting BSODs.

I really don't know what I could try next. Any help?

 

[Sample_Text_420_Blaze_It]

I think a clean install should do the trick.

 

[The Wild Turkey]

I was afraid it might it might come to that. Even though all my games and other programs are safely stored on other drives, I'll still need to reinstall them so that they will work properly with Windows, right?

 

[Sample_Text_420_Blaze_It]

I was afraid it might it might come to that. Even though all my games and other programs are safely stored on other drives, I'll still need to reinstall them so that they will work properly with Windows, right?

Honestly, the problem can be in your 2nd hard drive too, that might be a little risk you see.
You should be able to wipe your main HDD and re-install your current owned Windows.
If the game's don't work and/or you get again a BSOD you might have to format your 2nd HDD. but before we do that try to re-install Windows 7 first. OR you can re-download all drivers first. better than directly re-installing your OS.
so these are the steps;
1. re-install drivers.
2. if it didn't work, re-install Windows 7
3. if that didn't work - you really need help from a professional :/

any other questions should be asked too.

kind regards,
420-

 

[The Wild Turkey]

It's taken some time, but I've finally managed to find enough spare time to do a full format and reinstall of Windows, however that hasn't fixed the problem. I did the reinstall on Monday, but have since had three more BSOD's. This time, Windows produced a dump file which I ran through the windows debugger, but each it reports each crash was produced by a different cause; afd.sys, memory corruption and win32k.sys (files available if that might help diagnose the problem). Memtest is still reporting no errors when left to run overnight.

I'm really at a loss as to what's causing these bsods, but I'm thinking it must be hardware as a clean install didn't resolve it, yet memtest reports no problems. I'm wondering if the problem might lie in the mobo? Unfortunately I don't have a spare lying around to swap out and test. Are there any utilities like memtest that might report problems with a mobo?