Random BSODs with random messages

[squareking]

Howdy all. Medium-time lurker, first time poster.

For the past week or so, I've been suffering from seemingly random blue screens, usually while playing a game but also at irregular intervals. So far, I've seen:

System_Service_Exception
Kernel_Date_Inpage_Error
Critical_Error_Termination
APC_Index_Mismatch

listed on the blue screen, and occasionally there's no error string. Yesterday, it ran for hours perfectly fine while running Netflix; this morning when I woke it up, it immediately restarted and I got a "Windows has recovered from an unexpected shutdown" message (details said it was a blue screen).

This past Saturday I ran 3 passes of memtest86 and no errors were found. Based on my armchair tech knowledge, at this point either the mobo or processor is to blame, right? I updated my video driver just after this started happening, but that's the only driver I've touched.

Full specs:

Win7 Home Premium
4x 2GB DDR3-1600, Corsair I believe
i5 760 4x 2.80GHz/8MB
ATI 5830
Gigabyte GA-P55-USB3

(fake edit): I thought I had emailed myself the crash dump files, but they weren't attached. Mondays are great. I'll get those up this evening. Until then here's the Windows report, if it helps:

Problem signature:
  Problem Event Name:	BlueScreen
  OS Version:	6.1.7600.2.0.0.768.3
  Locale ID:	1033

Additional information about the problem:
  BCCode:	1a
  BCP1:	0000000000000403
  BCP2:	FFFFF680000702D8
  BCP3:	A04000018F97A867
  BCP4:	F7FFF680000702D8
  OS Version:	6_1_7600
  Service Pack:	0_0
  Product:	768_1

 

[himnextdoor]

The first thing I would do is to try and restore the system to a time that pre-dates the problem.

Automatic updates might have caused a driver conflict so it might be useful to rule that out.

The random nature of the problem might suggest a heat problem.

Does removing the side-casing affect the rate at which the problem occurs?

Check fans and make sure that the heat-sinks ar dust free and that any air intakes or outlets are free from blockage.

It may be a motherboard problem and I would test this first by removing as many components from the system that I can.

If you have on-board VGA then you should revert to that for now.

Don't forget to ensure that BIOS is set to its defaults too.

Remove all but one stick of RAM.

All drives except the boot drive.

Sound-card? Remove it.

If the problem persists when your system is nothing more than a motherboard, CPU and monitor then we can take a closer look at the drivers and then, if that doesn't help, we can look at the remaining hardware.

 

[squareking]

The first thing I would do is to try and restore the system to a time that pre-dates the problem.

Automatic updates might have caused a driver conflict so it might be useful to rule that out.

I tried this initially and I didn't have an early enough point set up. This is a good reminder that I need to set it up properly.

The random nature of the problem might suggest a heat problem.

Does removing the side-casing affect the rate at which the problem occurs?

Check fans and make sure that the heat-sinks ar dust free and that any air intakes or outlets are free from blockage.

I'll give this a shot and report back. I installed a few extra fans over the summer and it did a good job of keeping air moving, but I haven't dusted the interior in a while...

Edit: Some dust in the main intake, less dust on the 5830 and side fans, but worth a clean. Temps before cleaning using Speccy: CPU 36C, mobo 34C, gfx 40C.

It may be a motherboard problem and I would test this first by removing as many components from the system that I can.

If you have on-board VGA then you should revert to that for now.

Don't forget to ensure that BIOS is set to its defaults too.

Remove all but one stick of RAM.

All drives except the boot drive.

Sound-card? Remove it.

If the problem persists when your system is nothing more than a motherboard, CPU and monitor then we can take a closer look at the drivers and then, if that doesn't help, we can look at the remaining hardware.


This might have to wait for the weekend, but thanks for the overview. Sounds like a foolproof way of narrowing things down.

Here's a link to my crash dump and sysdata.xml files. Not sure if this is exactly what's needed, but hopefully it's a step in the right direction.

 

[squareking]

Happened again today while Youtubing, only this time the screen glitched out for a second and the audio stuttered and hung as the screen went blank (it's happened like this before, but occurs maybe 10% of the time). Did a soft reset; the computer got to loading the OS and restarted again.

Guess I'll start taking it apart tonight.

 

[himnextdoor]

Try this.

Go into BIOS and Disable half of the cores and disable hyper-threading too.

Restart the machine. Do you still have the fault?

 

[squareking]

I've tried everything mentioned to no avail so far. There was a brief period where I was crash-free, but today I've had to restart 3 times. I've uploaded the latest minidump -- if someone could take a look I'd appreciate it!

FWIW, BlueScreenView highlights ntoskrnl.exe as the problem in the last 3 dumps.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B94zheYMNXRaR3EwdURPSnFRcjA/edit

 

[himnextdoor]

Hi, sorry I couldn't get back to you sooner.

Which internet browser are you using?

Firefox and Chrome have been known to use accelerators that can make a system unstable.

Either uninstall your browser and revert back to Internet Explorer or disable any loaded accelerators and see if that helps.

Also, you might download and install the 'K-Lite Codec pack'. This will check and repair any faulty codecs you have installed.

Sometimes, Windows updates the graphics drivers. Check your 'Installed Programs' list and check to see how many 'Graphic Accelerators are installed. There should be only one. If there are two, you should uninstall the older version.

Does any of this help?