System crashes, bsod's, restarts

[andybgr]

Greetings, my name is Andy and I am new to this forum, although I am watching you guys for years solving many problems.

So my experience with Windows 7 lately, is a lot of BSODs (of different kind), unexpected restarts, and display crashes (like a faulty gpu kind).
Just for the details, I get this problems from a few seconds to an hour apart

I decided to make a clean installation of Windows 7, but with the same results - nothing was solved.

these are the BSODs (of course there were many more before the clean installation of win7

this is the display crash

sometimes I get a combination, of 1 sec of display crash followed by a BSOD different each time.

I use 2 RAM DDR3 sticks, 2gb each.
I ran memtest86+ for 10 passes on each stick at a time, yes 1 of them showed errors and I removed it, the other one showed 0 errors so I kept it. Still the problem wasn't fixed.
I fixed the voltages and the clocks of each ram as they are on the manufacturer's sticker, still nothing fixed.
I plugs the sticks on different slots, still a problem.

My HDD is a WD,
I ran a HDD test for WD, no problems at all (I bought the HDD 2 days ago)

Unfortunately I don't have a spare graphics card, RAM, or PSU to test, and neither of my friends do.

What I found out in my little mind, is that each time I try to run Windows Update I get all these problems within seconds or minutes apart. When I don't try to run Windows Update, the system is more stable, the problems occur within an hour apart.

So I switched the SATA cable (thinking of data transfer -windows update etc) the BSODs dissappeared. as you can see the first picture the last one was at 02:40 last night, even though I was on the pc until 07:00am and many hours today also, no BSODs. The only thing that kept on going was the display crashes and the unexpected restarts on random momemts..

any thoughts?

 

[Lutfij]

When posting a thread of troubleshooting nature it's customary to include your full system's specs and your OS. List them like so:
CPU:
Motherboard:
Ram:
SSD/HDD:
GPU:
PSU:
Chassis:
OS:

Have you ruled out that your installer isn't corrupt? Mind sharing where you got your copy of Windows 7?

 

[andybgr]

Yes sorry about the specs,

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 955
Motherboard: Asus M4A88T-EVO/USB3
Ram: 2 x 2GB DDR3 OCZ3G1333LV2G (Gold Series) clocks 9-9-9-20 @ 1.65v
SSD/HDD: Western Digital 1TB WD10EZRZ-00HTKB0 5400rpm
GPU: AMD RADEON HD 5770
PSU: Thermaltake Litepower 700watt ATX 12v 2.3
Chassis: Bulldozer R4
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate SP1

The Windows 7 cd is the original, bought from store, just to check if it works fine i installed it to my laptop a few days earlier and everything was fine.

One more thing I want to add, on the BlueScreen Viewer program, even though I don't show it in the image, for each BSOD and faulty driver, in the details below there is always the ntoskrnl.exe as secondary faulty driver, for example for the faulty drivers it shows:

Ntfs.sys as primary
ntoskrnl.exe right below as secondary

thats for each and every BSOD that occured

 

[axe0axe0]

Hi andybgr,

NTFS is the New Technology FileSystem driver
Ntoskrnl is 1 of the kernel drivers of Windows

The Windows kernel files, mainly ntoskrnl, is defaulted to when no tool can find other drivers in the stack. If any of the kernel drivers would truly cause problems, you and millions of other users would complain about much more issues. Just a FYI

I ran memtest86+ for 10 passes on each stick at a time, yes 1 of them showed errors and I removed it, the other one showed 0 errors so I kept it. Still the problem wasn't fixed.

Did you switch the sticks between slots to make sure no slot is at fault?

Did you run sfc /scannow in admin command prompt?

 

[andybgr]

Greetings axe, thanks for the replly

I tried every possible combination with the ram sticks on their slots, even to run the pc, or the memtest. The problems haven't been solved and I also confirmed this way that 1 stick indeed is faulty (based on memtest) - which i removed after.

I did ran sfc in admin just a few hours ago. I also ran it on the old HDD disk a few days ago, no problems..

I have a question, since I dont have spare parts graphic card, RAM, PSU to test... just for the Graphic Card could I remove it completley and use the VGA onboard to see if any problems occur just to rule that out?

 

[axe0axe0]

Yes, you could remove it.

 

[andybgr]

it seems to me that I need a higher than 700watt PSU? I checked a PSU Calculator, my hardware exceeded the 700watts.. can you confirm this could be a reason of BSODs and crashes?

I don't know if you can see this link from th PSU calculator:

PSU Calc

 

[axe0axe0]

It would be logical that a system requiring more power than a PSU could provide could crash (or even not boot), not sure why you want me to confirm?

With my calculations, from http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-5770,2446-15.html and (dutch site) https://tweakers.net/pricewatch/234282/amd-phenom-ii-x4-955-black-edition/specificaties/ it would be that you're more than safe with 700W.
I'd say that your system doesn't need more than 500-600W, stretching the amount far up to be safe taken in account that my intel may be wrong.

 

[andybgr]

Now it seems that the pc reboots on its own under heavy loads. heavy loads meaning in games and during windows updates...

I put windows updates on "download only install later" and it seems to work. when I try to install them after a while it reboots. I tried to upgrade to Windows 10 since I have a original key for it, everything worked fine until Windows 10 during installation tried to check for updates, it went to about 18% and the pc reboot it several times after that and rolled back to Windows 7.

Just in case I ran FurMark to stress test the GPU, it was stable at 92C for 20 minutes then I stopped it - so I guess GPU is fine.

And one more thing, the motherboard Asus M4A88T-EVO/USB3 it comes with AI Suite II which overclocks everything. I uninstalled AI Suite, turned off OC from BIOS and reset the CMOS, so I believe OC is no longer the issue.

I know something is getting messy in my system, by combining all these problems I mentioned above, any thoughts?

 

[axe0axe0]

To my opinion, 92C is high.

When was the last time the system was cleaned of dust?
How old is the system?

 

[andybgr]

the system is about 8 years old, everything except the HDD which i bought 3 days ago.. Last time cleaned was about November.. I guess I really need to clean it and add some thermal paste. But the CPU temperature seems very normal even though the fan keeps on spinning really fast. Any way to stress test the CPU?

 

[andybgr]

Alright, just right now I was just reading our posts here, I tried to install windows updates, and after 3 seconds the display crashed (as in the image), I had to reboot. Just before that everything was fine for hours

 

[axe0axe0]

CPU stress test: https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/16474-prime95-stress-test-your-cpu.html

What updates do you get?
What updates do you try to install?

8 years for a system is long, I'm a bit surprised your parts haven't given up yet.

 

[andybgr]

since I made a clean installation of Windows 7 SP1, I had to go through every update that came up from Windows. As I see the History logs, about 1/5 so far made it successful the rest Failed or Cancelled due to reboots. Then the updates start over again - then again, it crashes, and they fail..and it keeps on going same after that

It's trying to install Security updates for Windows 7

the even viewer show Critical errors (41) each time the computer crashes or reboots, with the "0" in BugCheckCode.

 

[axe0axe0]

Event id 41 only means that the system has shut down unexpectedly, nothing more. Not really useful except for finding out when the system has shutdown unexpectedly.

Try to install 1 update at a time, the smallest most preferable.

 

[andybgr]

Nope, it failed immediately, I tried it in 4-5 different updates. The fail was quick so it didn't reboot, but....

following a guide I cleared all my updates and started over again.. as soon as Windows Update started "searching" for updates, after 4-5 second it reboots...

I did spend some time on my pc yesterday, about 6-7 hours trying to figure out the problem.....
-The pc rebooted once as mentioned above in the updates....
-it crashed (as shown in the image) as soon as I got into a game..(Diablo III)
-and it also rebooted as soon as I clicked "asus update" on the AI Suite II.....

every other time the pc was perfectly fine...should I mention that Chrome and Modzilla crash their pages after a while? is that helpful?

Just to mention, during the game the cpu temperature was at 48C, so it wasn't a temperature problem (I did monitor it and record temperature history just for that)....nevertheless I still need to blow the dust from the case, I have also already ordered a new CPU Fan (just in case) plus some paste for the CPU...and I also ordered a new PSU..in a few days I will know.......after that I must order new RAM..old pc i need to upgrade it a little bit

 

[andybgr]

Alright here is the thing,

As I mentioned in my first post, I changed the sata cable and all the BSODs have solved. So I was thinking last night, what if I could install windows again since there is no more data corruption ? So I did, and it seems that everything works fine.. no crashes, no BSODS, the updates download fine..

just to keep the devil out, i will keep this post open for a few days and let you know if anything else comes up.

thank you for your help, I appreciate it!