Hi everyone,
I apologize for the long post, but I'd like to give as much relevant info as possible up front. And I desperately need help, so please hang with me.
I just built a new system, and I'm having some very frustrating and debilitating problems. I'll try to be as concise as possible, but there's a lot to it.
Background, I've run both Windows XP Pro SP2 32-bit and Vista Business 64-bit with similar results. Currently, I'm running XP.
I started experiencing random BSODs about 6 weeks ago. I have since tried to decipher a large number of minidump files (unfortunately, I didn't save any from Vista), and I'm not sure what to think. About half of them are "IMAGE_NAME: memory_corruption" but not all of them. From reading through some of the dumps, I thought it was my sound card (which was an old SB Auditgy 2 Platinum card), because of many `kmixer.sys` problems in the minidumps. So, I finally replaced it, thinking it would solve the problem, but to no avail.
The trend is very strange. I shutdown (read, completely turn off) my PC. Give it a few minutes. Turn it back on. Now I get about 3 days to 1 week with no problems, no BSOD. Finally, it crashes somewhere in that timeframe. So, I reboot (read, do NOT shutdown or turn off), and then come back up and check out the dump. Now I get about another day or so (1-2 days) before another BSOD. Again, reboot, keep working, and then BSOD in some number of hours (say 6-12 hrs). Again, reboot, keep working, and then BSOD in about 1 hours. The time between crashes continues to shrink until I completely shut down the PC. If I shut it all off, give it a few minutes, then power it back on, I "reset" my time horizon and can get another 3 days to 1 week, but the process just repeats.
Now, a couple of weeks ago (when I was switching back and forth between Vista and XP Ghost images), I was getting to a point where I'd try to load ghost or the Vista repair CD, but both would provide an error saying "Kerner is corrupt, or missing". It took quite a while, but I finally got around this. FYI, all of my problems started happening after I downloaded and installed a number of CS3 trial apps (Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, Dreamweaver). None of the trials worked, and gave an error. Mind you, this is on a brand new hard drive, and I started from scratch with windows installs (then made ghost images afterward), so there was never any Adobe software installed before. I've been really tempted to blame my problems on Adobe, but I'm trying to be rational.
Ok, back to memory testing...When I was having crashes in vista and experiencing the "kernel" errors above...Once I got past the kernel error such that I could run the Windows Memory Diagnostic tool, it would report "hardware issues" withing about the first 30 seconds of testing. This was VERY consistent with this tool throughout about 2 weeks of crashing and testing. At the same time, Memtest86+ never reported a single error.
More recently...Last night I experienced my first crash after replacing my sound card. I rebooted and immediately ran Memtest86+ and lo and behold, it reported a large number of errors. I didn't know how to read the display and unfortunately, I didn't pay much attention to the errors except that I saw a lot of "ffffffff" passed but "0fffffff" (or something other than 'f' in the first place) failed. I thought, well, I'll just remove the 4 sticks (4x1GB) and test each one individually. I let each one go through at least the first pass (in the first DIMM slot) and no errors. It was really late, so I put them all back in and ran the test overnight, and 5 hours later, no problems whatsoever.
So, here's my list of questions:
■Has anyone seen the consistent process of BSODs progressively occurring more often as I explained above?■Does restarting completely flush the RAM, or is power still supplied such that only a hibernate or shutdown would flush it? (I ask b/c perhaps this is why it gets progressively faster until I kill power.)
■Could the answer to the question above relate to why I saw errors in memtest86+ immediately after I rebooted, but never after a shutdown (which is obviously required for removing RAM...ie., memory is flushed, so my time horizon starts over)?
■Can I determine (from the output) which RAM module is faulty if memtest86+ shows an error? Or do I then have to start testing each individual stick?
■Is there any other stress test I can use to try to test the RAM? (I'm tired of waiting day's in between crashes to troubleshoot...this is getting very drawn out.)
■What else (what other hardware) could be causing this problem? And how would I test such hardware?
■Would posting any of my numerous minidump files be of any benefit?
■Any other suggestions on how to go about troubleshooting this issue?
■Could Adobe really have anything to do with this? (I've thought about zeroizing my HD, but that would be a huge pain as well, and I have no real evidence to support trying that right now.)
■Anything that you can think of that I didn't ask!
Also, another FYI...I updated my video card drivers (posted Jan 8, 2008), as well as my sound card divers (beta version posted yesterday, Feb 13, 2008). I'll list my setup below.
Any help/suggestions/comments are GREATLY APPRECIATED!!! (And sorry for the long post.)
Thanks,
Chad
Core 2 Duo E6750
4GB (4x1GB) Crucial Ballistix DDR-800 RAM
Gigabyte P35-DS3R v2.0
PowerColor Radeon x1950pro 512MB
Creative X-Fi Fatality Platinum Sound Blaster
Seagate Barracuda 250GB SATA 7200 RPM
PC Power & Cooling Silencer 610 EPS12V EPS12V 610W Continuous
Antec Solo case w/ 3 fans + Zalman CNPS9500AT
I apologize for the long post, but I'd like to give as much relevant info as possible up front. And I desperately need help, so please hang with me.
I just built a new system, and I'm having some very frustrating and debilitating problems. I'll try to be as concise as possible, but there's a lot to it.
Background, I've run both Windows XP Pro SP2 32-bit and Vista Business 64-bit with similar results. Currently, I'm running XP.
I started experiencing random BSODs about 6 weeks ago. I have since tried to decipher a large number of minidump files (unfortunately, I didn't save any from Vista), and I'm not sure what to think. About half of them are "IMAGE_NAME: memory_corruption" but not all of them. From reading through some of the dumps, I thought it was my sound card (which was an old SB Auditgy 2 Platinum card), because of many `kmixer.sys` problems in the minidumps. So, I finally replaced it, thinking it would solve the problem, but to no avail.
The trend is very strange. I shutdown (read, completely turn off) my PC. Give it a few minutes. Turn it back on. Now I get about 3 days to 1 week with no problems, no BSOD. Finally, it crashes somewhere in that timeframe. So, I reboot (read, do NOT shutdown or turn off), and then come back up and check out the dump. Now I get about another day or so (1-2 days) before another BSOD. Again, reboot, keep working, and then BSOD in some number of hours (say 6-12 hrs). Again, reboot, keep working, and then BSOD in about 1 hours. The time between crashes continues to shrink until I completely shut down the PC. If I shut it all off, give it a few minutes, then power it back on, I "reset" my time horizon and can get another 3 days to 1 week, but the process just repeats.
Now, a couple of weeks ago (when I was switching back and forth between Vista and XP Ghost images), I was getting to a point where I'd try to load ghost or the Vista repair CD, but both would provide an error saying "Kerner is corrupt, or missing". It took quite a while, but I finally got around this. FYI, all of my problems started happening after I downloaded and installed a number of CS3 trial apps (Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, Dreamweaver). None of the trials worked, and gave an error. Mind you, this is on a brand new hard drive, and I started from scratch with windows installs (then made ghost images afterward), so there was never any Adobe software installed before. I've been really tempted to blame my problems on Adobe, but I'm trying to be rational.
Ok, back to memory testing...When I was having crashes in vista and experiencing the "kernel" errors above...Once I got past the kernel error such that I could run the Windows Memory Diagnostic tool, it would report "hardware issues" withing about the first 30 seconds of testing. This was VERY consistent with this tool throughout about 2 weeks of crashing and testing. At the same time, Memtest86+ never reported a single error.
More recently...Last night I experienced my first crash after replacing my sound card. I rebooted and immediately ran Memtest86+ and lo and behold, it reported a large number of errors. I didn't know how to read the display and unfortunately, I didn't pay much attention to the errors except that I saw a lot of "ffffffff" passed but "0fffffff" (or something other than 'f' in the first place) failed. I thought, well, I'll just remove the 4 sticks (4x1GB) and test each one individually. I let each one go through at least the first pass (in the first DIMM slot) and no errors. It was really late, so I put them all back in and ran the test overnight, and 5 hours later, no problems whatsoever.
So, here's my list of questions:
■Has anyone seen the consistent process of BSODs progressively occurring more often as I explained above?■Does restarting completely flush the RAM, or is power still supplied such that only a hibernate or shutdown would flush it? (I ask b/c perhaps this is why it gets progressively faster until I kill power.)
■Could the answer to the question above relate to why I saw errors in memtest86+ immediately after I rebooted, but never after a shutdown (which is obviously required for removing RAM...ie., memory is flushed, so my time horizon starts over)?
■Can I determine (from the output) which RAM module is faulty if memtest86+ shows an error? Or do I then have to start testing each individual stick?
■Is there any other stress test I can use to try to test the RAM? (I'm tired of waiting day's in between crashes to troubleshoot...this is getting very drawn out.)
■What else (what other hardware) could be causing this problem? And how would I test such hardware?
■Would posting any of my numerous minidump files be of any benefit?
■Any other suggestions on how to go about troubleshooting this issue?
■Could Adobe really have anything to do with this? (I've thought about zeroizing my HD, but that would be a huge pain as well, and I have no real evidence to support trying that right now.)
■Anything that you can think of that I didn't ask!
Also, another FYI...I updated my video card drivers (posted Jan 8, 2008), as well as my sound card divers (beta version posted yesterday, Feb 13, 2008). I'll list my setup below.
Any help/suggestions/comments are GREATLY APPRECIATED!!! (And sorry for the long post.)
Thanks,
Chad
Core 2 Duo E6750
4GB (4x1GB) Crucial Ballistix DDR-800 RAM
Gigabyte P35-DS3R v2.0
PowerColor Radeon x1950pro 512MB
Creative X-Fi Fatality Platinum Sound Blaster
Seagate Barracuda 250GB SATA 7200 RPM
PC Power & Cooling Silencer 610 EPS12V EPS12V 610W Continuous
Antec Solo case w/ 3 fans + Zalman CNPS9500AT
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