Would factory reset help with blue screen crashes?

[StevenZervos]

So I have been having blue screen crashes for some time now. They come and go but they don't seem to stop. They usually happen completely randomly when I play games(more often) or use Chrome(pages crash all the time).
I tried many stuff with command prompt and safe mode but they don't seem to help.
Would the blue screens stop if I reset my computer? Should I clean the drive too? Any suggestions?

gtx 970, i5-4460S, 500gb hdd, 16GB DDR3 and some old HP motherboard

 

[Guest]

Can you list all of ur components and windows version?

 

[StevenZervos]

Can you list all of ur components and windows version?

Yeah sure. Done

 

[Karadjgne]

Check Windows Event viewer. It'll list the critical errors that are causing the bluescreens. You may not exactly understand what it's telling you, but you can ask or Google what it means and that'll send you in the right direction.

Maintenence is always important with a pc. Cleaning it both physically and software wise is part of regular maintenance. CCleaner is good for that, left on default settings, it'll clean out the junk files etc. Also I'd recommend (under tools) that you run it's registry cleaner once in 's while and make sure you do any backups first.

Bsod is caused by a variety of things, everything from overheating to software conflicts to driver issues to bad or unstable OC. A reset of windows can't hurt, but may not fix the issue, and might just change the issue as now you have to reinstall a bunch of stuff, just filling up temp files and making that the cause.

Figure out the cause, then fix that, don't just jump to conclusions and hope it's fixed. You only end up frustrated and waste a bunch of time.

 

[Guest]

Sounds like a problem with psu.

You need to get it checked with some vendor as it can be ram or faulty hard drive.

Probably it has something to do with psu.

 

[USAFRet]

Sounds like a problem with psu.

You need to get it checked with some vendor as it can be ram or faulty hard drive.

Probably it has something to do with psu.

Nothing said so far specifically leads to the PSU.
It might be, or it might be literally anything else.

 

[StevenZervos]

Check Windows Event viewer. It'll list the critical errors that are causing the bluescreens. You may not exactly understand what it's telling you, but you can ask or Google what it means and that'll send you in the right direction.

Maintenence is always important with a pc. Cleaning it both physically and software wise is part of regular maintenance. CCleaner is good for that, left on default settings, it'll clean out the junk files etc. Also I'd recommend (under tools) that you run it's registry cleaner once in 's while and make sure you do any backups first.

Bsod is caused by a variety of things, everything from overheating to software conflicts to driver issues to bad or unstable OC. A reset of windows can't hurt, but may not fix the issue, and might just change the issue as now you have to reinstall a bunch of stuff, just filling up temp files and making that the cause.

Figure out the cause, then fix that, don't just jump to conclusions and hope it's fixed. You only end up frustrated and waste a bunch of time.

Okay well I can try the CCleaner. I haven't OC'ed but overheating could be possible since I have a small box with lots of cables and a big gpu(gtx 970) on a micro-ATX. I don't think it is outdated drivers, I checked everything.

 

[StevenZervos]

Sounds like a problem with psu.

You need to get it checked with some vendor as it can be ram or faulty hard drive.

Probably it has something to do with psu.

I have "Corsair VS Series VS550 80Plus" for psu and why would it be a RAM problem?

 

[StevenZervos]

Check Windows Event viewer. It'll list the critical errors that are causing the bluescreens. You may not exactly understand what it's telling you, but you can ask or Google what it means and that'll send you in the right direction.

Maintenence is always important with a pc. Cleaning it both physically and software wise is part of regular maintenance. CCleaner is good for that, left on default settings, it'll clean out the junk files etc. Also I'd recommend (under tools) that you run it's registry cleaner once in 's while and make sure you do any backups first.

Bsod is caused by a variety of things, everything from overheating to software conflicts to driver issues to bad or unstable OC. A reset of windows can't hurt, but may not fix the issue, and might just change the issue as now you have to reinstall a bunch of stuff, just filling up temp files and making that the cause.

Figure out the cause, then fix that, don't just jump to conclusions and hope it's fixed. You only end up frustrated and waste a bunch of time.

I guess I could use a program to watch the cpu temperature before the crashes. Could it be a hard drive problem? It is about 3 years old and almost full.

 

[Karadjgne]

Full hdds can be an issue. Windows has a page file it uses for temporary holding of stuff as it adds all the data up before transfer to gpu or hdd etc. If there's no room to expand the page file as needed, the cpu freaks out and you get a bsod.
Clean out the hdd, using CCleaner will dump all the crud you've got stored up in internet temp files, windows cache temp files etc which can free up a bunch of room.
You can also get rid of hibernation, it uses @75% of your ram size, so if you have 16Gb of ram, it'll free up 12Gb that windows separates automatically from your usage.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/819-hibernate-enable-disable.html
For temp watching I prefer Realtemp for Intel cpu's, it's as accurate as it gets for software and is not intrusive and is easy to use.

 

[StevenZervos]

Full hdds can be an issue. Windows has a page file it uses for temporary holding of stuff as it adds all the data up before transfer to gpu or hdd etc. If there's no room to expand the page file as needed, the cpu freaks out and you get a bsod.
Clean out the hdd, using CCleaner will dump all the crud you've got stored up in internet temp files, windows cache temp files etc which can free up a bunch of room.
You can also get rid of hibernation, it uses @75% of your ram size, so if you have 16Gb of ram, it'll free up 12Gb that windows separates automatically from your usage.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/819-hibernate-enable-disable.html
For temp watching I prefer Realtemp for Intel cpu's, it's as accurate as it gets for software and is not intrusive and is easy to use.

Okay so I fixed some registry stuff with CCleaner and the blue screens stopped, for now at least. I tried to clean some space with it but it only cleaned about 20GB. The pc is full of games, I'm planning to get new hdd.
I watched the cpu temperature and it is 60-65 C while gaming.
However games and web pages keep crashing and one game tells me it detected hardware failure and shows this page: http://www.warframe.com/en/hardwarefail
So now I'm going to boot and test if the RAM is good with a USB ISO. If it is indeed a hardware problem, I guess it could be the hdd or the cpu since they are the oldest and cheapest in my computer. The gpu and ram are very new and I doubt there is a problem. I could also try to open up the pc and clean the dust if it helps.
Upadte: Nevermind it crashed again with a blue screen with a memory management error without opening any games. I have seen this error before but it's not the only one. There are so many that I cant remember all of them.

 

[Karadjgne]

Wow. 20Gb is a huge amount if stuff to get rid of, generally you don't find more than 3-4Gb in either of my pc's, I use CCleaner at least every other week just to get rid of all the internet crud my daughter seems to accumulate.
65°C while gaming is perfectly acceptable for a cpu and stock cooler, and age of cpu is irrelevant, cpus themselves are the single hardest component in any pc to kill. The whole pc will get old and die or get out-dated long before a cpu calls it quits. I have a 20 year old pentium II 350MHz (OC to 400MHz) that still works like brand new.
Hdd possible. It's a couple of spinning disc's, spun by black rubber bands. Yes it's possible for that to get corrupted, or if you picked up any malware, get corrupted, or even a slight bump while it's working. Generally, figure on @5 years healthy life for a hdd, after that is usually when you start to get bad sectors. Easiest way to check is with WD software, smart checks, from a Windows Admin CMD run CHKDSK which will also look for errors.
For ram, use memtest86 and run it overnight, it's by far the best ram checker.

Basically, Warframe is telling you exactly what I said.

You have a 4th generation Intel cpu and motherboard, so the motherboard drivers for Lan and audio are much older code-wise than Windows 10. Since Win10 came out, it has had some few issues with what it considers 'Legacy' drivers, ones not designed to work well with a 64bit OS, since it wasn't around. Win 10,however, is stubborn to a fault and prefers its own drivers over others, resulting in conflicts between the 2,and you get a bsod as a result. It's very common, and nvidia has had many complaints about this, even today there's still issues with some games and even cards like the gtx1060 not working right simply because Win10 is messing things up. So if running hdd, ram tests etc reveals nothing, I'd still recommend you upgrade your bios and motherboard drivers from the HP website, and if they have none, find out who makes that mobo (usually Asus, msi or gigabyte) and see if they have some.

If all of that resolves nothing, when you purchase the new hdd, use that as a brand new installation of windows, and just transfer all your game files from the old hdd, format it, and keep it as a spare for long term backups etc that almost never get used.

 

[StevenZervos]

Wow. 20Gb is a huge amount if stuff to get rid of, generally you don't find more than 3-4Gb in either of my pc's, I use CCleaner at least every other week just to get rid of all the internet crud my daughter seems to accumulate.
65°C while gaming is perfectly acceptable for a cpu and stock cooler, and age of cpu is irrelevant, cpus themselves are the single hardest component in any pc to kill. The whole pc will get old and die or get out-dated long before a cpu calls it quits. I have a 20 year old pentium II 350MHz (OC to 400MHz) that still works like brand new.
Hdd possible. It's a couple of spinning disc's, spun by black rubber bands. Yes it's possible for that to get corrupted, or if you picked up any malware, get corrupted, or even a slight bump while it's working. Generally, figure on @5 years healthy life for a hdd, after that is usually when you start to get bad sectors. Easiest way to check is with WD software, smart checks, from a Windows Admin CMD run CHKDSK which will also look for errors.
For ram, use memtest86 and run it overnight, it's by far the best ram checker.

Basically, Warframe is telling you exactly what I said.

You have a 4th generation Intel cpu and motherboard, so the motherboard drivers for Lan and audio are much older code-wise than Windows 10. Since Win10 came out, it has had some few issues with what it considers 'Legacy' drivers, ones not designed to work well with a 64bit OS, since it wasn't around. Win 10,however, is stubborn to a fault and prefers its own drivers over others, resulting in conflicts between the 2,and you get a bsod as a result. It's very common, and nvidia has had many complaints about this, even today there's still issues with some games and even cards like the gtx1060 not working right simply because Win10 is messing things up. So if running hdd, ram tests etc reveals nothing, I'd still recommend you upgrade your bios and motherboard drivers from the HP website, and if they have none, find out who makes that mobo (usually Asus, msi or gigabyte) and see if they have some.

If all of that resolves nothing, when you purchase the new hdd, use that as a brand new installation of windows, and just transfer all your game files from the old hdd, format it, and keep it as a spare for long term backups etc that almost never get used.

First of all thank you for your help and time. The memtest86 is almost over after 3 hours and it has found 680k errors. Does that mean there is something wrong with my RAM?
Originally my pc had windows 8 and then I changed to 10 and replaced the RAM, GPU and PSU. So would it be better if I go back to Windows 8?
About the HDD, I tried sfc /scannow which stopped halfway and said "Windows Resource Protection could not perform the requested operation" and then I tried it in Safe Mode and it did the same. I also tried the CHKDSK twice and it got stuck at 22% for quite some time, both times, and then without saying anything and it just restarted my pc. After that I posted this hoping for help.
I can try looking for motherboard drivers although I think I did that in the past and didn't find anything
I remember I did a reset before to empty some space and then audio devices didn't work and I changed some drivers and everything was fine. I did this: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/insider/forum/insider_wintp-insider_devices/idt-high-definition-audio-codec-not-working-on/570a5038-e48e-43f3-af75-95da61447c87?auth=1
I am gonna change cpu and get the i5-8400 with 1151 socket mobo. Im also gonna change the hdd and ram since ddr3 won't fit in the new mobo. In other words I'm just gonna keep the PSU(Corsair 550W 80 Plus which I hope will be enough), GPU and maybe the box. So hopefully I won't have problems after that. But it might take some weeks untill I get all of them.
In you opinion is it a hardware problem or not?

 

[Guest]

Hi, As you have large number of errors in memtest 86.run the test with only one RAM stick installed (test each RAM). See if there's a specific module that gives the errors.

If in the same slot one stick runs OK and the other gives errors, then it's a RAM issue.

You can try clearing the CMOS. It looks like a faulty RAM stick.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/328710-30-memtest86-large-number-errors

Thank you,
Ishaan

 

[StevenZervos]

Hi, As you have large number of errors in memtest 86.run the test with only one RAM stick installed (test each RAM). See if there's a specific module that gives the errors.

If in the same slot one stick runs OK and the other gives errors, then it's a RAM issue.

You can try clearing the CMOS. It looks like a faulty RAM stick.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/328710-30-memtest86-large-number-errors

Thank you,
Ishaan

Thanks man that helps a lot. I will definitely try it.

 

[Karadjgne]

I'd not go back to win 8. With you registered at Microsoft now with a win10 key, instead of factory reset, I'd dl a fresh copy of your win10 and save it to a 16Gb USB stick. Install that onto the new hdd as a clean install, without all the win.old files from win8 that take up a huge amount of space. Just make sure the old hdd is not plugged in or the new installation will tap into both hdds and plant files everywhere, you want all the files on the new hdd.

 

[StevenZervos]

I'd not go back to win 8. With you registered at Microsoft now with a win10 key, instead of factory reset, I'd dl a fresh copy of your win10 and save it to a 16Gb USB stick. Install that onto the new hdd as a clean install, without all the win.old files from win8 that take up a huge amount of space. Just make sure the old hdd is not plugged in or the new installation will tap into both hdds and plant files everywhere, you want all the files on the new hdd.

Alright thanks man. I did a clean install with USB in my pc before so I think I know how to do it. I didn't use any keys however. Apart from the new 2TB HDD, I was thinking I could get an SSD to run windows faster. If so how many GB of SSD would I need for the windows?

 

[Karadjgne]

Common recommendations are 250/256 Gb for OS drive, minimum is 120Gb, but those have a tendency to fill up fast once you add the OS important stuff like Office, Adobe, Photoshop, Antivirus etc.

 

[StevenZervos]

Common recommendations are 250/256 Gb for OS drive, minimum is 120Gb, but those have a tendency to fill up fast once you add the OS important stuff like Office, Adobe, Photoshop, Antivirus etc.

250GB it is then. Any brand recommendations? Also do you happen to know about HDD's ?
I'm probably going to get WD Gold or Caviar Black both 2TB at 125 Euros or Seagate Barracuda 2TB at 66 Euros.
I read that the Seagates often break and that the WD blacks are the best choice for gaming. What is your opinion on Seagate?

Update: Forget what I said, I didn't do my research right. Turns out Seagate hard drives are as reliable as cheesecloth condoms and WD is really not worth the price. I guess my best choice is the Toshiba P300 3TB. I know you might say I don't need it but it is just 10 euros over the 2TB version.

 

[Karadjgne]

Some Seagate hdds seem to have had issues. That's true. Some WDs as well. I've had them all over the 30 odd years of pc tinkering, owning, building and there's only one salient fact out of that. All hdds will fail given time and usage. I've had Seagates that lasted more than 5 years, Toshiba that only lasted 3, Hitachi that bounced down a flight of concrete stairs and were still perfect only to die abruptly a year or so later. None of them are infallible. Currently I have 2 WDs, a Black and Blue, both have been trouble free for over 4 years. All 3 of my kids Toshiba drives are toast, having bad sectors already and only saw 2-3 years of usage. What's funny is WD owns Hitachi HDDs since 2012.

The WD Black's are better built than the Blues, have a better warranty, so should be considered more bullet proof than the Blue, but neither is bad at gaming. Worth the extra cost? Mebe, but only if you need the warranty, otherwise the Blue is cheap enough to replace. The new Toshiba seem to be holding well, I've not heard anything negative yet, but I don't read newegg/Amazon reviews for obvious reasons.

Everyone has an opinion about hdd brands, some positive, some negative, to me they are HDDs, they all fail sooner or later, so I fail to see any point in the argument. If the Toshiba is only €10 more for a full TB size upgrade, jump on it, it won't hurt to have the space, even if never used.

 

[StevenZervos]

Some Seagate hdds seem to have had issues. That's true. Some WDs as well. I've had them all over the 30 odd years of pc tinkering, owning, building and there's only one salient fact out of that. All hdds will fail given time and usage. I've had Seagates that lasted more than 5 years, Toshiba that only lasted 3, Hitachi that bounced down a flight of concrete stairs and were still perfect only to die abruptly a year or so later. None of them are infallible. Currently I have 2 WDs, a Black and Blue, both have been trouble free for over 4 years. All 3 of my kids Toshiba drives are toast, having bad sectors already and only saw 2-3 years of usage. What's funny is WD owns Hitachi HDDs since 2012.

The WD Black's are better built than the Blues, have a better warranty, so should be considered more bullet proof than the Blue, but neither is bad at gaming. Worth the extra cost? Mebe, but only if you need the warranty, otherwise the Blue is cheap enough to replace. The new Toshiba seem to be holding well, I've not heard anything negative yet, but I don't read newegg/Amazon reviews for obvious reasons.

Everyone has an opinion about hdd brands, some positive, some negative, to me they are HDDs, they all fail sooner or later, so I fail to see any point in the argument. If the Toshiba is only €10 more for a full TB size upgrade, jump on it, it won't hurt to have the space, even if never used.

Thanks a lot for your help. Have a nice day.

 

[Karadjgne]

No worries, have a happier new year 😀