Blue Screen of Death Crashing - Please Help with Troubleshooting

[Vinho]

Hey MMOC Computer forum,
Before you read this post I want to sincerely thank you for taking some time to help me, I'm sincerely appreciative!

It's been a couple of years since I've browsed these forums asking for suggestions for my gaming build, I was successful and am happy to say I've gotten this far on my rig, she's been treating me nice these past couple years!

Let me give you some background on my system, specs, and what I've tried so far to isolate the problem:

i5-750 - 2.67 ghz @ ~3.8 ghz
4 gb gskill DDR 3 1600 mhz ram
Asus P7P55D-E Mobo
ATI HD 5770
Corsair TX 650w PSU
WD Caviar Black 7200 rpm 640 gb HDD
Samsung 7200 rpm 250 gb HDD (from my old system)

Lately while playing League of Legends and the Smite Beta, at random / inconsistent times, for either game -- My system freezes briefly, crashes and I'm shown the BSOD. It only flashes for a few seconds without being able to really read a full line of anything.

When I went to the events viewer there is a critical event shown that has the event ID 41 - Source "Kernel-Power"

While talking with my friend, He believed it to be either my RAM or my PSU. I ran a program called "memtest" to 100% with no errors found.
I then borrowed my dad's multimeter to test my PSU, removed it from my PC and read very consistent (and acceptable) voltages for my 24 pin mobo connector, and all additional peripheral connectors as well.

When updating my friend with my troubleshooting progress, he then said it could be due to any piece of hardware on my machine, from my HDDs giving out, to my GPU or my Mobo...

He suggested I fresh install windows, which I did, and I am still getting the crash. (I installed windows on BOTH HDD's, experienced the BSOD crash on both)

My PC crashed on my older 250 GB HDD while I was trying to download the League of Legends Game, not even while playing or having the system under any real load / stress.

So as far as I know I've ruled out my: PSU/ RAM/ HDD's -- I have no idea how to check if I've fried my MOBO or GPU or what could be the cause of this.

I feel lost =\ Where do I go from here?



Thank you for your time

[Asrialol]

If you go to Start > Control Panel > System and the advanced tab. Find "Startup and Recovery" or something and under "System Failure", un-check "Automatically restart".
Then you will be able to see the bluescreen.

Or just click start, and search "advanced system" or something.




Have you tried using only one ram chip, and see if the problem is still there?

[Vinho]

Awesome, I'll post what I see once I see the crash again

[bargiddle]

assuming youre on windows 7, do this.

right click on my computer, click propreties. on the left, click advanced system settings. new box will pop up, go to advanced tab, near the bottom under startup and recovery, click settings. in that new window, uncheck Automatically restart. the next time you get a BSOD, write down the two circled things here



will help people help you figure out whats wrong

[chazus]

Also, get a program called 'hwmonitor' and find out what your CPU and GPU temps are at

[bargiddle]

might also want to try setting your cpu to stock clock/voltages, see if it might be that which is acting up

[Sick]

Download and install Bluescreenview it will basically analyze the crash dumps and try to help you pinpoint the problem easier http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/blue_screen_view.html

[Cherrysoul]

Whocrashed is free software you can download (small file) that will; tell you exactly what is in your dump files(BSOD) with a simple quick click of a button (even old logs)

[Vinho]

Thank you all for the feedback; it did crash again and this is my iphone pic of the BSOD--



I dl'd that 'WhoCrashed" free software as well and this is what I see:


On Wed 7/18/2012 2:07:26 AM GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\Windows\Minidump\071712-19484-01.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: hal.dll (hal+0x12903)
Bugcheck code: 0x124 (0x0, 0xFFFFFA8004DF4028, 0xF2000000, 0x10005)
Error: WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR
file path: C:\Windows\system32\hal.dll
product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
company: Microsoft Corporation
description: Hardware Abstraction Layer DLL
Bug check description: This bug check indicates that a fatal hardware error has occurred. This bug check uses the error data that is provided by the Windows Hardware Error Architecture (WHEA).
This is likely to be caused by a hardware problem problem. This problem might be caused by a thermal issue.
The crash took place in a standard Microsoft module. Your system configuration may be incorrect. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver on your system which cannot be identified at this time.


On Wed 7/18/2012 2:07:26 AM GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\Windows\memory.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: hal.dll (hal!HalBugCheckSystem+0x1E3)
Bugcheck code: 0x124 (0x0, 0xFFFFFA8004DF4028, 0xF2000000, 0x10005)
Error: WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR
file path: C:\Windows\system32\hal.dll
product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
company: Microsoft Corporation
description: Hardware Abstraction Layer DLL
Bug check description: This bug check indicates that a fatal hardware error has occurred. This bug check uses the error data that is provided by the Windows Hardware Error Architecture (WHEA).
This is likely to be caused by a hardware problem problem. This problem might be caused by a thermal issue.
The crash took place in a standard Microsoft module. Your system configuration may be incorrect. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver on your system which cannot be identified at this time.


On Tue 7/17/2012 7:07:45 PM GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\Windows\Minidump\071712-21590-01.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: ntoskrnl.exe (nt+0x70040)
Bugcheck code: 0xA (0x80, 0x2, 0x0, 0xFFFFF80002A83342)
Error: IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
file path: C:\Windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
company: Microsoft Corporation
description: NT Kernel & System
Bug check description: This indicates that Microsoft Windows or a kernel-mode driver accessed paged memory at DISPATCH_LEVEL or above.
This appears to be a typical software driver bug and is not likely to be caused by a hardware problem.
The crash took place in the Windows kernel. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver which cannot be identified at this time.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Conclusion
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

3 crash dumps have been found and analyzed. No offending third party drivers have been found. Consider configuring your system to produce a full memory dump for better analysis.

---------- Post added 2012-07-17 at 10:28 PM ----------

I've reset my BIOS settings to factory default and my clock speeds are now @ factory 2.67 ghz again to see if that does anything

[bargiddle]

from my google skills, 0x124 looks like a general hardware error. try setting your cpu to stock clock/voltages, see if it crashes again, and if it does, start testing other things, like ram and your GPU if you can

[Vinho]

Also, get a program called 'hwmonitor' and find out what your CPU and GPU temps are at

I have core temp and I can see the temp of my GPU through my catalyst control centre software ---

my CPU under load (in game, and clocked at 3.8) never went above 55 degrees celsius, and my hd 5770 never went higher than 70 celsius.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

Do the BSODs continue to occur if you load the default BIOS settings (i.e. undo the overclock, save the overclock profile beforehand)?

[Sick]

run hdtune on both hd's and see if it reports any errors i recently had a problem with a drive goin bad that was causing bluescreens

[Shiromar]

Sounds like an unstable overclock. Have you tested your PC in prime to see if it's stable? I know "124" means not enough voltage for Sandy Bridge CPUs.

[Vinho]

I don't want to jump to any early conclusions or wrap this thread up juuuuust quite yet -- It's been a little over 2 hours of no BSOD after setting my BIOS and overclocking back to factory defaults.

If overclocking IS/WAS the reason for all of these BSODs, I don't know how I went two years at a stable 3.8ghz overclock with very cool temps-- to all of a sudden get BSOD spammed.

Sounds like an unstable overclock. Have you tested your PC in prime to see if it's stable? I know "124" means not enough voltage for Sandy Bridge CPUs.

would it still be worth running prime if I'm no longer OC'd?

[Sick]

I don't want to jump to any early conclusions or wrap this thread up juuuuust quite yet -- It's been a little over 2 hours of no BSOD after setting my BIOS and overclocking back to factory defaults.

If overclocking IS/WAS the reason for all of these BSODs, I don't know how I went two years at a stable 3.8ghz overclock with very cool temps-- to all of a sudden get BSOD spammed.



would it still be worth running prime if I'm no longer OC'd?

parts do degrade over time so its possible one of the parts is starting to go out or cant handle those settings anymore

[Vinho]

Been running a blended stress test with prime95 for the past hour, PSU / Ram / CPU have been doing well under load, cpu temps are maxing at 55^c
I think I'm going to do a nice clean up of everything, I know my GPU could be taken apart for a little TLC, maybe re-paste my CPU and GPU while I'm at it.

I appreciate all of the help, something so simple as undoing my overclock seems was the fix, I'll be sure to dig this thread up should anything further arise; thank you again for everyone's input and support <3

[Shiromar]

I don't want to jump to any early conclusions or wrap this thread up juuuuust quite yet -- It's been a little over 2 hours of no BSOD after setting my BIOS and overclocking back to factory defaults.

If overclocking IS/WAS the reason for all of these BSODs, I don't know how I went two years at a stable 3.8ghz overclock with very cool temps-- to all of a sudden get BSOD spammed.



would it still be worth running prime if I'm no longer OC'd?

If you really want to solve the problem, then yes priming would be a viable option at this point. If it fully passed, then proceed to renewing your overclock if you wish. If you want to fully get to the bottom of the cause, head over to OCN and create a thread over there. The guys over there will be able to help you a lot more than over here IMO.

parts do degrade over time so its possible one of the parts is starting to go out or cant handle those settings anymore

This. Chips technically are not designed to be overclocked, so overclocking them will degrade them. Generally you won't notice this too much, however if your overclock is right on the edge of stability, that slight degradation may be noticeable.