Repeated BSOD's - Hardware problems?

[AlexHaden]

Hi All,

Purchased my 3xs Overclocked bundle a few weeks ago, and have had nothing but poroblems with BSOD's. Finally after weeks of trouble shooting i have RMA'd to Scan, who have done their initial test and have come back with NFF. They are now getting their system builders to stress test the system.

Have posted in their forum, had lots of views but no one has a thought on the potential cause, so im checking here.

Basically im wondering if the PS( Tagan 580w) or my GTX 260 could be causing these problems? they are the only two parts of the build that are not brand new (although less than a year)?

Read on for the full story.....

Upon installing windows 7 home, i immediately started to get the following BSOD’s

PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA
SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION
IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
One about HAL :-) Dang that 2001 computer!
and;

clock interrupt not received on secondary processor within allocated time limit

The crashes were happening at random, and even not a load, i looked at the CPU Temps and they seemed fine Idle;

43 for CPU and 30 for MB

When stress testing with prime 95, CPU hits around 72 and MB 60.

I took the side off the thing and had good airflow with fan to keep it cool and it still BSOD's and mobo still gets to 60+

Assuming it was the Overclock making things unstable, (or so i thought) I then put it back to the stock settings, and it seemed to be stable for a day or two

I was happy at that point to forgo the O/C for a nice stable PC.

Then the BSOD’s started up again.

That’s when i completed a full re-install of Windows 7 – just in case there had been corruption during the previous BSODs.

Install completed and kept getting random BSOD’s again no one thing seems to trigger them.

Ran Memcheck for a long time, and had around 20 errorsso i reseated the ram, ran memtest again and it came back OK.

Windows still BSOD’s randomly.

The following BSOD’s happened (all random, no specific action seemed to cause)

PFN_LIST_CORRUPT
IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
MEMORY_MANAGEMENT (4 times)
PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA

KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED

All on a fresh windows build

So following SCAN’s code, i went through every driver and updated / removed non essential ones – updated the BIOS (as not bothered about the OC) and checked and re-checked everything, consulted Microsoft experts at windows 7 forums to bug check the .dmp files.

Found 1 or 2 out of date drivers and removed them, re-booted and everything seemed stable for one day.

Then out of the blue (funny eh?) , More of the

PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA

PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA

PSU is a one year old Tagan 580W and the Graphics card is a Nvidia GTX 260. Both work fine when placed in another computer.

Its at this point, after everything i have decided to RMA the bundle as there is something terribly wrong somewhere.

Random BSOD’s are a difficult one. PC Can run fine for hours or a day or two, and you think the BSOD’s are gone. Then they come back with a vengeance!

I have had the .dmp's looked at and they all point to "corrupted memory".

What im wondering is:-

1- Could the PSU or GFX card cause this - even though they work perfectly in another PC?
2- Has memcheck ever failed to find issues?
3- What can i do if scan say they are 100% happy, and when i get it back, i continue to get BSOD's all the time?

Im thinking that the NB by getting to over 60 degs, has gone iffy? Would that cause memory corruption like what im seeing?

Thanks

[TheWizard]

I have had the .dmp's looked at and they all point to "corrupted memory".

What im wondering is:-

1- Could the PSU or GFX card cause this - even though they work perfectly in another PC?
2- Has memcheck ever failed to find issues?
3- What can i do if scan say they are 100% happy, and when i get it back, i continue to get BSOD's all the time?

Im thinking that the NB by getting to over 60 degs, has gone iffy? Would that cause memory corruption like what im seeing?

Thanks

Hi there, I am surprised no one else has replied to your post yet. I had a similar situation with my Intel Core2Duo build last year. Every time I would successfully install windows 7 and get into the desktop, I would get a BSOD. I had a similar crashdump as you and I think it is related to your memory modules. If you have spare RAM moduels you can pretty much eliminate if the memory is causing the BSOD or not. Take out your current modules and replace with any other that you may have and boot windows. If you still get BSODs thereafter it is most likely not your RAM.

Unfortunately, the MS forums aren't really great in trying to find out the cause. I had no help solving my bsods other than just a gut feeling it was the memory. I ran memcheck with the memory modules causing the bsod and they didn't show anything(they were OCZ.. sigh). You could also look at the timings of of the memory by going to your BIOS or lowering the frequency and see if that works. All the best.

[AlexHaden]

I'm guessing it's ram, as I had lots of errors on memtest on first run, but then they vanished.

Unfortunatley, I don't have any spare to check, so I'm at the mercy if scan.