[For the love of sod.]

Hullo, everyone.  Getting somewhat frequent blue screens.  Far as I can tell they're not triggered by any thing specific, and have occurred when the computer wasn't doing much work.  I've tried things like replacing the power supply (which I thought had solved it as it went months without doing it after that), testing the HDD, turning off the onboard audio, updating some drivers (particularly my GPU), and testing my memory.

The interesting thing about the RAM was that I ran MemTest and it got a lot of errors, so I removed one of the sticks to test them individually, and that test was fine (ran fifteen 1024GB-instances of the programme until they'd all gone over 100%).  Then I switched that stick with the other stick and repeated the test, which was grand.  Then I put the first stick back in the board (but it was now in the second slot) and ran the test again, now on both sticks again, and the test was fine.  I concluded that somehow one of the sticks could've been loose.  Note that when I say first or second slot, I mean slot 2 and slot 4 as per the motherboard manual.

 

One interesting thing I noticed is that this began to happen again (recall, I'd not had any blue screens since replacing the PSU several months ago) with great frequency last month when I installed Microsoft Visual Studio.  Could of course be totally unrelated but that thing took hours to install and seemed to be changing a lot of files. 

 

 

I built this computer at the end of 2014.  Here are the specs:

Operating System
    Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit SP1
CPU
    AMD FX-8320    29 °C
    Vishera 32nm Technology
RAM
    16.0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 577MHz (11-11-11-28)
Motherboard
    ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. M5A97 R2.0 (Socket 942)    34 °C
Graphics
    S22D300 (1920x1080@60Hz)
    2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti (Gigabyte)    31 °C
Storage
    2794GB Seagate ST3000DM001-1CH166 ATA Device (SATA)    35 °C
    746GB ASDK ST3000DM001-1CH166 ATA Device (NULL)
Optical Drives
    ATAPI iHAS124 W ATA Device
Audio
    ASUS Xonar DG Audio Device


Thanks very much.

Attached Files

•  Minidump.zip   707.1KB   365 downloads

Edited by For the love of sod., 04 September 2015 - 09:10 AM.

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   For the love of sod.

 

Took a look at the last five dumps, there appears to more than one cause with only one being obviously connected to another, the two related were audio drivers however one or more attributed to System related crashes could also be associated with audio drivers, memory management was identified as the penultimate crash btw.

 

We need some additional info;

 

Do you play or have installed Metal Gear Solid on this computer.

 

What is the brand and model name or number of the PSU

 

Download then run Speccy (free) and post the resultant url for us, details here,  this will provide us with information about your computer hardware + any software that you have installed that may explain the present issue/s. 

 

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[phillpower2]

   For the love of sod.

 

Took a look at the last five dumps, there appears to more than one cause with only one being obviously connected to another, the two related were audio drivers however one or more attributed to System related crashes could also be associated with audio drivers, memory management was identified as the penultimate crash btw.

 

We need some additional info;

 

Do you play or have installed Metal Gear Solid on this computer.

 

What is the brand and model name or number of the PSU

 

Download then run Speccy (free) and post the resultant url for us, details here,  this will provide us with information about your computer hardware + any software that you have installed that may explain the present issue/s. 

 

Tip

To ensure that you receive notification of any reply to your thread click on the Follow this topic tab, top right corner above your OP.

 

[For the love of sod.]

Thanks very much.

Here's my Speccy snapshot:
http://speccy.pirifo...qkEsnKD34G85d86
 
I do have Metal Gear Solid V on here, both Ground Zeroes and The Phantom Pain.  Ground Zeroes definitely caused no trouble.  Not sure about Phantom Pain, though.  Last three blue screens (I think it's the last three; at least two of them anyway) were during Phantom Pain.  I'm attaching an updated Minidump .zip file, the last two dumps of which are definitely during Phantom Pain and hadn't yet happened when I started this thread.
What's curious is that the blue-screen problem started again a good month before I installed Phantom Pain, and my first two hours playing the game were great.  It didn't crash, I quitted the game, and went to bed.  The following day however, it crashed very soon after starting the game.  Next time I played I got slightly further before crashing.  Time after that I got to play even longer, the longest (after the first two-hour session) being about fifteen minutes.  Then the next time I tried to play, about five minutes in, the game crashed, not the whole PC.  I started it again, and this time I paused it about two minutes in to make a cup of tea.  The game had been on pause for a fair few minutes and me making my cuppa, and suddenly without having been touch for a bit, it blue-screened once again.

Not sure is this relevant, but that initial session was the Prologue section of the game, and all the crashes have been in the following section (Chapter 1, Episode 1).  Either way, there does seem to be a connexion between this game and the crashes, despite the crashes starting a while ago.  They're definitely happening a lot more now.

 

My PSU is a Corsair CMPSU-600CXV2.  That's the one replaced my initial one, which was a 550 or maybe even a 500.  As you can see from the logs, following that replacement I'd no blue screens for about 7 months.

Thanks again.

Attached Files

•  Minidump.zip   778.19KB   354 downloads

[phillpower2]

Hardware and PSU output look ok.

 

First crash today was related to Metal Gear Solid  and specifically PROCESS_NAME:  mgsvtpp.exe I have included an external link so you can see that it is a known problem, the second crash was caused by a problem with portcls.sys which is a Windows audio driver, see here

 

Things of note from Speccy and their relevance in red;

 

Operating System

Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit SP1

Computer type: Desktop

Installation Date: 16.1.11 16:12:07

 

Windows Update

AutoUpdate: Not configured

 

Windows has an awful lot of updates missing, this may not only cause system instability but also put you at risk of malware attack.

 

Power Profile

Active power scheme: Plug High, Battery Save

Hibernation: Enabled Disable this, while troubleshooting at least.

Turn Off Monitor after: (On AC Power): Never

Turn Off Hard Disk after: (On AC Power): 60 min

Suspend after: (On AC Power): Never

Screen saver: Disabled

 

Firewall

Firewall: Enabled

Display Name: COMODO Firewall

 

You do not have an AV software protecting your computer, this again puts you at risk of malware attack and therefore it be may necessary for you to seek the help of the GTG malware experts.

 

TimeZone

TimeZone: GMT -5:00 Hours

Language: English (United States)

Location: United States

Format: English (Ireland)

 

Generated by Piriform Speccy v1.28.709

05 Sep 2015 @ 09:40

 

Are the time and date on your computer correct for where you are.

 

 

Sound Cards

NVIDIA Virtual Audio Device (Wave Extensible) (WDM)

NVIDIA High Definition Audio

ASUS Xonar DG Audio Device

Realtek High Definition Audio

 

You are using an ASUS Xonar device are you not, if yes, create a new restore point and then uninstall the other audio devices/drivers in the Device Manager.

 

You are welcome btw 

[For the love of sod.]

Thanks very much again.  I have all the red now sorted, Windows updates apart.  I'll have to look at that later.

I don't want an AV.  Every one I've ever tried has done more harm than good and been very invasive.  I've never met a malware problem that wasn't rectified easily enough (on my own machines I mean).  I have a firewall and I'm very careful.

I've disabled hibernation many times.  Never seemed to be permanent.  This is the first time I've done it through the command line however, so perhaps this time it'll work.

 

All other audio devices have been uninstalled.  Would that help with the portcls.sys crashes?

Besides simply not playing MGS5, what would I want to do about that?  I'm a little unclear on the sort of crash they were discussing in that thread, but to me it seemed to be a crash that wouldn't allow them even to start the game.  Should I be trying the fix they're talking about?

Thank you again.

[phillpower2]

You are welcome 

 

We now need to see if the system crashes after all of the suggested changes (including updating Windows) have been made.

 

Was your time and date correct when you checked.

 

No AV protection is your choice but I must say that I think it very unwise, if we cant solve the present issues here I will need to post the malware self help guide for you.

 

All other audio devices have been uninstalled.  Would that help with the portcls.sys crashes?

 

 

Driver conflicts can cause various types of problems and uninstalling unnecessary drivers is simply one step in the process of elimination.

 

Besides simply not playing MGS5, what would I want to do about that?  I'm a little unclear on the sort of crash they were discussing in that thread, but to me it seemed to be a crash that wouldn't allow them even to start the game.  Should I be trying the fix they're talking about?

 

 

As said above we need to see if the crashes still occur after the changes, if they do and they still point to MGS 5 the game should be uninstalled to see if the crashes then stop, the link that I provided was just one that I found that shows that the game causes instability, another one here

[For the love of sod.]

Ah now I won't be able to do the updates until maybe to-morrow when I have more time home, but I forgot to ask you about BIOS updates.  I've read it's recommended but when I tried it seemed fairly daunting.

This is the site.  Which of these files do I need?  or would you for any reason not recommend it?
www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/M5A97_R20/HelpDesk_Download/

Cheers.

Edit:  I'm living in New York for the moment so the time and date were correct, yeah.

Edited by For the love of sod., 05 September 2015 - 12:40 PM.

[phillpower2]

No worries I will be around at some point.

 

Flashing the BIOS is always the last resort as if it goes wrong the board is ruined beyond economical / financial repair, much safer to exhaust all other tests first.

 

Time and date details acknowledged 

[For the love of sod.]

Tried to update Windows but it failed, so I'll try again. 
I put Windows at updating but accidentally shut it down in the middle of it before I left (for some reason my 'lock' button in the Start menu becomes a 'shutdown' button during updates, never understood that).  It was configuringabout 60 updates.  When I came back I started the PC and when it was done with all the updating after about twenty minutes, it said it had failed to update.  I'm hoping this is because of the shutdown.  Installing them all again now.

The audio devices keep coming back.  I've uninstalled and disabled them many many times and they just won't stay dead.  Any ideas?

Thanks.

[For the love of sod.]

Sorry to double-post but I really thought I had this problem fixed, and yet I was installing updates an hour ago and it blue-screened again. It was another 'IRQL not less or equal' one but with no dump file for some reason. Maybe owing to the updates in progress? I could swear it had the word 'driver' on the blue screen but I'm not positive. I didn't pay much attention as I'd assumed there'd be a dump file to look at in BlueScreenView. But there isn't.

The audio drivers are still disabled but they're not uninstalled. Uninstalling them seems impossible for some reason, apart from physically removing my motherboard or my GPU. Obviously, I'd rather not do that.

But I'm glad to say I've been playing MGS5 for hours at a time with no problems whatever.  And for this blue screen the game was not running.  Although in fariness I was thinking about playing it.  Could that be the trouble there?

[phillpower2]

If Windows crashed there should be a crash dump available unless crash dumps have somehow become disabled on your computer, how to check below;

 

1. Copy any dmp files from C:\Windows\Minidump onto the desktop.

2. Select all of them, right-click on one, and click on Send To> New Compressed (zipped) Folder.

3. Upload the zip folder using the Attach button, bottom left of the dialogue input box 

 

JAFYI: Unless a person clicks on the Follow this topic tab they will not receive an automatic notification of a response to their reply, that is why you may not always receive a reply.

[For the love of sod.]

Sorry, I've tried that but there's no new file, far as I can tell.  I've followed your instructions anyway and here's the new file, though I expect it to be identical to the previous one.  Thanks again.

 

Edit:  Haha sorry, there's no new Dump File I meant, but none the less here's the new Zip File of all files in the Minidump folder.

Attached Files

•  Minidump.zip   778.19KB   369 downloads

Edited by For the love of sod., 09 September 2015 - 02:24 PM.

[phillpower2]

Windows has not crashed so the shut down may have been caused by overheating or a hardware problem, do the following for us if you will;

 

Post an updated Speccy url and screenshots of Speedfan and HWMonitor (full screen please)

 

Download Speedfan and install it.  Once it's installed, run the program and post here the information it shows.  The information I want you to post is the stuff that is circled in the example picture I have attached.

If you are running on a vista machine, please go to where you installed the program and run the program as administrator.

 

 (this is a screenshot from a vista machine)

 

Download then run HWMonitor and post a screenshot so that we have a comparison to the Speedfan results, details from here

 

To capture and post a screenshot;

 

Click on the ALT key + PRT SCR key..its on the top row..right hand side..now click on start...all programs...accessories...paint....left click in the white area ...press CTRL + V...click on file...click on save...save it to your desktop...name it something related to the screen your capturing... BE SURE TO SAVE IT AS A .JPG ...otherwise it may be to big to upload... then after typing in any response you have... click on browse...desktop...find the screenshot..select it and click on the upload button...then on the lower left...after it says upload successful...click on add reply like you normally would.

 

Screenshot instructions are provided to assist those that may read this topic but are not yet aware of the “how to”.

[For the love of sod.]

Strange, because I was monitoring my CPU and RAM usage at the time of the crash and it was fairly low, but anyway here we are, and curious enough the voltages are missing from Speedfan.

http://speccy.pirifo...hST4duI1GcpgvVT

 

 

Attached Thumbnails

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[For the love of sod.]

Another crash occurred.  This one's given us a dump file, included in the attached .zip file.  It happened as I was using Reaper, my DAW, and this isn't the first time it's happened when using Reaper.  On the other hand, I've done some rather intensive things with Reaper recently with no trouble.

Let me know if I shouldn't double-post even with new information like a dump file.

Cheers.

Attached Files

•  Minidump.zip   811.93KB   374 downloads