BSOD and windows 7 restarts after a few failed attempts

[common man]

i've had my build for the past 4 weeks. worked very well until now. in the morning i started my pc. i went outside for 30 minutes and when i returned i see the first blue screen. i try to restart and after a few failed attempts it does. i keep working and 30 minutes later get the second blue screen. when windows successfully restarts after a few failed attempts: (1) i update ati drivers (2) uninstall norton endpoint. afterwards, the computer works fine for 1.5 hours and then the blue screen shows up again.

i'm confused because my pc was working just fine for the past few weeks. last week temperatures were 85F indoors & 58C max for my CPU and i had no problem until now. temps are even cooler this week. my last windows update was 2 weeks ago. i didn't install anything besides ccleaner & a mozilla add on. i removed both and then had my 3rd blue screen (which looks similar to but is different than the 1st blue screen). how can this happen all of a sudden?

here's some screenshots for info. my system info is in signature. please note that my overclocked cpu has speed step enabled so it goes from 2.1 to 3.2 ghz depending on the need. my guess is i either need to disable the OC or change the RAM. appreciate any feedback. thanks!

i don't know why my images appear as links instead which is inconvenient for readers.

screenshot for cpu info:

screenshots of my mobo menu...

 

[Arainach]

The first thing to try is to completely disable the OC and see if it goes away. After that, the error you're seeing is from a Symantec product, so I'd try uninstalling that and seeing if it goes away.

 

[common man]

i'm new to all this so some of my questions may seem obvious: how do you know the blue screen is from a symantec product?

 

[Tawnos]

i'm new to all this so some of my questions may seem obvious: how do you know the blue screen is from a symantec product?

Because of the driver name triggering the bluescreen.

You could have a bad symantec install, malware, bad ram, or other problems. Start with the program that is named, see if the bluescreen continues. If not, it's the named process, if so, test RAM, then continue down the line.

 

[InvisiBill]

http://aumha.org/a/stop.htm has lots of great info on STOP error codes.

0x000000D1: DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
The system attempted to access pageable memory using a kernel process IRQL that was too high. The most typical cause is a bad device driver (one that uses improper addresses). It can also be caused by caused by faulty or mismatched RAM, or a damaged pagefile.

0x000000A5: ACPI_BIOS_ERROR
The cause of this message is always errors in the ACPI BIOS. Usually, nothing can be done at an operating system level to fix the problem. See the articles linked here for more details.

0x0000000A: IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
Typically due to a bad driver, or faulty or incompatible hardware or software. Use the General Troubleshooting of STOP Messages checklist above. Technically, this error condition means that a kernel-mode process or driver tried to access a memory location to which it did not have permission, or at a kernel Interrupt ReQuest Level (IRQL) that was too high. (A kernel-mode process can access only other processes that have an IRQL lower than, or equal to, its own.)


Corrupted BIOS or hardware failing maybe?

 

[Arainach]

The stop code just means it's a driver problem. The more important line is WpsHelper.sys, which tells you WHICH driver is failing.

 

[InvisiBill]

The stop code just means it's a driver problem. The more important line is WpsHelper.sys, which tells you WHICH driver is failing.

Yes, two of the STOPs are related to drivers, one of which mentions WpsHelper.sys. However, the middle error points to something completely different.

0x000000A5: ACPI_BIOS_ERROR
The cause of this message is always errors in the ACPI BIOS. Usually, nothing can be done at an operating system level to fix the problem. See the articles linked here for more details.

Both of the "driver" errors can also be caused by faulty hardware, and don't necessarily mean a bad driver. They're technically incorrect accesses, which are often caused by drivers, but could be due to bad hardware. If the BIOS is corrupted or other hardware problems are corrupting data (i.e. causing incorrect accesses), you could get these same errors.

If the problems started as soon as Symantec was installed, I'd think it was a problem with that driver. However, several different error messages, starting a month later, and only being a problem intermittently, makes me think it could be something else, like mobo problems. I'm not saying that it's not Symantec, I'm just saying that I don't think the errors indicate that it must be Symantec.



Actually, something in one of those pics just caught my eye. Try turning on ACPI 2.0 Support in the Power menu of the BIOS. http://www.rojakpot.com/showFreeBOG.aspx?lang=0&bogno=381 says that you'll need to reinstall Windows for it to work properly though. According to the BOG changelog, that info was from 2007-2008, so Windows 7 might be a little better about that now.

 

[Tawnos]

The stop code just means it's a driver problem. The more important line is WpsHelper.sys, which tells you WHICH driver is failing.

Not quite. It says the module that was currently being executed at time of fault. When you have numerous bugcheck codes, I tend to focus on hardware issues, rather than software.

 

[common man]

i disabled the overclock and reinstalled norton. it's been 3 hours and the computer is running fine. i'll leave it on overnight to see if it lasts.

surprisingly, i don't notice any loss in performance going from 3.2 ghz clock to 2.4 ghz. the pc just takes a longer time to start up. otherwise my favorite programs like mozilla and ms office run at their usual speed. even a game like cod4 still does 80-120 fps.

if this doesn't hold up then i'll replace the ram.

 

[common man]

boooooo!

this screen showed up shortly after 3 hours of running...

next step is to replace the ram...

 

[Tawnos]

Test the RAM before replacing.

 

[silent-circuit]

I had two machines start having issues like this at practically the same time -- a P35 based Shuttle and my P45 based tower, the Shuttle with 4GB of Patriot DDR2-800 and the tower with 8GB of Corsair DDR2-1066. One stick out of two and one stick out of four. Random lockups, like the OP. Did Memtest86+ 4.0 on one stick at a time, found the offending sticks and started RMA proceedings today.

Memtest first, OP. One stick at a time, to isolate.

 

[common man]

apparently this problem is rampant with crucial ballistix (i did google searches). luckily i had access to another pair of ram sticks that crucial sent me to replace another set of crucial ballistix. i just swapped the ram with crucial's replacement. it's been running since 6:37 eastern time and we'll see how it rolls. i've disabled the overclock too. the sticks of ram that i have now replaced are getting rma'd to crucial.

 

[Tawnos]

apparently this problem is rampant with crucial ballistix (i did google searches). luckily i had access to another pair of ram sticks that crucial sent me to replace another set of crucial ballistix. i just swapped the ram with crucial's replacement. it's been running since 6:37 eastern time and we'll see how it rolls. i've disabled the overclock too. the sticks of ram that i have now replaced are getting rma'd to crucial.

I had the same issue with the ballistix They were all 5 star rating when I bought the chips, and about 6 months later, hundreds of failures.

 

[silent-circuit]

Well, I just had Patriot Extreme and Corsair Dominator sticks fail, so it's certainly not limited to Ballistix, just to those of us with bad luck.

I've heard the Ballistix are notorious, though. OC like banshees, but die at random. Probably even the specifications written on the sticks are heavily over-volting the modules, that's all I can figure.

 

[common man]

no more problems. pc's been running since yesterday without a hiccup. it was the faulty memory!

 

[cluelessnewbie]

Over the last 10 years I would say the average lifetime of a stick of memory in my computer has been about 18 months. There is no other hardware component with a failure rate as high. I also suspect that a good amount of problems blamed on Windows or software are actually caused by bad memory.

 

[YeuEmMaiMai]

Over the last 10 years I would say the average lifetime of a stick of memory in my computer has been about 18 months. There is no other hardware component with a failure rate as high. I also suspect that a good amount of problems blamed on Windows or software are actually caused by bad memory.

lol wut? u must have some crappy luck or your are buying stuff that is poorly made. I have never had a PC die due ram failure and some of those machines are approaching 12 years old....

 

[GreenMonkey]

lol wut? u must have some crappy luck or your are buying stuff that is poorly made. I have never had a PC die due ram failure and some of those machines are approaching 12 years old....

I've only had one bad stick of RAM out of probably 3 dozen over the years, an Ultra PC2700 stick that would log one error in memtest. Was causing corrupted skins and other issues in Guild Wars (bright white boxes where characters should be).

The only thing with a lower failure rate I have is CPUs (having never had one die).

 

[YeuEmMaiMai]

3 power supplies
1 Intel Triton 2 (430H) based board toasted when ps blew out
2 wd hdd failures- one due to a cracked casing and a laptop drive failed due to controller failure
1 ATi Radeon 8500 LE (bad cap)
1 Nforce 2 board (Abit board but Nforce was and still is a peice of crap)

not bad for all of these different computers

Ztation 486 16MB
Home grown 486 16MB
Pentium 90 32MB
Pentium 233MMX 64MB
Celeron 300a 128MB
Pentium III 750 256MB
Pentium III 850 512MB
AMD Athlon 512MB
AMD Athlon64 2500 512 MB
AMD Athlon64 X2 3800 2GB

Machines currently in use
Intel Pentium Dual Core 1.8 2GB 2 years +
Intel Pentium Dual Core 2.3 4GB 2 years
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.33Ghz 4GB 1.5 Years
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.66Ghz 4GB 2 Years
Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 8GB

Dell Vostro 1400 1.8Ghz C2D 4GB
Dell Vostro 1525 1.8Ghz C2D 4GB
Dell Studio 2.8Ghz C2D 4GB
Dell Studio i5 2.4GHz 4GB

MacBook Pro 2.8Ghz 4GB

 

[cluelessnewbie]

lol wut? u must have some crappy luck or your are buying stuff that is poorly made. I have never had a PC die due ram failure and some of those machines are approaching 12 years old....

Memory that has gone bad on me include cheap generics, Crucial Ballistix and high end Corsair memory. I just run on stock, no overclocking or tweaking of timings. Never did my PC "die" on me. Sometimes the symptoms are very subtle, often memory will fail memtest while seeming to work just fine. Other times it would only cause a single application to crash, like Internet Explorer, or cause a crash in the Windows Vista install. Isolated symptoms that I think most people would pass off as software bugs.

 

[Tawnos]

Memory that has gone bad on me include cheap generics, Crucial Ballistix and high end Corsair memory. I just run on stock, no overclocking or tweaking of timings. Never did my PC "die" on me. Sometimes the symptoms are very subtle, often memory will fail memtest while seeming to work just fine. Other times it would only cause a single application to crash, like Internet Explorer, or cause a crash in the Windows Vista install. Isolated symptoms that I think most people would pass off as software bugs.

I've had it happen a lot, that way, as well. I've also worked with thousands of systems, so have had the opportunity to see how common ram failures really are. Certain sticks, such as Ballistix, have an almost guaranteed EOL, based on manufacturing flaws. Others ran their entire life without a hitch. *shrug*