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BSOD caused by hardware or software issues?

J

JoeUser

2[H]4U
Joined
Mar 30, 2010
Messages
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So since getting my 7970 I've been having one or two random BSOD every day while using my PC. I seem to be getting a "dxgkrnl.sys" error though this tends to not always be the case. The BSOD go away too quickly for me to really see all the problems (yes I have auto restart turned off but, you know Windows, god forbid it listen all the time!:mad:).

Either way I've run Memtest for 8+ hours with no issues and I've run Intel Burn Test so my RAM and CPU are fine from what I can tell.

All things are pointing to the video card.

MY QUESTION IS THIS. If the problem is the drivers wouldn't reinstalling them fix the problem? I went from the betas (was getting BSOD) to the WHQL drivers (still getting BSOD) HOWEVER my card itself is working fine. No artifacts, no glitches, no nothing. The card is also being very well cooled and never gets above 55C on the core, or 70C on the VRM. RAMsinks are cool to the touch.

SO is it possible that something hardware wise could be wrong with my card DESPITE there being no apparent evidence of this other than the random BSOD?

I'm just lost here and totally screwed as I can't RMA because the card is used, I sold the stock heatsink, and the RAM and VRM heatsinks are epoxied on (using Antec 620 water cooler).

Thanks for the help in advance, guys!
 
My experience with computers that BSOD as a regular occurence with no outstanding known driver issues, is hardware faults. The first computer I built I spent months chasing driver issues and video cards and ram, BSOD after BSOD, crashing when playing dvds, etc, boiled down to a faulty motherboard. As soon as that was replaced all was good. I've had one or two bad videocards, the symptoms were crashing to a grey screen, random lockups during games followed by a bsod. Usually driver issues just boot me out of a game or perform poorly. Sometimes it'd throw a driver error at me which made me think it was a driver/compatibility issue, nope, bad card, died a few weeks later.
 
I would say to browse the windows event logs and see if something jumps out in one of the messages. Since the temps are good, maybe just as a shot in the dark drop the cpu OC down to like 4.2 or something to rule that out as well.
 
Get the memory dump files and read what they said. Are you sure that you PSU is up to the task?
 
OK...the problem is being caused by ntoskrnl.exe. This seems to be the memory management part of Windows (RAM and HDD/SSD).

I just now did a fresh install with the same issue...so it seems that either my RAM or SSD is at fault. I don't know if this manages video RAM, so the GPU isn't exactly out of the question at the current point in time.

I've already run Memtest on my RAM for 7-8 hours the other night without issues so I'm guessing the problem lies with the SSD. Again, don't know if the video RAM is to blame, but I have no way of testing this.
 
Turns out it's my SSD that's causing the problem. Having no issues (which I would have by now) using a HDD. It's a relief to know it isn't my GPU! :D
 
OK...scratch that. Just got another BSOD with the same "ntoskrnl.exe" failure as before...took a lot longer this time though.

So perhaps it ISN'T the SSD? I don't think it's the RAM as it passed at least 8 hours of memtest...so the only thing I can think it is would be the GPU RAM perhaps. I don't know if "ntoskrnl.exe" does anything with the GPU RAM though. I know it's for memory management but I don't know if this deals with video card RAM as well.

Hmmm...perhaps something is wrong with the motherboard or maybe the RAM that Memtest didn't find?
 
I just remembered that a week ago or so I had a bad BIOS update so I ordered a new BIOS chip that came with the latest BIOS.

So I just now inserted my bad BIOS chip, reflashed it back to the OG BIOS I was using before all this started happening. All I can do now is see if maybe the new BIOS was causing issues. As far as I can tell my system is completely back to pre-BSOD specs.

Can't believe I didn't realize this earlier, guess I just assumed that the BIOS wouldn't cause issues...but that's yet to be seen...
 
Just out of curiosity, does the error still occur when everything is left at stock speeds? (CPU, ram, GPU etc)
 
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