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Is this build beginning to fail?

S

Spiffae

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 17, 2003
Messages
159
Hi Hardforum!

I've got a great (if aging) build that this forum helped me build a few years ago and recently it's been starting to act up.

I had a run of BSODs and hard reboots after upgrading to Catalyst 12.6 drivers, so I rolled back to 12.4 hotfix, and that had improved my problems until recently.

In the last three days I've had a series of BSODs - two during flash movies (the screen freezes, shows static, and then gives me a SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION BSOD at 0x0000003b - the error is located in ntoskrnl.exe+7f1c0, and occaisonally dxgmms1.sys+83f1

I would assume this was a driver problem except for a few strange things. First of all beyond the BSODs, I have been getting completely hard reboots. From clicking on a link to an instantly black screen, nothing runing, nothing going on. The BSODs have also happened while listening to music on spotify, which is not very GPU intensive :)

Finally, after hard rebooting a few times the machine has gotten into a power cycle. I hear it clicking on and fans spinning up, but then the screen stays black. After a few seconds it will power down and then try again. It does this three or four times, and then I manually shut it down with the power button and then it boots up normally.

Since this error is happening before the memory is even being accessed, I'm suspicious of the motherboard or PSU - am I right to be concerned? I'm attaching a minidump of the latest BSOD.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/zw4k4g3ji0cfqwr/080812-9968-01.dmp

thanks for your time, hardforum!

W7 Professional x64
Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R LGA 775
Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz
PowerColor AX6850 1GBD5-DH Radeon HD 6850 1GB
128GB Crucial RealSSD
8GB G.Skill DDR2
 
Last edited:
How bout posting some hardware specs as well? What version of windows are you running?
 
Sorry, was just updating my sig - running Windows 7 professional x64. Build should be in the sig.
 
Sounds a lot like the power supply to me - can you post the specs of the PS you are using?

Normally I would be considering the motherboard for bad caps but you have an Ultra Durable so none of the caps should pop. It is still a possibility but I would check the power supply first - if it the same age as your system or older and you have been pushing it to its limits, capacitor aging may have caught up with the PS and that's why it worked before but not now.
 
Hmmm, PSU could be suspect - I thought I had replaced it in '09 but it might still be the Cooler Master Real Power RS-450-ACLY 450W I bought in 2006. I could see that causing hard reboots and power cycling, but could it also be causing BSODs?
 
Spiffae said:
Hmmm, PSU could be suspect - I thought I had replaced it in '09 but it might still be the Cooler Master Real Power RS-450-ACLY 450W I bought in 2006. I could see that causing hard reboots and power cycling, but could it also be causing BSODs?
Click to expand...

If it's not providing the proper voltage to certain devices it certainly could.
 
OK so interesting development - I was just using windows (nothing fancy) and the screen went dark - a second later it popped back up and said "the graphics driver has just stopped working and recovered" about ten seconds after that, another BSOD, still System service exception, and the error was in atikmpag.sys, dxgkrnl.sys and dxgmms1.sys

still think PSU?
 
What year did you buy the motherboard?

Could you please inspect the capacitors on the motherboard to see if any look either bulging or have residue on top?
http://www.google.com/search?q=bad+capacitor

click on images

Other options:
1. Reinstall windows to see if software corruption
2. Reinstall windows on another hard drive to see if ssd problem

Replacing the psu is relatively painless. If the mobo is toast, then you either have to replace it or build a new comp.
 
I'll check the motherboard, and I'm looking into replacing the PSU - the motherboard is from 2009.

I honestly don't think this is windows install corruption, and would only go to reinstalling/changing drives if this problem became very persistent after a PSU switch. All drive checks and windows integrity checks pass easily.
 
So I'm back with an update and a new problem - I got the Cooler Master PSU, which immediately fixed all my problems.

Until today.

I'm exactly back where I started. Random reboots, hard crashes, weird blue screens, and one very alarming time when the computer started power cycling rapidly with fast high pitched beeps from the internal speaker. It's now stable for 5-10 minutes, and then it's anyone's guess.

I'm thinking all new build, because if the PSU is new and the problem is back... I'd guess motherboard. Advice?
 
further update - comp just crashed hard (very rapid looping of the music that was just playing) when i hit the power button, the sound stopped, but the computer stayed on (still frozen) when I held down the power button for 3 secs, the machine finally shut off.

All this is pointing to PSU/motherboard to me, and since I just replaced the PSU I don't think that is the problem.

At least it's black friday. New MB/CPU/GPU/RAM here i come... crap.
 
Spiffae said:
they haven't changed in years - so yeah, they are good. memtest runs fine
Click to expand...

Just to be sure test them if you got some times. Like you said with the black friday deal, this can be the time to get a nice cheap combo to update your rig
 
I noticed a strange thing today. Yesterday the machine hard locked, the final time with static on the screen (although the mouse pointer stayed on top of the static) and I just gave up and held the power button until the machine shut off.

A few hours later I noticed that the numlock light on my keyboard was still on. I thought that was odd, powered up the machine, hit shut down, and let it shut down - numlock light is now off! What is going on with the power in my system! The motherboard routes power I know, so is this just more evidence pointing at the motherboard?
 
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