Random bsod's

M

merc68

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 29, 2004
Messages
153
System consists of an i5 750, Corsair H50, 4gb gskill ram, P55ud3-r mobo, GTX 260, CM 700 modular psu, Windows 7 Home Premium 64Sorry for the length of the post. About a week and a half ago my mchine became very unstable after switching from my onboard audio to my old X-fi card. I started getting random lockups and blue screens that were mostly different errors all the time. I removed the card and ran driver sweeper but the instabiltiy continued and even got worse. It got to the point that I couldn't safely boot to windows without a crash. I rolled back my oc to stock with no effect.

I bit the bullit and decided to reinstall Windows Friday afternoon. Then the real troubling thing happened, blue screen during Windows installation. So I then concluded that I had a hardware issue. I ran memtest on each stick of ram individually for at least eight hours using both ram slots with no errors and ran the WD diagnostics on my hard drive with no error. I started poking around in my case checking for loose cable and whatnot. My psu has the cpu power connector split for use with a four or eight pin connection and half of it seemed to click like it wasn't fully latched in. Hoping that was it I attempeted to reinstall windows with only one stick of ram and the installation went fine. I installed most of my apps and all was well. So since I felt I had found it was the power connector as the problem I put the other stick in and buttoned up the case. All was well until yesterday Started getting random glitches in windows then blue screens started again. It seems to start up after the machine has been in use for a while. And it seems on some boot ups that it hangs at the memory test for an unusually long time. I stripped it back down to one stick lastnight and so far so good.

So can ram be bad even though it passed memtest or could there be an issue with the cpu, board, hd,or psu? I can go to my BB and get a psu or hd but I have no hardware to test the other items. Any suggestions will be appreciated.
 
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Try running both stick of RAM together through Memtest.

Also, set up Windows (if you can) so that the system doesn't automatically reset itself after a crash. The next time you suffer a BSODs, write down the code it gives you. That way, you can search for the specific BSOD in question once you reboot itself.
 
... what tiraides said. Running them both through memtest would be ideal because with two sticks, the MCH would need more power for the other stick. If it fails memtest with 2 sticks, bump the voltage. Which model RAM do you have? What did you set the timings and speed to? AUTO?
 
I will try that tonight. I have the gskill tridents set at auto I believe it was 9 9 9 24 at 1.5v 1333 mhz
 
Update. I went home at lunch to fire up memtest. The machine rebooted after about 10 seconds of memtest with 2 sticks in it. I tried it twice to be sure. Also voltage on memory is 1.58 v on auto
 
Manually set the voltage to 1.5v and try memtest again (don't use AUTO). If it fails, try 1.55v manually; next is 1.6v. If 1.6v fails, do you have the latest BIOS?
 
I would also manually set the timings to see if it's a compatibility issue with the RAM. If you have a known good power supply you may want to try that as well.
 
I updated to the latest bios and tried voltages from 1.5 to 1.65 and timings set manually to 9-9-9-24 which are the settings on the package. Still crashes memtest with 2 sticks in. Totally stable it seems with only 1 stick and it doesn't seem to matter what stick I use. Possibly a power issue?
 
Did you try different slots?

If the RAM works fine in pairs on another system, then it could be a mobo or PSU issue. If you have another PSU, try it (if not, borrow from a friend?).
 
I grabbed a psu on the way home lastnight. No good. I'll try other slots tonight
 
I tried putting ram in the other slots and the machine won't give me a video signal. So I guess at this point I'm leaning toward the board being bad. Any other ideas?
 
I guess the only thing concerning me is the possibility of it being a bad processor because of the memory controller being integrated now.
 
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