My computer has been having issues for a while, and several times after I thought I'd 'fixed' the issue, the crashes return only little while later. I've made a few threads about these issues in the past, but the problem persists. Time to knuckle down and find the root of this problem.
The problem: My computer is intermittedly freezing or getting the blue screen of death. These crashes have been getting progressively more frequent, to the point where it's difficult to get my computer to run at all.
What I've done about it: For a while I believed it was an overheating problem. Every time the crashes would get too frequent I would remove my heatsink, apply some new thermal compound and then reattach it. This would clear up the crashes for a short while, but they'd return a little while after. At this point I don't think that overheating is the issue (or at least, not the main one). I checked this morning in the brief window my computer was working, and at startup, the CPU was idling at 37 degrees.
The next thing I did was to run memtest86 to see whether or not faulty RAM might be causing the problem. The results were as follows:
SLOT 1: RAM 1 got 1 error in 1 test, RAM 2 got 0 errors in 1 test
SLOT 2: RAM 1 got 1 error in 1 test, RAM 2 got 0 errors in 1 test
SLOT 3: RAM 1 got 0 errors in 1 test, RAM 2 got 0 errors in 1 test
SLOT 4: RAM 1 got 1 error in 1 test, RAM 2 got 0 errors in 1 test
I then ran a test with RAM 1 in SLOT 3 and RAM 2 in SLOT 1, and got 4 errors across 2 tests. As a result, I removed RAM 1 from the computer hoping that would fix the problem. However, when I started my computer this morning, the crashes were as bad as ever.
I haven't been able to identify what model my power supply is. It's either a AeroCool E85-550, or an E85-700, but I can't tell which.
I don't think that the graphics card is the source of the problem. It's a MSI N560GTX-TI, which is quite new (as are the motherboard and the CPU, although those are a bit older than the GPU).
I'm not particularly experience with the inner workings of my computer, much of what I've said here has been discovered by following the advice of friends. Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated, so I can stop these crashes once and for all.
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I'm beginning to suspect that the power supply seems a likely culprit. It's not so old that it should have degraded by now, BUT I think it might be being damaged by my monitor. My monitor is a piece of crap, and has a faulty power socket. Any power cable that's attached to it is extremely loose, causing the monitor to flicker between brightnesses often, and sometimes completely lose power. When it does lose power, you can often hear crackling electricity.
It's a problem I've been meaning to fix, but haven't gotten around to. Up until now I've only considered it an inconvinience, but is it possible that it might be overloading the power supply?
By the way, here are my system specs, if that's any help:
CPU – AMD Phenom II X4 965
GPU – MSI N560GTX-Ti TwinFrozr
Motherboard – ASUS M4A88TD-M
RAM – 4GB Kingston DDR3 (well 2GB now that I've removed the potentially faulty stick)
OS – Windows 7 64-bit
EDIT: It looks like I'm not the only one having issues with this particular motherboard.
EDITx2: I used a program called 'Blue Screen View' to recover some information about previous blue-screens. I can't tell which information is useful, so here's a screenshot.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc957609.aspx
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-system/irqlnotlessorequal-windows-7/e37150e0-1937-490a-be24-fa22c230b20a
Try booting in Safe Mode and then seeing if you still get the blue screen?
EDIT: Flashed the bios without destroying my motherboard, hopefully that'll fix things.
Wow, who'd have thought that would work! *makes a note for future things to check in regards to a BSOD.*
At this point I am getting really pissed off. :evil: