Blue Screens, restarts, what?

Mad Jazz

Hey all,

I've been having some issues with my desktop that I can't seem to figure out, so I want to ask the audience. I built my computer 7 or 8 months ago and everything has been fine. System is very stable with no overclocking, no hardware issues that I've noticed. Then, a couple of days ago, I wake up to find that my machine has rebooted itself in the night. Since then, after approximately one hour of uptime, programs will start to hang as though they're eating up all the clock time, except everything else seems to function. More and more programs lock up, culminating with windows itself. Sometimes I get a dialogue box saying windows has stopped responding, sometimes I get a bluescreen (that disappears before I can write down the error code), but nothing consistent in either direction. Chkdisk found no issues with my HD, virus scans on all my drives have come up empty, temp logs of my cpu cores don't show any increase before the crash (last one was ~36C across all 4). I also reinstalled windows since the hardware issues seemed to be negative, but the problem persists. The only common factor in the crashes seems to be that they occur after an hour, and that when my comp reboots itself after a crash, the boot hangs after the BIOS loads (instead of going to the starting windows screen, it's a black screen with a flashing DOS cursor in the upper left corner). If I power down completely and restart, everything starts up just fine.

Spec highlights:
ASRock z68 gen3 board
i5 2500k
128gb SSD I use as my boot drive and for commonly used programs, 2 externals for data
geforce 570gtx
8gb ram

Help me, H/A, you're my only hope!

Tofystedeth

In the Computer Managment console you can check the System logs in Event Viewer to get the STOP codes and parameters from your BSODs. You can try checking those, or downloading the debugging tools and seeing if you can find a faulty driver, but it looks like with the part about locking up at the BIOS it's something deeper. I'd try maybe burning a UBCD or something and running MemTest86+ or some of the CPU tests to see if there's something going on there. If you're not seeing heat issues that's the next best bet.

Essee

I know you said chkdisk didn't find any issues, but I would personally try unplugging and replugging your boot drive/disc drive anyway. Because this is the same behavior I've seen before that was fixed by unplugging and replugging the primary hard drive (programs freezing up all of a sudden while Windows appears to still run, getting through the BIOS but no further, etc.). With the disc drive, you could try starting your machine without it connected at all, because I once had trouble with Windows telling me it couldn't load when the DVD drive on a machine died and was still connected, even though it wasn't at the top of the boot order or anything (so not exactly the same behavior you're seeing, but computer failures aren't consistent anyway).

temps

check that everything is plugged in properly. I have almost the exact same setup and started getting bsod while playing games, they started becoming more frequent.. Open the computer and one of power connections on my vid card was not in all the way and loose. Apparently it was in enough to have the computer run fine most of the time but loose enough that vibrations would randomly cause a bsod.

Next I would check the ram.. good luck

Mad Jazz

Additional wrinkles!

I have now opened up the case and rechecked all the connections, as well as reseated the ram and graphics card. MemTest86+ finds no issue with my ram, and the HD utilities on UBCD have no issue with my boot drive. It seems like there's an issue with this version of UBCD when it comes to cpu checks (at least that's what I could glean from their forums), so cpu check is inconclusive. However, my shit no longer boots at all. Every time I try to start the machine, I get the bios screen, the processor beep, and then a black screen with a DOS style cursor. I'm stumped, gents. All I can think of is that my processor or HD are somehow fucking up, but I'm at a loss as to how exactly that's generating the constellation of symptoms I see.

TychoCelchuuu

That's some pretty bizarre stuff. If I had to guess I'd say maybe the HD was messing up, and at least you can check that without too much grief; just use one of your storage drives as an OS drive to see if the symptoms disappear.

TIFunkalicious

this sounds like it could be a motherboard issue to me, which are labyrinthine and mysterious. a bad connection or a power issue maybe. if you have another working desktop i would try trading out your hard drive to see if it functions in a different machine. If it does, you might have to replace your board

Mad Jazz

Tragically, I do not. Is there any way to test that short of actually replacing the thing and hoping for the best? I've run a couple of different HD diagnostics now that have all come up fine, so I would be surprised if that ended up being the issue (diagnostics not being infallible notwithstanding)

Great Scott

We need to isolate the problem. For one example, try starting the PC with the hard drive disconnected. Of course it won't boot, but the BIOS and POST should still be fine. That would prove that the problem has either something to do with the hard drive (assuming the POST goes well) or nothing to do with it (you get hangs before the PC even attempts to load Windows).

Stopping after an hour is typically either Heat or Power. Since you know there isn't a Heat problem, and since the problem has been progressive, my best guess from what's in the thread so far is a slowly-failing power supply.

There are a few ways to check this. If you don't have a PSU tester, the simplest way is to disconnect everything (Video card, if you have a built-in one to use) and definitely any optical or hard drives. See if that helps things get started. If that helps, try connecting just the hard drive and starting Windows.

Another good way to isolate Windows / the hard drive from being a problem is to boot your PC off of a Linux CD (I use Mint KDE, but there are tons of options).

Tofystedeth

Most of those harddrive tests are more to test the integrity of the disks,data, and spindles themselves. If you have something weird like a bad controller on it, they won't catch that. I had a CDR drive once that caused all sorts of bizarre freezes and lockups, which I couldn't trace until it got so bad that it was randomly ejecting the tray and failing hard enough for Windows to yell at me about unplugging IDE cables while the PC is powered on.

Mad Jazz

So I just unplugged my external drives and my computer booted up like a champ. It seems as though I've found a potential culprit in an unlikely place, leading me to believe that computers are just magic boxes powered by capricious spirits.

TIFunkalicious

that's just what the spirits want you to believe