Experienced serveral bluescreens in the last few days

[Ctwx]

Hey there,

I experienced several bluescreens in the past days. I installed the anniversary update. Before that I also had problems with bluescreens, mostly caused by the nvidia drivers.

My PC specs:

• ASRock 970 Pro3 2.0 mainboard
• Kingston 2x8 gb ram @ 1600 MHz
• AMD FX-8350 cpu 8x4.0 GHz
• Noctua NH-D14 cpu cooler
• Palit GeForce® GTX 750 Ti KalmX (2048MB GDDR5)

I bought the mainboard, ram and the graphics card early this year. I already checked the ram with the integrated memory check tool, so I guess it's fine.

I'm out of ideas. I guess the graphics card is the problem, but I'm really now sure. Do you have any ideas?

Thank you very much!

 

[Ctwx]

I can't edit my previous post, so forgive me for my double post. I just got another bluescreen. This isn't funny anymore.

This time it was a BAD_POOL_HEADER bluescreen. Here is the crashdump.

Regards
Ctwx

 

[Trouble]

Hello and welcome to the forum.
Sorry, I took a look at all four of your dump files and could not find anything that jumped out at me.
Generally when you have BSODs that are inconsistent with what they are blaming at fault it may indicate a hardware issue.
BAD_POOL_HEADER
IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

Normally I would suspect a driver issue, but in looking at your attachments, everything looks up to date and ....
The only third party drivers I see other than your nVidia display driver are associated with....
Virtual Box, which might be a consideration, as I have not used it in years and have no idea about its' compatibility with Windows 10 latest version. Speaking of which I see in the debugger that it is reporting

OSNAME: Windows 10
OSEDITION: Windows 10 WinNt TerminalServer SingleUserTS
OS_LOCALE:
USER_LCID: 0
OSBUILD_TIMESTAMP: 2016-07-15 21:16:17
BUILDDATESTAMP_STR: 160715-1616
BUILDLAB_STR: rs1_release
BUILDOSVER_STR: 10.0.14393.0

I'm not sure if that is an issue with the debugger and how it see the Anniversary Update or if you still have a cumulative update that is needed to bring the version number to 14393.10

I would start by looking at your Kingston RAM.

Download Memtest86+ from this location here. Burn the ISO to a CD and boot the computer from the CD from a cold boot after leaving it off for an hour or more.
Ideally let it run for at least 7 passes / 6-8 hours. If errors appear before that you can stop that particular test. Any time Memtest86+ reports errors, it can be either bad RAM or a bad Mobo slot. Perform the test RAM sticks individually as well as all possible combinations. When you find a good one then test it in all slots. Post back with the results.
See this Guide to using Memtest 86+

Looks like you have two 8 gig sticks occupying
A1 DIMM 0 A1 BANK 0 and A1 DIMM2 A1 BANK2
Confirm with your motherboard manual that this is the correct method to populate your 4 available slots with two modules.

 

[Ctwx]

Hello and welcome to the forum.
Sorry, I took a look at all four of your dump files and could not find anything that jumped out at me.
Generally when you have BSODs that are inconsistent with what they are blaming at fault it may indicate a hardware issue.
BAD_POOL_HEADER
IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

Yes, I am confused too. I first thought it the graphics card's fault, but now? I also suspect a faulty mainboard.
Yesterday a friend gave me his old MSI GeForce 8800 GT. So far no bluescreen.

I'm not sure if that is an issue with the debugger and how it see the Anniversary Update or if you still have a cumulative update that is needed to bring the version number to 14393.10

There are no updates available. Perhaps there is a difference since I'm using the education version?

I would start by looking at your Kingston RAM.

I checked it yesterday with memtest86+. No errors were found. I also checked it with the Windows Memory checking tool.

Looks like you have two 8 gig sticks occupying
A1 DIMM 0 A1 BANK 0 and A1 DIMM2 A1 BANK2
Confirm with your motherboard manual that this is the correct method to populate your 4 available slots with two modules.

I just checked the manual. To work optimally/in dual channel you should use A1 and B1 or A2 and B2. Mine are in A1 and B1.

 

[Trouble]

Yesterday a friend gave me his old MSI GeForce 8800 GT. So far no bluescreen.

Not sure, which nVidia card you were using before you swapped it out, but that 8800 likely will be using an older driver 341.95
Which nVidia card had you been using and which driver had you been using with it. Did you get the latest from nVidia for that one?

Additionally, if you ran 6 or 7 passes of memtest and everything showed OK, no errors.... then that is not likely a trouble spot.
Maybe next, check your hard disk to see if it has any issues since a couple of your dump files suggested memory corruption and page faults.
Use an admin command prompt and the native Check Disk utility to see if it reports any issues.
chkdsk C: /R
AND
IF your hard disk manufacturer has their own such utility you might consider using that also or in place of the Check Disk utility.

 

[Ctwx]

Not sure, which nVidia card you were using before you swapped it out, but that 8800 likely will be using an older driver 341.95
Which nVidia card had you been using and which driver had you been using with it. Did you get the latest from nVidia for that one?

Before I had the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti with the latest driver. Yes, it had a different driver version. The driver version of the GTX 750 was 368.81. Hmm... What now? Should I leave it in the PC or switch it back?

Additionally, if you ran 6 or 7 passes of memtest and everything showed OK, no errors.... then that is not likely a trouble spot.

I ran it once, since I already ran it like 5 times when the bluescreens started 3 or 4 months ago. Should I re-run it tonight?

Maybe next, check your hard disk to see if it has any issues since a couple of your dump files suggested memory corruption and page faults.
Use an admin command prompt and the native Check Disk utility to see if it reports any issues.
chkdsk C: /R
AND
IF your hard disk manufacturer has their own such utility you might consider using that also or in place of the Check Disk utility.

OK, I'll run it. I'll check what Seagate offers. Both hard disks are rather new.

 

[Trouble]

What now? Should I leave it in the PC or switch it back?

Leave it for now. Don't swap it back. It's an excellent means of determining if you have a driver issue or if the card itself has a problem.
Wait and see if it Blue Screens with your buddy's old 8800 or not.
I assume it is using the same PCIe slot on the motherboard?
AND
I assume that you have the latest chipset drivers installed for that MoBo.

 

[Ctwx]

I assume it is using the same PCIe slot on the motherboard?

Yes.

I assume that you have the latest chipset drivers installed for that MoBo.

There are none by ASRock. See here: http://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/970 Pro3 R2.0/index.de.asp?cat=Download&os=Win1064
The "all in one" driver isn't a driver for the mainboard, it's a graphics card driver, which oviously won't work. So.. yeah, there are none from ASRock.

by the way: I was told that the ASRock boards aren't that great and I should consider getting a different brand. They tend to cause problems.

 

[Trouble]

I was told that the ASRock boards aren't that great and I should consider getting a different brand. They tend to cause problems.

IDK.... I still have an older ASRock board running in my wife's computer upstairs (Windows 10 14393.10) solid as a "rock" excuse the pun.
I'm pretty sure they are an off-shoot of ASUS and just like any other top tier board manufacturer, you can get a bad one now and then. Personally, I've gone to Gigabyte boards with my last two builds but I'm pretty sure they aren't any better or worse than Intel, ASUS, ASRock, MSI, etc., their top boards are generally all pretty good and you get what you pay for.

There are none by ASRock

OK.... no big deal I guess. I was able to check your BIOS version and saw that it was the most recent already. Just wasn't able to check your chipset driver.

 

[Ctwx]

IDK.... I still have an older ASRock board running in my wife's computer upstairs (Windows 10 14393.10) solid as a "rock" excuse the pun.
I'm pretty sure they are an off-shoot of ASUS and just like any other top tier board manufacturer, you can get a bad one now and then. Personally, I've gone to Gigabyte boards with my last two builds but I'm pretty sure they aren't any better or worse than Intel, ASUS, ASRock, MSI, etc., their top boards are generally all pretty good and you get what you pay for.

But mine isn't exactly the top tier. I bought it because it was affordable for me -- as a student. But I'm not so sure if it was a good choice.

OK.... no big deal I guess. I was able to check your BIOS version and saw that it was the most recent already. Just wasn't able to check your chipset driver.

OK. Yes, I updated it. I also asked in the Microsoft Answers forums. They told me there was an update. But it sadly didn't help.

 

[Trouble]

According to the spec sheet for the MoBo, it has a
Northbridge: AMD 970
Southbridge: AMD SB950
Perhaps going directly to AMD http://support.amd.com/en-us/download and manually drilling down to see what they have to offer for a 9 series chipset driver for your version of Windows 10 32 or 64 bit.
Might be worth a look at the 46 Meg file.
I'm not particularly fond of the way AMD goes about installing drivers anymore, they seem to want to install the Crimson Software like they used to do with their Catalyst Suite.
IDK.... up to you I guess.

 

[Ctwx]

I'll try that out. Thank you.

Since Windows 10 many many drivers got installed manually. I experienced this on my notebook, where I had to install many drivers for Windows 8, but Windows 10 it made this automatically. I'm not sure if this would work better if I had an AMD graphics card.

Edit: Their manual download doesn't work... It causes a JavaScript error: "Uncaught ReferenceError: cfPageName is not defined" what a joke...

 

[Trouble]

Must be something on your end.
I just downloaded the file just to extract the .exe to see what was in it.
It downloaded fine here.

 

[Ctwx]

Now it works... What kind of sorcery is this? Thank you.

 

[Ctwx]

I had the 8800 GT graphics card in my computer so far. No crashes. Today I put my GTX 750 Ti back in. I started 3DMark 11 benchmark and ran it. After that I started Heaven Benchmark multiple times. No bluescreens... If the graphics card is the cause this should've caused a bluescreen, shouldn't it?

I tried to start the same programs I usually have opened, but no problems. What now? I already contected the vendor of the graphics card that I might want to exchange it because it might cause bluescreens.

Thank you.

 

[Trouble]

IDK....
You have to give it time. How frequently were the Blue Screens occurring before.
Has the driver updated? Are you using the same driver that your were using before?
Perhaps the card just needed to be removed and reseated firmly, but..... IF there is something physically wrong with the card it may take a while for it to show up or a confluence of events to get the glitch to manifest.

 

[Ctwx]

Mhm... OK, then I'll just wait.

Yes, I reinstalled the latest driver version I had used before. The bluescreens occurred irregularly. I had 3 in 2 days and I had days without any. I hate not to know what's going on.

Thank you for your patience and help. I'll try it for a week. If it crashes I'll try the 8800 GT for another week.

 

[Trouble]

Hang in there.
These things can be a giant pain to figure out.
Was there any particular activity that produced them in the past or did you have them occur when the system was idle or at least seemed idle to you.

 

[Ctwx]

No. I was programming using PhpStorm (Java based IDE), Firefox, Thunderbird and like 6 messengers where running. The app "Unstream" was running in the background playing a Twitch livestream. That's when it happened most of the time.

edit: My system just crashed! This time it was a kernel security check failure. I added the crashdump... Should I switch graphics cards again? According to BlueScreenView the ntoskrnl was the cause.

 

[ram1220]

Have you checked out your PSU? Maybe the new graphics card is taxing the power supply at times and causing the problems? It's one thing I haven't seen mentioned. I would also check the HDD with the test supplied by the manufacturer of your drive. I have seen those errors when a HDD is failing. My bet is on a PSU not up to snuff or a failing HDD.