wlw

So, ahem... I switched the GPUs from my 6850 to 5670 and reset the BIOS to the bad* settings and everything is running fine. *) C1E [Enabled], HPET [Enabled], NB VID 1.1V. I'll give it some more time of alternating stress and idling to confirm, but still... It doesn't really make sense if my GPU is faulty. There have been indications of low level hardware problem, yes, but besides the occasional strange pattern on the screen, nothing really points to the GPU. Even more, I can stress it all day long and overclock it to it's limits and it's still working fine and then bam crash when idling on 100/150 clocks. The CPU is much more likely to be the cause but unless there is something very complicated going on, does anyone see any particular indication as to how the GPU could cause all those above problems? Deja vu, double fault again on amdppm.sys: X64_0x7f_8_amdppm!C1Halt+2 Disabled C1E yet again, this somehow drives the suspicions away from GPU. I've been looking for this driver related problems and found Andre talking about it on another forum (here) so why not, I'll go all over the RAM again because I'm out of ideas for now. Update: I've been testing the RAM sticks one at a time and both of them rarely give errors. 99% of the errors appear on test #5 - Block move. Youngest bit of the oldest byte only, so it's 0xEFFFFFFF instead of 0xFFFFFFFF. Once there was an error on test #7 - Random pattern, and it was the same - oldest byte was off by 1 - 73e9ab6d when it should be 63e9ab6d. So it's one bit in the oldest byte, which is negated sometimes (7 = 0b0111 instead of 6 = 0b0110 and E = 0b1110 instead of F = 0b1111). There can be numerous passes without errors, but when they do pop up, it's in the first pass and they span the entire stick. This makes me wonder if this is in fact a problem with the memory or perhaps with the memory controller in the CPU?

Tripredacus - no, I haven't. Previously I had to disable USB3 controller because the driver was crashing, now I'm also disabling core unlocking, HPET, C1E and on top of that downclocking and overvolting... so I have to disable more and more for it to work, which is nowhere near how a new PC should behave. The features are there to be used and I have to disable half of them to be able to actually use the computer, this is p***ing me off. Disabling another feature is not the way to go, not unless I know what is causing these problems and how to fix it. That being said, since I have disabled C1E and HPET and given NB a little more juice, everything is working fine. That makes 3 days of solid stability in every scenario that used to crash the PC - idling, streaming videos, gaming etc. However because it has the tendency to go quiet for a couple of days and then crazy again, I'm withholding my optimism and refraining from doing any changes until the above tweaks prove to be the solution, at which point I'll try to narrow it down to just one factor, probably undervolted North Bridge. If it happens to be just another passing peace, I'm going to throw everything at it, including Aero In the meantime I'm still looking into getting another CPU and GPU.

cluberti yes, it's Windows 7 with Aero, there is only one x16 slot on this MoBo so I don't have much choice; the board have been swapped for a new one so this pretty much rules out slot corruption. Could you elaborate a little why Aero rules out CPU? Anyway I am getting another GPU and CPU for testing, finding an AM3 CPU proves to be much harder, I should have another GPU soon. dencorso I don't have those keys at all, will setting them to 0s and then deleting (if it doesn't help) return them to their default values?

I have Avira as a resident scanner and MBAM, CureIt and OTL nearby for extra scanning when there's something suspicious. Just scanned the system with MBAM and it didn't find anything. I have once again disabled HPET and C1E in BIOS and bumped the NB voltage a little (from 1.1 to 1.15V), prior to that I've run 2h OCCT Linpack and 3 passes of bootable MemTest86+, it's been running nicely for couple of hours, it even went sleeping for some time and it's still working fine. The NB is sitting there at 65*C, everything else is cold, besides crashing when idle basically rules out overheating as the cause. I'm leaning towards CPU failure but I haven't found another one to test yet. And what about that checkered-distorted screen pattern? First shot is GPU, sure, but what else could cause that? CPU, NB? Interesting thing is that the mouse pointer stays intact, which suggest that the corruption doesn't occur on the whole frame buffer at the GPU level, but rather that that's what the GPU already receives and promptly displays it. Also, when it happens, the sound loops, which again suggests general hardware failure, so, CPU, NB...?

Unfortunately no, I have no other AM3 compatible CPU to test. I was going to buy a full PII x4 955 but during the two weeks of RMA I spent all my money on renovation so no CPU for now. I find it strange that the CPU was working fine for two years in AM2+/DDR2 motherboard but ever since I switched to AM3/DDR3 there have been nothing but problems. It all checks out, it's most likely to crash/freeze/BSOD when doing little or nothing - switching power states (hence my previous ideas with CPU LLC, Spread Spectrum etc.). I doubt if C1E enabled in BIOS is the reason for that as I altered that setting on the old mobo, but I'll check it. I'll try to find another CPU for testing but it's turning out to be much harder than another GPU, obviously... ED: just had another BSOD, this time it was cdd.sys (no dump was saved) which doesn't fit the pattern at all...

Hello, The problems went away for a little while but returned quickly, so I have returned the mainboard and received a new one. And what do you know, same problems on the brand new motherboard. It's BSODing on every occasion it can, mostly when idling or when loaded slightly, for example when my kid was watching cartoons on youtube. Also it sometimes freezes for a minute after the desktop appears (as it used to) and crashes with that same strange pattern on the monitor that I gave a photo of before. Also, it refuses to shut down. It goes up to the "Shutting down" screen and hangs there (the circle doesn't rotate). I attached external probe to the NB heatsink because it's hot on this MoBo (and it was on the RMA'd one), but it's sitting at max 65*C when there's no fan blowing at it, which I'd say is about 10 degrees below a warning level. I'm attaching two fresh minidumps, one of them points to the CPU, so I'm running OCCT right now and as usual, no problems when the machine is loaded, only when it's not... Oh and this time the CPU is untouched, 2 cores on stock speed and stock voltage. Minidump.zip

Interesting news! Because, as I have mentioned earlier, the system was a bit more eager to hang or crash when certain apps were operating, I gave it some more thought. SpeedFan and Trixx, when set to auto fan control, they both operate on short timers performing I/O operations on NB, SB and GPU (PCI-E through NB, of course). When set to fixed speeds however, there was no such symptom (crashes more common). The system would still crash or freeze from time to time, but as crash dump collection attempts were futile, this points to some serious hardware issue. Well then, what do we know about NB. Firstly, HPET counter/comparators are integrated in it. Secondly, it gets quite hot, and as any silicone semiconductor chip, it gets moody when it's hot and becomes less stable, which in turn begs for higher voltage to make it more stable. HPET is also used for streamed content synchronization, which is a clear connection to flash videos crashing the machine. Now let's focus on the CPU. The system would run OCCT for hours with ease, but then crash when an Internet browser was opened and such. It handles constant load okay, crashes when load changes - CPU Load Line Calibration anyone? Lastly, Spread Spectrum shifts frequency to minimize EMI, but this could potentially decrease overall system stability. So based on above thoughts, I made the following changes: - set Spread Spectrum from Auto to Disabled - set CPU Load Line Calibration from Auto to Disabled - disabled HPET - increased NB voltage from default 1.1V up three notches to 1.1375V - re-unlocked CPU to 3 cores (leaving 4th core with it's faulty L1 cache off) - restored CPU overclock to 3.7/3.7/3.5 and 1.42V I have been doing everything that used to crash or freeze the PC. Hosting L4D2 server for 4 people was a guarantee of a failure. Some flash videos, most commonly in Steam's store, like I said before, also automatic fan control... No problems. I'm still cautious, but I have yet to see another BSOD, crash or freeze. Will keep you updated.

ASRock 870 Extreme3, it came with BIOS 1.60 and there was no update since. If this check out, I will notify ASRock tech support, as I have submitted two tickets to them but they couldn't help.

Okay, I have found some info that the motherboard has issues when HPET is enabled, I will test the system with HPET disabled in BIOS.

It happened when I powered the PC on and walked away as I usually do when it boots up. When I returned I was welcomed by that screen. However I gave it a hard reset and it's working normally (well, within it's own "norm", that is...) and it has been working ok for a whole day today, even without the crazy tower fan. So it's like it used to be, couple of days of crashes and then a week of peace.

Beside occasional hangup everything was going rather well, until...

I am supercooling the PC with a meter high tower fan laying on it's side, so far no issues, so it seems to be indeed the north bridge failing, despite what ASRock support said (that they're hot but their fine)

I set the pagefile to 5000MB. Had another freeze, ctrl+alt+del gave STOP F4 after a while, but it got up to "Initializing disk..." and hung there again. Also both the USB Mouse and Keyboard go dark so my guess is that part of the main board stops working, I'm not sure if this makes any sense but it looks like this.

Microsoft says RAM + 1MB, the forum says RAM + 50MB and apparently RAM+100 isn't enough too... Anyway, I set it to 5000 and we'll see. Another find: when the system freezes (where I can move the mouse and click the desktop icons but nothing works) and I don't do ctrl+alt+del forcing it to BSOD, it will stay like that for some time with the HDD LED on, and after a minute or so the screen goes black with just the mouse pointer on it, which I can move. From that point on nothing happens. Only option left i hard reset.

4GB, I had the file at 4096 + 50 = 4146MB, but incresed it's size to 4200 and moved it to another HDD after it failed for the first time.