BSOD but stable, wtf?

[Ruhnie]

Hoping someone can help me out with a problem I'm having. I have OC'ed my system, but it is Orthos stable for 12 hours and memtest86+ stable for 6 hours. I haven't had a chance to run them longer than that, but honestly that seems pretty damned stable to me. However, I am randomly getting blue screens, and the offending driver is not the same everytime, which leads me to believe it's possibly a RAM issue. How do I determine what is causing it, and how do I reach true stability if I'm not there?

E6400 @ 3.2GHz (402 fsb)
Gigabyte DS3 (vcore @ 1.4v, MCH +0.1v, PCIE @ 100)
2GB Corsair XMS2 6400 4-4-4-12 (1:1 divider)

 

[myocardia]

I would either lower my overclock, or raise my memory timings to 5-5-5-15, and see what happens.

 

[phile]

Originally posted by: Ruhnie
Hoping someone can help me out with a problem I'm having. I have OC'ed my system, but it is Orthos stable for 12 hours and memtest86+ stable for 6 hours. I haven't had a chance to run them longer than that, but honestly that seems pretty damned stable to me. However, I am randomly getting blue screens, and the offending driver is not the same everytime, which leads me to believe it's possibly a RAM issue. How do I determine what is causing it, and how do I reach true stability if I'm not there?

E6400 @ 3.2GHz (402 fsb)
Gigabyte DS3 (vcore @ 1.4v, MCH +0.1v, PCIE @ 100)
2GB Corsair XMS2 6400 4-4-4-12 (1:1 divider)

Have you run memtest?
http://www.memtest.org

I would restore stock settings for cpu and mem, if this will be your first time testing the mem. You want to first confirm that the mem is good.

-phil

 

[Ruhnie]

Originally posted by: phile

Originally posted by: Ruhnie
Hoping someone can help me out with a problem I'm having. I have OC'ed my system, but it is Orthos stable for 12 hours and memtest86+ stable for 6 hours. I haven't had a chance to run them longer than that, but honestly that seems pretty damned stable to me. However, I am randomly getting blue screens, and the offending driver is not the same everytime, which leads me to believe it's possibly a RAM issue. How do I determine what is causing it, and how do I reach true stability if I'm not there?

E6400 @ 3.2GHz (402 fsb)
Gigabyte DS3 (vcore @ 1.4v, MCH +0.1v, PCIE @ 100)
2GB Corsair XMS2 6400 4-4-4-12 (1:1 divider)

Have you run memtest?
http://www.memtest.org

I would restore stock settings for cpu and mem, if this will be your first time testing the mem. You want to first confirm that the mem is good.

-phil

Yeah like I said, it's 6+ hours memtest stable at these settings. It also passed memtest for 13 hours at a lower fsb. The RAM is fine, it has to be a voltage or a timing is just a little off methinks.

 

[phile]

Oops, I read your original post too quickly. Sorry about that. Is there any sort of pattern to the BSoDs? Is there always sound playing at the time? Is the videocard being stressed at the time? You may just consider doing a fresh install of Windows, making sure to them install the latest drivers for all your hardware, including chipset drivers.

-phil

 

[Ruhnie]

Originally posted by: phile
Oops, I read your original post too quickly. Sorry about that. Is there any sort of pattern to the BSoDs? Is there always sound playing at the time? Is the videocard being stressed at the time? You may just consider doing a fresh install of Windows, making sure to them install the latest drivers for all your hardware, including chipset drivers.

-phil

At first I thought that it was related to a game I was playing whenever I got the blue screens, because I haven't gotten them while playing anything else. Then today, while my system was idle, I got a BSOD that I noticed when I walked into the room. Worst case I will do a clean install, but I'm hoping to avoid that mess.

 

[Regs]

Sounds like a power issue to me or my next best guess is the SATA channel reacting to the over clock. DO you have one of those PSU controller fan only wires connected? Those gave me some trouble awhile back and gave me some random BSODs. Everytime the PSU would max the RPMs on the fan it would drain the voltage or create some instability.

 

[Ruhnie]

Originally posted by: Regs
Sounds like a power issue to me or my next best guess is the SATA channel reacting to the over clock. DO you have one of those PSU controller fan only wires connected? Those gave me some trouble awhile back and gave me some random BSODs. Everytime the PSU would max the RPMs on the fan it would drain the voltage or create some instability.

Hmm that's a weird one, but no mine isn't like that. In fact, my PSU has no external connector or wires for the fan, it's internal I guess. I have an Antec NeoHE 500w PSU, which should be more than enough juice for my system. And my SATA drive is actually running as IDE in BIOS, whatever that means.

 

[Regs]

I thought my antec 460watt 16amps was good enough until I discovered that connection. When I installed a hard drive I reconfigured some power wires and noticed that fan only connector caused some bsod issues. I got driver errors, less than or equal errors, and even memory errors.

 

[Ruhnie]

Originally posted by: Regs
I thought my antec 460watt 16amps was good enough until I discovered that connection. When I installed a hard drive I reconfigured some power wires and noticed that fan only connector caused some bsod issues. I got driver errors, less than or equal errors, and even memory errors.

So how would I know if it's an issue with my PSU?

 

[AdamK47]

Originally posted by: Ruhnie

Originally posted by: Regs
Sounds like a power issue to me or my next best guess is the SATA channel reacting to the over clock. DO you have one of those PSU controller fan only wires connected? Those gave me some trouble awhile back and gave me some random BSODs. Everytime the PSU would max the RPMs on the fan it would drain the voltage or create some instability.

Hmm that's a weird one, but no mine isn't like that. In fact, my PSU has no external connector or wires for the fan, it's internal I guess. I have an Antec NeoHE 500w PSU, which should be more than enough juice for my system. And my SATA drive is actually running as IDE in BIOS, whatever that means.

That doesn't mean the SATA drive is running IDE. That selection in the DS3 BIOS is for the GBB36X SATAII controller. The selections are confusing, but they releate to how that controller operates. The parallel IDE and purple SATA connectors are for this controller. Try updating the controller driver to the latest version if you haven't. That seems to have fixed the blue screen I would get on cold boot. I don't know if it will help you here, but it's worth a shot. I've outlined the process at the end of this thread. Here is a copy and paste:

There is a new driver for the Gigabyte GBB36X Controller. This driver is only available from Microsoft Windows Update. I tried to search for a stand alone installation, but could not find it. To install it go to the device manager and right click on the controller and click on properties. Go to the driver tab and click on Update Driver. Have it connect to Windows Update to find the new driver. Here is a pic I took of the version and date.

Do not go through the Windows Update page to update the driver! I learned this the hard way. It will try to install a new driver rather than update the existing driver causing anything attached to the parallel IDE controller to stop working.

I hope this fixes the cold boot problems when running SATA RAID and have a device attached to the parallel IDE channel. I'll know later.

 

[Ruhnie]

Originally posted by: AdamK47 3DS

Originally posted by: Ruhnie

Originally posted by: Regs
Sounds like a power issue to me or my next best guess is the SATA channel reacting to the over clock. DO you have one of those PSU controller fan only wires connected? Those gave me some trouble awhile back and gave me some random BSODs. Everytime the PSU would max the RPMs on the fan it would drain the voltage or create some instability.

Hmm that's a weird one, but no mine isn't like that. In fact, my PSU has no external connector or wires for the fan, it's internal I guess. I have an Antec NeoHE 500w PSU, which should be more than enough juice for my system. And my SATA drive is actually running as IDE in BIOS, whatever that means.

That doesn't mean the SATA drive is running IDE. That selection in the DS3 BIOS is for the GBB36X SATAII controller. The selections are confusing, but they releate to how that controller operates. The parallel IDE and purple SATA connectors are for this controller. Try updating the controller driver to the latest version if you haven't. That seems to have fixed the blue screen I would get on cold boot. I don't know if it will help you here, but it's worth a shot. I've outlined the process at the end of this thread. Here is a copy and paste:

There is a new driver for the Gigabyte GBB36X Controller. This driver is only available from Microsoft Windows Update. I tried to search for a stand alone installation, but could not find it. To install it go to the device manager and right click on the controller and click on properties. Go to the driver tab and click on Update Driver. Have it connect to Windows Update to find the new driver. Here is a pic I took of the version and date.

Do not go through the Windows Update page to update the driver! I learned this the hard way. It will try to install a new driver rather than update the existing driver causing anything attached to the parallel IDE controller to stop working.

I hope this fixes the cold boot problems when running SATA RAID and have a device attached to the parallel IDE channel. I'll know later.

I actually read about people having problems with the gigabyte controller. Since I'm not running raid I just used the intel drivers, the yellow connectors. I let windows install those.

 

[phile]

Originally posted by: Ruhnie

Originally posted by: Regs
Sounds like a power issue to me or my next best guess is the SATA channel reacting to the over clock. DO you have one of those PSU controller fan only wires connected? Those gave me some trouble awhile back and gave me some random BSODs. Everytime the PSU would max the RPMs on the fan it would drain the voltage or create some instability.

Hmm that's a weird one, but no mine isn't like that. In fact, my PSU has no external connector or wires for the fan, it's internal I guess. I have an Antec NeoHE 500w PSU, which should be more than enough juice for my system. And my SATA drive is actually running as IDE in BIOS, whatever that means.

Your choice of PSU could be key. There have been a ton of problems with the Antec NeoHE PSUs. I think they have released updated versions. If I were you, I'd run out and buy a new PSU - somewhere with a good return policy - and return it if it does not solve your problems.

-phil

 

[Ruhnie]

Originally posted by: phile

Originally posted by: Ruhnie

Originally posted by: Regs
Sounds like a power issue to me or my next best guess is the SATA channel reacting to the over clock. DO you have one of those PSU controller fan only wires connected? Those gave me some trouble awhile back and gave me some random BSODs. Everytime the PSU would max the RPMs on the fan it would drain the voltage or create some instability.

Hmm that's a weird one, but no mine isn't like that. In fact, my PSU has no external connector or wires for the fan, it's internal I guess. I have an Antec NeoHE 500w PSU, which should be more than enough juice for my system. And my SATA drive is actually running as IDE in BIOS, whatever that means.

Your choice of PSU could be key. There have been a ton of problems with the Antec NeoHE PSUs. I think they have released updated versions. If I were you, I'd run out and buy a new PSU - somewhere with a good return policy - and return it if it does not solve your problems.

-phil

Well I just bought it brand new less than a month ago, based on it's ratings of power users from xtremesystems.org. It's supposedly made by seasonic I believe and has an Antec brand stamped on it. It's too late for me to return it, so if it's bad I guess I'm SOL.

 

[zephyrprime]

I'd bet that you're having some sort of driver issue. What do you have installed on that machine? See if booting and running some stuff in safe mode exhibits the same problem.