Question Low Voltages Reported - Troubleshooting BSOD

[In2Photos]

I'm troubleshooting a co-worker's PC. Quick rundown of what has transpired.

She complained about programs not running and errors of missing executables. I was out of town so she tried help from Adobe and Intuit. They couldn't figure it out. I was able to trace the probelms down to AVG Tuneup blocking the programs to save resources. Removed AVG Tuneup and the programs started workign but now he is getting random BSODs. I tried going into the event viewer to determine what is going on, but haven't found anything leading me to the culprit. I had hardware monitor on this PC and after opening it I saw really low voltages being reported. So I then installed Hardware Info to verify and got the same thing. See the screenshot below.



I doubted the PC would run at these voltages, but went ahead and disconnected the PSU and then verified that voltages were 3.3, 5 and 12 volts. They checked out fine.

Also checked the voltages in the BIOS and they report normal. So why do I see this in hardware monitor and hardware info?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Also checked the voltages in the BIOS and they report normal. So why do I see this in hardware monitor and hardware info?

It happens. More often than not. Those sensor readings have to be calibrated, per-board or per-board-model. Generally, the BIOS "PC Health" section has calibrated readouts. Monitoring programs in Windows, may not be, unless that have been specifically tuned to that particular mobo and recognize it. Especially OEM rigs, many are not recognized. After-market / popular mobos, more so.

Also try, for example, OCCT. Ver 4.2 had some nice monitoring graphs. Whether the sensors will be accurate to your board, is anyone's guess.

But, if you've tested with a real multi-meter on the +12V and +5V lines on a molex connector, and they were within spec (if the system was under load), then things are probably GOOD with the PSU.

Have you web-searched "blue screen Acer TC-780"? Maybe there is something peculiar about those systems, that causes it.

Also, consider running an overnight, bootable RAM test, such as Memtest86.

 

[In2Photos]

Ran Memtest86 overnight and it ran fine, no errors. I thought I had found an issue with the video driver (built-in graphics) so I updated that. It ran fine for a couple of days but it's back to BSODs about 4-5 times a day.