PC random crashing

[nsafreak]

Ok this one has been slowly driving me nuts over time and I just can't figure out what the cause of this is. The real problem is that I can't replicate it with any level of consistency at all. So hopefully somebody can point me in the correct direction. Every now and then for no reason that I can determine my PC will suddenly black screen and the only way to get back up to Windows is to power down the PC via the button on the front. The problem is that I can't seem to figure out what is causing it. The PC can go for weeks without any issues whatsoever and then BLAM it crashes. I've looked through my logs and I don't see any error messages that preclude the crashes. Every now and then I do see a System error log message from atikmdag of "CPLIB :: General - Invalid Parameter" followed shortly by "Display is not active" but these occur multiple times in the logfiles when the system continues to run just fine.

Here are my system specs:

CPU: Intel E7400
RAM: OCZ Gold DDR2 800 2x2GB and Kingston HyperX DDR2 1066 2x2GB (running at DDR2 800 speed)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EP43-UD3L
Video: Asus Dark Knight TOP 4870 512MB
HDD (boot): Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB
HDD (storage): Seagate 7200.11 1TB
DVD+/-RW: Lite On 22x
PSU: BFG Tech GS-550 550 watt PSU

What I've tried so far:

1) Run memtest86+ overnight. It ran with 0 errors for 8 hours straight.
2) Made sure that there is good & clean power. System is hooked into an APC BackUPS XS 800 UPS.
3) Load older/newer drivers. I'm currently running the WHQL drivers released a few months ago. I haven't tried the most current yet but the problem seems to be reduced by using these drivers.
3) Make sure that there is adequate airflow. I have one fan in the front blowing in, one fan in the back blowing out and one fan on the side. This is a CoolerMaster RC-534 case for reference. Temps seem to be ok:

CPU idle: 40 degrees Celsius
CPU full load: 54 degrees Celsius
GPU core idle: 62 degrees Celsius
GPU core full load: 74 degrees Celsius (and I REALLY have to be pushing the GPU to do that, even running a pair of EvE Online clients doesn't bring it close to 70 normally so it rarely approaches that temp)

Other sensors (not sure where these are):

TMPIN0 (idle): 45 degrees Celsius
TMPIN0 (full load): 52 degrees Celsius
TMPIN1 (idle): 35 degrees Celsius
TPMIN1 (full load): 44 degrees Celsius

Voltages

CPU VCORE: 1.06 min 1.20 max
VIN1: 1.92 min 1.92 max
+3.3V: 3.34 min 3.36 max
+5V: 5.00 min 5.03 max
+5V VCCH: 5.16 min 5.21 max
VBAT: 3.23 min 3.23 max

All temps & voltages were acquired from CPUID Hardware Monitor.

I'm not sure if mixing the RAM like I did is causing problems (although I'd expect the issue to occur more frequently if it did) or if it is something with my PSU or video card. One other note. If I try and use the reset button instead of the power button when the PC reboots there will still be no video and a beep sequence of long-short-short. Not quite sure what that indicates, I have to see if I can find the BIOS beep code for it. Note that is the ONLY time I hear a beep code at all from this sytem other than the normal single beep upon powering up/resetting the system. Again this only occurs if the system black screens and I press the reset button. If I have to reset it for some other reason (like installing Windows 7 updates) instead of restarting from a black screen it restarts fine.

Edit: Ok I looked up the Award BIOS beep codes and one long followed by 2 short indicates a video failure. But why would this beep only occur on a reset and not on a full power down/power up?

 

[gravator]

Sounds like driver issues. Also try this out and see if it tells you anything. http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/blue_screen_view.html

 

[nsafreak]

I'm resurrecting this thread because the issue is still occurring and I'll be darned if I can figure out what the cause is. It may be driver related still I suppose (will be loading the 10.5 WHQL drivers shortly) but I'd really like some additional feedback. One change to the original above post. If it goes to a black screen and I hit the reset button the PC now reboots normally with the normal single beep and proceeds to load. I have gone through with a can of air and made sure to clean out the case as thoroughly as possible (it's normally pretty dust free). I've also reseated the card and my RAM to make sure everything is in good contact. I will add that according to the latest version of GPU-Z my video memory temps sit at around 77 degrees Celsius when the card is idle and top off at 84 degrees Celsius when the card is under load. I believe that this is within tolerance for the memory for this card.

 

[silverfang77]

Maybe your video card's defective. Try a different one for a while. If it doesn't crash, you'll know why.

 

[nsafreak]

Maybe your video card's defective. Try a different one for a while. If it doesn't crash, you'll know why.

Wish that was possible. All of the other video cards that I have are AGP cards for my older rigs where I'm not concerned about video performance. And if I was going to go out and purchase another video card I might as well upgrade to a 5850. Thanks for the suggestion though, wish it was a bit more feasible.

 

[nsafreak]

Just an update to this thread. I'm not sure if I have fixed this problem as of yet. As far as I can tell it doesn't seem to be the video card as being defective. I ran FurMark in stability test mode for 15 minutes. It got the card up to 100 degrees Celsius where it seemed to level off. That's quite warm but still well within tolerance for a 4870. That and it took almost the full 15 minutes to even get it that high and it cooled off pretty quickly. I've decided to give the latest drivers from Asus' website a try and see if they've done any tweaking that might help. They don't seem to add anything to the actual install that I would normally do for a set of Catalyst drivers. I also decided to do another run of memtest86+ to make sure something hasn't gone wrong in the meantime. I ran it for a solid 9 hours with 5 runs and 0 errors. At this point I find it really hard to believe it's memory based at all. With any luck at all the Asus drivers (based on the ATi 10.2 drivers) will resolve my issue. We shall see. Please feel free to suggest other things that I should try though.

 

[mafia]

Two questions.

Does your motherboard Gigabyte GA-EP43-UD3L come installed with a "EPU" (as some ASUS motherboards have) program for efficiency? A possibility is that the program, when you run it on "efficient mode" or some other "low power setting" may lower the voltage of the memory without you knowing it, causing the crash. (I had a similar problem).

Also, does your motherboard have fasteners installed in the screws? Make sure it doesn't, as that may ruin the grounding, thus causing your computer to crash.

 

[Modelworks]

I have seen that happen sometimes if windows tries to spin down a hard drive, turn off a display or put the pc to sleep with some applications.
Change power management to always on and see if that changes it.

 

[nsafreak]

Ok I think I've narrowed down the problem further. It's either the video card or the PSU it would seem. I just had the crash occur again and this time I remembered about the 4 LEDs on the back of the card. So I popped off the side of my case to see if any of them were lit. I saw LEDs D1602 and D601 were lit which according to some AMD forums posts indicate that External Power Connector A was removed (it's not, its in there quite firm) and a critical core power fault. Now that leads me to think that either my card is faulty or its my PSU. I don't think my PSU is faulty since I actually replaced it not long ago thinking that it was causing the problem then. I could be wrong and it simply doesn't have enough juice to consistently power my video card. I'm currently running a BFG GX-550 PSU with the following hooked up:

Intel Core 2 Duo E7400
WD Caviar Black 640GB HDD
Seagate 7200.11 1TB HDD
Lite On DVD Burner
Asus DK Top Radeon HD4870

The PSU is the same as this one (http://www.newegg.com/Product/NewPro...k=BFG%20GS-550) except it is modular. So which is more likely needing to be replaced, the PSU or the video card or am I missing another possibility?

 

[nsafreak]

Two questions.

Does your motherboard Gigabyte GA-EP43-UD3L come installed with a "EPU" (as some ASUS motherboards have) program for efficiency? A possibility is that the program, when you run it on "efficient mode" or some other "low power setting" may lower the voltage of the memory without you knowing it, causing the crash. (I had a similar problem).

Also, does your motherboard have fasteners installed in the screws? Make sure it doesn't, as that may ruin the grounding, thus causing your computer to crash.

With my motherboard the feature you seem to be referring to is CIA2. I actually have had this set to disable since day one since on my system it actually overclocks instead of slowing things down. I should note that I also have this setting my my BIOS called Robust Graphics Booster. I'm going to have to dig through the documentation a bit to see exactly what its supposed to do but its currently set to Auto. It has two other settings of Fast and Turbo.

Insofar as the motherboard having fasteners installed in the screws I do not see any. Looking at my motherboard it looks like I forgot to put one screw in for some odd reason. I don't think this would cause any grounding issues, would it?

 

[nsafreak]

Well I'm not terribly thrilled with the initial tech support that I've received from Asus. Here's the initial response that I received:

[FONT=&quot]Dear Sir/Madam

Usually when you have lockups like this, its going to be related to overheating, power issue or memory timing configuration.

Sincerely,

Level 2 Technical Support


ASUS Technology Inc.

http://www.asus.com

Tech support: 812-282-2787

Live Support: http://livesupport.asus.com

Download: http://usa.asus.com/download

MB Category: http://www.wikihardware.com/wiki/Category:Asus

Where to buy: http://usa.asus.com/wheretobuy.aspx[/FONT]

This is what he was responding to:

[FONT=&quot]From time to time for no consistent reason that I can find my video card will stop
displaying video and force me to reboot in order to get video back. During this time it
seems that the entire PC is frozen since any audio I had playing keeps looping (such
as in a game I could hear a gunshot sound looping over and over). Windows does not
show an error in its logs that I can see when these crashes occur and I'm not sure
what's causing it. I have tried the latest drivers from your website (based on Catalyst
10.2) along with the latest drivers from ATi's website which are currently Catalyst 10.6.
I remembered to look at the diagnostic LEDs the latest time that a crash like this
occured and saw that the LEDs labeled DE1602 and D601 were lit. I have completely
unplugged everything from my PC, opened it up, grounded myself and made sure
everything was firmly connected. While checking neither of the PCIe power connectors
were loose. I'm not sure if there is a fault with the video card or if it something else but
I would like to solve this issue. For reference I am using a BFG GX-550 550 watt power
supply. Thank you for your help.[/FONT]

Not exactly the most helpful response but I figured I hadn't included enough detail so here is the response I have just sent:

I'm reasonably certain that this is not an issue with the card overheating or memory timing configuration unless you're talking about the timing on the card itself. I suppose it may be a power issue but I find that to be unlikely as well. Let me explain the steps I have taken so far:

1) I have completely replaced the previous BFG GS-550 PSU with a new BFG GX-550 PSU thinking that the previous power supply had issues. I hooked the old power supply up to another computer and its been running fine without issue.
2) The card does not appear to be overheating when these lockups occur. I have two monitors on my PC and I've had temperature monitor programs running while I've had games running to see if the card is overheating thus causing the freeze. I typically do not see the card go above 84 degrees Celsius while playing games and it typically idles at around 61 degrees Celsius. From reading through your documentation and posts on your forums this seems to be well within tolerance. Currently at idle I have temperatures of 61 degrees Celsius for the GPU, 75.5 degrees Celsius for the memory and 64.5 degrees Celsius for the shader core. I have also run loops of demos of games to see if these cause it to overheat and lock up the system. I had Far Cry running in a demo loop with all effects turned to maximum for 10 hours straight today and the system never locked up nor do the temperature logs show any overheating.
3) The memory in my system has been tested thoroughly stable by two tools. One of them is the Microsoft Memory Diagnostic which ran and found no errors. I also ran memtest86+ for 9 hours with 5 passes and it did not find any errors.

I suppose the possibility may exist that there is an issue with my power supply but I find that hard to believe. As a further note I have this PC hooked into an APC BackUPS XS 800 system. So if you would please suggest any tests or further diagnostics I can do to attempt to resolve this issue or start an RMA process to get a replacement card for this PC it would be appreciated.

We'll see what the response is this time around.

 

[nsafreak]

No additional suggestions from Asus *sigh*

[FONT=&quot]Dear Sir/Madam

Lockups are not necessarily due to the video card. When i refer to overheating im referring to the cpu or mobo, and memory timings issues are for the motherboard memory.

Sincerely,


Level 2 Technical Support


ASUS Technology Inc.

http://www.asus.com

Tech support: 812-282-2787

Live Support: http://livesupport.asus.com

Download: http://usa.asus.com/download

MB Category: http://www.wikihardware.com/wiki/Category:Asus

Where to buy: http://usa.asus.com/wheretobuy.aspx

My response basically consisted of telling the rep that I have checked my temperatures and they're just fine. I'm actually running Prime95 in torture test mode right now and my CPU is just sitting between 58 and 60 degrees Celsius after running for a good bit. According to Asus warranty support is handled by Newegg, which is odd I'll have to double check that since while its under warranty I bought it a little bit over a year ago from Newegg. Please feel free to make suggestions on other things that I should try.



[/FONT]

 

[nsafreak]

Just another update to this thread since this is an issue that frequently seems to pop up atm, for whatever reason, with 4870 and 5870 cards and I want folks to see what happens from beginning to end. I've started the RMA process with Asus for the card (put in the initial ticket via web form) so we'll see how it goes from this point on.

 

[WildViper]

Ok...I was about to post the same type of problem when I read yours. It sounds very similar to mine except my system just auto-resets and starts over. It is as if someone pulled the plug and plugged it back.

But, I do have the ATIKMDAG with "Display not active" and CPLIB :: General - Invalid Parameter as well.

And this is an amazing message i get "The previous system shutdown at 3:34:58 PM on ‎8/‎1/‎2010 was unexpected." No shit sherlock!

Anyways, my specs are below:

Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ processor
6 Gigs of RAM - it is branded Corsair XMS
Windows 7 Pro 64bit

Like you, I have done pretty much everything. I even replaced the RAM & Power & updated the ATI Drivers.

No luck! I am about to throw in the towel and get another board..not Gigabyte. Too many issues I have had..not just this but other PCs I have built differently.

Anand

 

[mafia]

With my motherboard the feature you seem to be referring to is CIA2. I actually have had this set to disable since day one since on my system it actually overclocks instead of slowing things down. I should note that I also have this setting my my BIOS called Robust Graphics Booster. I'm going to have to dig through the documentation a bit to see exactly what its supposed to do but its currently set to Auto. It has two other settings of Fast and Turbo.

Insofar as the motherboard having fasteners installed in the screws I do not see any. Looking at my motherboard it looks like I forgot to put one screw in for some odd reason. I don't think this would cause any grounding issues, would it?

It shouldn't, but your best bet would be to put the screw in.

 

[nsafreak]

Ok...I was about to post the same type of problem when I read yours. It sounds very similar to mine except my system just auto-resets and starts over. It is as if someone pulled the plug and plugged it back.

But, I do have the ATIKMDAG with "Display not active" and CPLIB :: General - Invalid Parameter as well.

And this is an amazing message i get "The previous system shutdown at 3:34:58 PM on ‎8/‎1/‎2010 was unexpected." No shit sherlock!

Anyways, my specs are below:

Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ processor
6 Gigs of RAM - it is branded Corsair XMS
Windows 7 Pro 64bit

Like you, I have done pretty much everything. I even replaced the RAM & Power & updated the ATI Drivers.

No luck! I am about to throw in the towel and get another board..not Gigabyte. Too many issues I have had..not just this but other PCs I have built differently.

Anand

One thing you might want to try is to uninstall your drivers completely and then run Driver Sweeper to get rid of the leftovers. Once that's done go ahead and install the latest ATi drivers. It may or may not work but the worst that could happen is that you have the same issue occur.

 

[nsafreak]

Well I saw that my RMA had completed with Asus today so since the RMA page didn't say whether they were shipping me a replacement or that they had fixed the card I gave them a call. According to the rep that I spoke with when they tested the card out they were not able to find any problems with it. So I'm getting the same card sent back to me. Which of course means that once I put it in the system I'm sure the same thing will happen once again.

So any ideas as to what it may be at this point? Some friends of mine have said that it may be the motherboard since it's the only part that I haven't tested/replaced yet. Logically that's pretty sound I have to admit although I find it odd that a motherboard could cause an issue like this but it is the main board of the system after all.

 

[laserhawk64]

I'm not too used to troubleshooting vid card issues here, but I gotta hunch.

Wiggle the connector that's on the card (not the cable end, but the one that's physically on the card) and see if that makes things fall apart.

If that ain't it, then you might take a multimeter and check the voltages on that PSU. Try to "stress-test" it... make the PSU run *really* hot and see if it fails then.

 

[Meghan54]

Good luck with your Asus RMA.

Having had to RMA two video cards to Asus, a 3870 TOP and a 4850, both were the most horrible RMA experiences I've ever endured.....

Both took 3 RMA's to finally get a working replacement card from Asus.

Seems that Asus' RMA procedure is like this: on the first RMA, the card is simply plugged in and checked to see if it works. If it does, it's sent back to the customer.

The second RMA for the second time results in some sort of tech looking at it to see if it does indeed have a problem. A fix will be semi-attempted and card returned.

The third RMA on the same card finally gets the card into the hands of their Level 3 tech support....two guys who actually do know what they're doing. And it turns out only those guys can really authorize replacing the card.

Found out all this talking to one of the L.3 tech guys during the 1 1/2 months I spent RMA'ing the 3870 card.

The 4850 took almost 3 months total to finally get it replaced, along with numerous phone calls, emails, etc.

Both cards were having the same essential problems as what you're describing....LED's lit on the back, video working for a brief period then crashing/turning off/etc.

Oh, and both cards came back in worse shape than when sent in after the first two RMA's.

Wife made me swear to never buy another Asus video card ever again. Bought a Sapphire to replace the 4850 and have had zero problems since.

Asus motherboards, on the other hand, have always been excellent for me, even with the single RMA I had to do with one of theirs a few years ago. But Asus' motherboards RMA to a different center than the video cards get sent to and are handled by a completely different set of people.

Good luck!

 

[rasczak]

I would have placed my bets on your PSU being the culprit. This is an interesting thread.

 

[nsafreak]

Quick question, would it be worth my time to do a complete clean install (ie wipe the drive & start from scratch) of Windows 7 to make sure there isn't some residual crap lying around somewhere? This particular install of Windows 7 was an upgrade from Vista, I went the clean install option that was listed on the installer but IIRC that's not a true clean install.

 

[nsafreak]

Well I got my video card back yesterday, put it in, made some tweaks to the BIOS. For 15 hours it ran fine then the same issue occured where it stopped sending signal to the monitors and the DE1602 & D601 LEDs on the back of the card were lit. I've now swapped it with an eVGA SSC GeForce GTX260 Core 216 that I have on loan from a friend, performed the usual driver uninstall & driver sweeper before I installed the nvidia card after which I installed the card and then the newest drivers from nvidia. If this card is able to run a few days without issue then I would be able to pretty conclusively say that the issue is the video card and would call Asus again to setup another RMA, although I'd insist that they pay for shipping this time around.

 

[nsafreak]

Just an update on this whole issue. RMA number two has been setup with Asus. The representative that I spoke with on the phone was polite, took note of the issue that I described, noted that it would need to be tested for at least 15 hours, and this time they're sending me a pre-paid label so that I don't have to pay for shipping. Hopefully this resolves the issue and either they fix the card or a replacement card is sent to me.

 

[nsafreak]

Another update to this thread. I received back my 4870 from Asus and they supposedly replaced the chipset on the card. Whether or not the chipset was actually replaced I do not know since I have no way of verifying it. This did not fix the issue though as it will still randomly stop sending video to the monitors and the DE1602 & D601 LEDs will light on the back of the video card. Needless to say at this point I'm quite pissed. I tried to call them today to setup RMA number three but I was not able to get a live person before they closed for the day. Even though a tech was supposed to call me back after I had left my number I did not receive a call. I will be calling them back early tomorrow morning to see what they have to say this time around. I find it pretty disturbing that my experience very much mirrors Meghan54's experience and I don't think I'll be purchasing any video cards from Asus in the future.

 

[hellotyler]

Any chance you can try your system out with a higher watt psu ?