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Possible CPU Failure?

S

syouseman

Junior Member
I'm very confused right now, my trusty Dell XPS 8100 has died on me and I can't trace the fault. Around 2 weeks ago I started getting weird hounds-tooth pattern when rendering stuff in solidworks (CAD software), but not while gaming or doing anything else. The renders are performed on the CPU which maxes all the cores while its being performed for around 20 minutes.

The a few days ago it blue screened with the error DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL.

As I understand it this is a memory error (could be wrong). Anyhoo, I tried to restart the computer, it posts and then either just before it loads the log in screen or just after it shows it, it blue screens again with the same error. At this point the CPU fan maxes untill it finished the crash dump and dies with the rest of the machine.

I don't think its a mobo error as I have no problems with any BIOS screens. I managed to boot some kind of diagnostic programme from a utility partition, I ran all the tests on there and found no errors on any component however it won't actually test the processor itself, just the cache. I also tried to boot ubuntu and windows from disk but gave up after about 20 minutes each.

Having exhausted all my other options and reluctant to spend money needlessly, would someone please give me a second opinion as to whether the CPU is knackered.

(Note: This computer spends about 5 hours a day at 100% CPU load).
 
Looks like a driver error. Did you read the whole message to see which driver was causing it? CPUs rarely fail on their own.
 
agreed. driver related. if you want some closure that your cpu is ok, run prime95+ for awhile and see if any of the cores error. if you did not find any errors in the low level or from a linux boot disc, then it's something in windows causing the problem.
 
for future reference, you can disable reboot on crash so you can actually read the message. system properties > advanced > startup & recover settings > uncheck automatically restart.
 
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