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System Unstable - WTH - Please Help Me Out

H

hondaf17

Senior member
Ok guys,

My newest rig, built with retail products from Microcenter, is below. I've had it assembled as-of about 3 weeks ago but just cannot get the damn thing stable.

I get the blue screen of death (BSOD) that says, "page fault in non-paged area."

I have re-installed Windows 7 64-bit literally about 7 times. After re-installing windows the computer is usually very nice and stable for about 1 day. Then it starts getting unstable. Programs will stop working (for example, audio driver utility no longer showing up in taskbar, avast stops scanning, etc) and evenutally I get the BSOD.

I'm only running on my retail dual core (no cores unlocked). I've run memtest and have zero errors. I recently thought I had it fixed when I noticed I had ram settings in mobo set to "auto" which was 11-11-11-30 and my RAM speed is 9-9-9-24. I've manually set the RAM to all the stated specs from my manufacturer, even re-installed windows, and still no luck.

I'm currently running chkdsk and will report back on what it finds. But, has anyone experienced something like this? Anyone have any suggestions on what to do next? Could I have screwed up my HDD by re-installing W7 so many times?

Thoughts?

TYIA,

PS - If I need to return mobo, ram, or processor, please let me know soon, as my 30 days is coming up pretty quick.
 
hondaf17 said:
Ok guys,

My newest rig, built with retail products from Microcenter, is below. I've had it assembled as-of about 3 weeks ago but just cannot get the damn thing stable.

I get the blue screen of death (BSOD) that says, "page fault in non-paged area."

I have re-installed Windows 7 64-bit literally about 7 times. After re-installing windows the computer is usually very nice and stable for about 1 day. Then it starts getting unstable. Programs will stop working (for example, audio driver utility no longer showing up in taskbar, avast stops scanning, etc) and evenutally I get the BSOD.

I'm only running on my retail dual core (no cores unlocked). I've run memtest and have zero errors. I recently thought I had it fixed when I noticed I had ram settings in mobo set to "auto" which was 11-11-11-30 and my RAM speed is 9-9-9-24. I've manually set the RAM to all the stated specs from my manufacturer, even re-installed windows, and still no luck.

I'm currently running chkdsk and will report back on what it finds. But, has anyone experienced something like this? Anyone have any suggestions on what to do next? Could I have screwed up my HDD by re-installing W7 so many times?

Thoughts?

TYIA,

PS - If I need to return mobo, ram, or processor, please let me know soon, as my 30 days is coming up pretty quick.
Click to expand...

drivers? i'm guessing your motherboard chipset drivers need to be updated. using the ones on the CD is not good enough, download the newest ones off the manufacturer's website.
 
Run the comp by systematically unplugging peripherals and unneeded hardware until you are down to only board, ram, video and PSU. I knew a guy who had all kinds of problems with windows 7, lockups, shutdowns, geberal slowness/unresponsiveness, turned out he had an external eSATA drive hooked to it, and the drive itself, or the driver, or something associated with the drive because as soon as he disconnected the drive, the computer ran absolutely fine. Basically just unhook something you dont need, an external drive, a floppy, an optical drive, a NIC, whatever, try it for a while, if you have an issue, unhook something else, repeat.
 
Alright.

I ran chkdsk and it found errors. However it then launched into windows super quick and I couldn't find the log file, and my computer wasn't stable enough to let me search for it (windows explorer kept crashing). However I did quickly see errors found.

I did a fresh install of Windows 7. Downloaded Western Digital's diagnostics tool, and it didn't even local my phyiscal drive. Tried Seagate's, and Seagate's diagnostics tool found it. Did the drive test and it passed.

So, somewhere along the lines my instability leads to errors on my HDD, correct?

I'm now running fine with my clean install, but I'm anticipating instability will arise in another day or so.

This time, something I did do different was install the latest sata and chipset drivers from Gigabyte. I'm also trying AVG free instead of Avast. I also have my external HDD unplugged, although I eventually need that to get all my data back.

Will try this for a couple days and see what happens - anyone have other thoughts / agree with my analysis?
 
... I also have my external HDD unplugged ...
Click to expand...

Did you properly install the the AHCI drivers during the OS installation ?

How to enable AHCI in Windows 7 RC after installation

AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface) enables native command queuing and hot-plugging through SATA host controllers (Serial-ATA) for your hard drives. In many scenarios it enables more efficient multi-tasking. Vista was the first Windows OS to support AHCI out of the box, where as Windows 7 does the same. But an issue with AHCI is that if you install the OS without enabling AHCI in the BIOS, enabling it after installation will render your OS unusable. This is because Windows disable the AHCI driver since it is not needed during the installation.

There is one way to fix this, although you need to have knowledge of registry editing. The detailed steps from Microsoft are as follows:

To resolve this issue, enable the AHCI driver in the registry before you change the SATA mode of the boot drive. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Exit all Windows-based programs.
2. Click Start, type regedit in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER.
3. If you receive the User Account Control dialog box, click Continue.
4. Locate and then click the following registry subkey:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESystemCurrentControlSetServicesM sahci

5. In the right pane, right-click Start in the Name column, and then click Modify.
6. In the Value data box, type 0, and then click OK.
7. On the File menu, click Exit to close Registry Editor.

After this you’ll have to restart your computer, go to BIOS and enable AHCI. When you log in to Windows again, you’ll notice the installation of drivers for AHCI. Another restart will be required to finish the driver installation.
Click to expand...


edit: I fergit ....

Are your RAMs qualified for the mobo? IIRC Gigabyte mobos get a little goofy with unqualified RAMs from time to time.

Updating to the most recent, stable BIOS may well be an issue with the new PhII 555.




--
 
Last edited:
heyheybooboo said:
Did you properly install the the AHCI drivers during the OS installation ?

How to enable AHCI in Windows 7 RC after installation




edit: I fergit ....

Are your RAMs qualified for the mobo? IIRC Gigabyte mobos get a little goofy with unqualified RAMs from time to time.

Updating to the most recent, stable BIOS may well be an issue with the new PhII 555.




--
Click to expand...

I actually looked at Gigabyte's approved memory list and they have 3 A-Data's supported. Mine is not listed, but it should work fine (I'm guessing). It says right on Gigabyte's approved list that they don't have time to test hardly any. I have this high performance RAM, and all my settings in mobo are set to manufacturer specs:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820211409

I am running the latest BIOS version of my Mobo (that was one of the first things I tried).

I know NOTHING about AHCI, etc. The manual with my Mobo is worthless on this subject. I normally just run SATA in "Native IDE" mode and don't worry about it. Once I get it stable I have no need for Hot Swap, as I just plug my external in once a week to do backup. If I run in Native IDE mode, do I still need to worry about this AHCI stuff???

TYIA,
 
You don't need to worry about AHCI.

I did just buy a Phenom II x3 720 BE and Gigabyte GA-MA785GM-US2H AM2+ from MC last night, and was reading the manual, and I saw that my MB may automatically prompt me to switch to AHCI during the first boot. Even if you accepted that option accidentally, Windows 7 has full support for AHCI, and since you've reinstalled so much there is no chance that you switched to AHCI after OS install.

After Fayd suggested that you may not be running the latest chipset drivers, you said "This time, something I did do different was install the latest sata and chipset drivers from Gigabyte." Could you please confirm which drivers you were using in your previous attempts?

Having chkdsk find errors on a system partition which has been running an unstable OS is very common. You should be able to find the chkdsk log by using event viewer, it shows up as a winlogon event under application events.
 
also, as a rule i generally do a full format (not a quick format) the first time i format a drive. it scans the drive surface to make sure there's no errors.

i had instability similar to yours on one of my builds. (probably 4-5 years ago, kn8-sli) i couldnt even reliably move data from an external hdd to the internal without it crashing the computer. the problem was the drivers distributed on CD weren't the best. after installing the drivers off the website, the instability was completely gone.

as a general rule, *ALWAYS* install the latest drivers off the manufacturer's website.
 
Hey guys. Yes, the drivers I used this time are the latest drivers off the Gigabyte website. The drivers I had been using previously were just the ones that came with W7 - I hadn't even bothered to install the ones from Gigabyte.

I don't have my external HDD hooked up yet but will eventually need to to get all my data and backup once a week.

I'll keep running like this and see if instability creeps up. If it does, I'm at a total loss. If it doesn't, it's my dumb fault for not using Gigabyte drivers from website the first 6 times around...
 
Well guess what guys. Not kidding, literally 30 seconds after I posted the above reply I got the BSOD with error "page fault in non paged area." And all I have installed is W7 64-bit, AVG Free edition, my sound drivers. And all drivers are latest from the website.

I'm fucking fed up. I'm taking all this bullshit apart and running to MC to get exchanges. I've built many computers in my day and have never had something go like this. I can't fucking figure it and it's driving me nuts.

Unless one of you guys can quickly talk me out of it I'm going to exchange my Mobo, Processor and RAM.
 
hondaf17 said:
I booted memtest from iso file on CD and it ran until it was complete, and said it found zero errors. It took it probably 30 minutes or so.
Click to expand...

I never run memtest for less than 24 hours. Memtest should never complete. EVery copy ive ever had starts, and only stops when you stop it. Id run it longer than 30 minutes for sure. Take a step back, a deep breath, let it run overnight to be sure. You dont want the hassle of returning everything when it could just be a bad stick of RAM.
 
Paperlantern said:
I never run memtest for less than 24 hours. Memtest should never complete. EVery copy ive ever had starts, and only stops when you stop it. Id run it longer than 30 minutes for sure. Take a step back, a deep breath, let it run overnight to be sure. You dont want the hassle of returning everything when it could just be a bad stick of RAM.
Click to expand...

yep.

one time i had a screwed up stick. i let memtest run for about 2 hours before i went to bed, no errors. when i checked it in the morning, several million errors and counting.

isolated the stick, and then RMAed the set.

btw, it's hard to diagnose something without the stop codes...

"According to Microsoft, this error can be caused by faulty hardware, anti-virus software, a corrupted NTFS volume or a bad system service." from someone else diagnosing this.

next time it happens, take a digital pic of the bluescreen and post it.
 
Last edited:
Ok, thanks guys. I have since cleared all CMOS settings, restored to defaults, and still unstable.

Another fun Friday evening spent inside on this damn thing. I am wondering now if it's something to do with trying to do a clean install of W7 upgrade over W7. I'm wondering if I need to intsall my Vista first and then do an install of W7. Reason I'm wondering that is I occassionaly get weird activation failed messages, not genuine messages, etc. And before anyone accuses me yes I actually have valid versions of windows. Vista Ultimate and W7 upgrade.

So I am now installing Vista, to do a clean upgrade to W7.

I will get W7 up and running tonight and run Memtest again and let it run over night.

I'm taking a break, grabbing a beer, and hope to be in a position to run memtest tonight.

Thanks guys. Appreciate it.
 
Unless you're a debugger, I've never found the specific stop codes to be too useful. When I had my bad P4, I had tons of page fault in non-paged area, irql not less or equal, etc pretty much randomly. I had a ton of crashes to desktop with War3, I think the only reason I finally suspected the processor was cause the problems occured quite a bit less frequently with HT off.

I think the only real way to figure this kind of thing out without debugging knowledge is to just keep switching out hardware or replacing things unfortunately. I don't feel guilty doing it because it seems like almost nobody takes the time to have their software engineers write good, reliable diagnostic tests for their hardware.
 
Athadeus said:
Unless you're a debugger, I've never found the specific stop codes to be too useful. When I had my bad P4, I had tons of page fault in non-paged area, irql not less or equal, etc pretty much randomly. I had a ton of crashes to desktop with War3, I think the only reason I finally suspected the processor was cause the problems occured quite a bit less frequently with HT off.

I think the only real way to figure this kind of thing out without debugging knowledge is to just keep switching out hardware or replacing things unfortunately. I don't feel guilty doing it because it seems like almost nobody takes the time to have their software engineers write good, reliable diagnostic tests for their hardware.
Click to expand...

Well with the hundreds of thousands of combinations of hardware out there too, its impossible for all hardware manufacturers (and software engineers that write the drivers to run most of that hardware) to take into acocunt every possible combination or circumstance, and while most often things will work, if one device it not necessarily faulty, but might be just a hair off perfect but not out of spec, it could create problems like this too.

I know its frustrating, but the problem MOST of the time will present itself.
 
Doing the upgrade, probably unnecessary. Not genuine messages, curious. Beer, essential.

I actually have still not even seen a computer running Windows 7 lol. I had a couple laptops with Vista (work one got repoed lol, home one decided to die for no good reason about a week ago). I'm kinda concerned I'll have a little trouble with the home premium upgrades I bought (2x$50 pre-order special) and using my academic XP discs. Does it still just ask that the CD be put in the drive, not the key entered?
 
Are there any specific options I need to select when I run memtest? From what I remember I just selected a test and it actually went through it all and came to an end.
 
Sounds like memory. It's almost always memory problems when you are getting corruptions at stock settings.
 
nerp said:
It's memory or PSU. I promise you this.
Click to expand...

Well I've gone through 3 power supplies thinking the same thing. My original 500 watt FSP Group Fortron, 550 BFG (a temp) and now my Corsair 650 watt TX. I've had similar problems with all 3. Perhaps running for the first week on my old-school FSP Group damaged something???
 
Athadeus said:
Unless you're a debugger, I've never found the specific stop codes to be too useful. When I had my bad P4, I had tons of page fault in non-paged area, irql not less or equal, etc pretty much randomly. I had a ton of crashes to desktop with War3, I think the only reason I finally suspected the processor was cause the problems occured quite a bit less frequently with HT off.

I think the only real way to figure this kind of thing out without debugging knowledge is to just keep switching out hardware or replacing things unfortunately. I don't feel guilty doing it because it seems like almost nobody takes the time to have their software engineers write good, reliable diagnostic tests for their hardware.
Click to expand...

it's useful if you have a set of said screenshots and can look for similarity.

if it's always the same program crashing, then chances are either that program or something it depends on is screwed. while that's unlikely in a fresh install, it's potentially useful.

besides, it was the stop codes that helped me isolate the problem on my kn8-sli.
 
Update:
I ran Memtest86+ v4.0 for 7.5 hours last night and it found zero errors. It was run at stock MOBO settings. Speed of DDR1333 even though my RAM is DDR1600.

I have now gone into BIOS and upped speed to DDR1600, and have set all RAM settings to stated manufacturer specs. I am running Memtest again and I'm currently 1 hour in without an error. Will let it go for several more hours and report back.

Think I'm golden???
 
If you can tell me the exact print out of the BSOD I can tell you what the source of the problem likely is.

Or better yet upload the .dmp file to a file sharing site like megaupload.com and link it here. I have software that can take it apart and hopefully locate the problem.

You can follow the below steps to collect minidump files:
=================
1. Click "Start", input "SYSDM.CPL" (without quotation marks) in the “Search” bar and press “Enter”.
2. Switch to the "Advanced" tab and click the "Settings" button under "Startup and Recovery".
3. Under "Write debugging information" section, make sure the "Small memory dump " option is selected.
4. Make sure "%SystemRoot%\Minidump" is in the "Small dump directory" open box and click “OK”.

If the Blue Screen appears again, please refer to the following steps to collect memory dump files:

1. Click “Start”, type “%SystemRoot%\Minidump" (without quotation marks) in “Search” bar and press “Enter”.
2. Go to your Desktop, right-click on it and create a new folder named "Dump".
3. Copy all the memory dump files (looks like [Mini092010-01.dmp]) in minidump to this folder.
4. Right-click on the Dump folder, click "Send To", and click "Compressed (zipped) Folder".
Click to expand...
 
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