So yesterday after playing Dragon Age: Inquisition for about 90 minutes, I escaped out of the game and walked away from my computer for about an hour. I left it on, not running anything.
Walking back into the room an hour later a blue screen had appeared and the error message showed a '100% memory dump' and told me to restart the computer. So I did and the computer restarted without issue. I then shut down the machine normally and haven't turned it on again.
This is the first time I ever had this happen on this machine. The room was very warm yesterday - about 82 degrees - could that have caused it? Is there anything I should be doing now after it has happened?
Thanks all.
id say theres a million and one things that could be - have you switched it back on yet?
It happens. Reboot your pc, chances are you'll succesfully reboot. Something upset the system enough for it to stop everything and write some information stored in memory at the time of the crash into a 'dump' file. During the reboot into the OS, you may get a System Recovery prompt asking to do a system repair - you can let it do it's thing here as well.
For windows (and depending of the generation of the OS), it may write it to: %SystemRoot%\MEMORY.DMP
The %SystemRoot% is a environment variable that is a short for C:\Windows usually.
(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi280.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fkk178%2Fendfire%2Fstartup_recovery_zpsd4t6rpi9.png&hash=3aacfe8b231c506d1c073656eaca24dcd1002f5c)
If this has been set, you might find you 'dump' file there. You can use the Windbg from Microsoft to make some sense of it.
(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi280.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fkk178%2Fendfire%2Fwindbg_zps7nhydrg6.png&hash=959eb21754b80122c0ac91a00edad4068d5a8138)
You can get Windbg as part the Windows SDK Kit. Here's the link for the installer (when installing, you can choose to only tick the "Debugging Tools for Windows' and only install this - you don't really need the other tools).
When you get to use Windbg to anylyze the kernel dump, you may find a snippet of a driver name or file. Sometimes they are obvious names, but if not, you can google the driver file name and find out who it belongs to.
Since I've bought my new PNY GTX 760 TI a few months ago, I've had 1 or two BSOD's in the manner you described. I checked the dump file with Windbg, and it appeared to be a sort of Nvidia driver.
I'm not sure if it was the problem was heat related (my fan set up is pretty decent), or maybe some airflow (I moved my desktop against the wall in another room since our baby came along). The driver is another possibility - would have to remember the name of the file mentionned in the crash dump next time (forgot to take it down).
Gus, let us know if you find the dump or need help.
Thanks guys - I restarted it yesterday when it told me to and had it on for a minute or two before shutting down. Have not turned it on again today. I'll do some exploring later but my gut says it was heat/humidity. Or perhaps it knows it is being replaced in about 10 days...then it will be my older daughter's problem :) ...which means, still mine.
Will post my findings.
Make sure your computer is well ventilated meaning that the fan in back of the rig can blow air out without being butted up against a wall. The front of the rig or any area that has air holes in the cabinet should also be away from any restrictions.
Does the CPU have a fan attached to it? If so is it working? Any time the main CPU or the graphics CPU exceeds it's temperature limit you get funky behavior like you saw. I say this because my old Dell laptop would frequently crash like this when it got hot. It turned out that if I propped the laptop on a stand so that the fan underneath it could properly cool the thing it would not crash.
^It has decent ventilation, in a cabinet with a door that can be opened up front. Yesterday was really warm and humid and I had played Dragon Age: Inquisition which is pretty graphically intense, so the temperature could have went up quickly. Weird that it didn't happen while I was playing, though.
As I talk about this I am more convinced that it was because of heat/humidity. Haven't had time to turn it on again (Sunday is family insanity day) but I will get up there later this afternoon. But I'm also afraid I will find something I don't want to find :) but I doubt it.
Either way this kind of works in my favor as I can now speed up the purchase of my new rig. I just don't want to pass along a problem machine to my kid. Chances of which are very low...although this is an iBuyPower machine, it has been totally reliable and rock solid for four years. I guess a blue screen kind of rattles you if you never see them.
On my machine right now...no issues. It's also ten degrees cooler in here today and a lot less humid.
As Endfire mentioned, I did install a new NVidia driver a week or so ago for my GTX 560. Could be either or both.
Downloading Windows SDK right now but it probably won't be necessary.
Should I do a disk cleanup and defrag?
No, I think it`s as you suspected - heat and/or airflow might have caused the issue. I'd just keep an eye on it. Otherwise, a driver roll-back is an option that doesn't usually hurt (if the driver is suspected).
That tool does come in handy when trying to identify hardware conflicts causing BSOD's.
Thanks again endfire, that was some quick response time. You should open an online shop :)
I've found that if you keep the tower within an enclosed space (such as an enclosed wooden cabinet with a door) that graphically intense programs can cause it to eventually overheat.
The problem, there, is the enclosed space. The case fans are meant to pull cool air in and push out the heat generated inside the computer. If the tower is within another enclosed space, it ends up essentially recycling it's own warmer exhaust, with a slow snowballing effect. Not the type of snowballing you're thinking of, either. :P
Even cabinets with small holes or areas for wire access usually don't provide enough free airflow. When you're running processor and GPU intensive games for long periods, in such a circumstance, then you can expect the internal heat to steadily increase if you don't have a lot of ventilation around the tower.
Similar problems can happen with notebook PCs. I have an Acer Aspire M that has both in & out fan vents on the bottom, to the video card and maybe CPU, as well as the side. Which is a terrible setup but they obviously did it to save space. So I use a thin little lap desk with flip-up mounts on the back side to give it the proper space it needs underneath. I suspect other users of the same model, who don't know about such things, have probably overheated theirs regularly by laying it on flat surfaces and running stuff for long periods.
^Pretty convinced that's what happened. The fans were roaring yesterday - this machine has always been loud, which is ok because it never crashed in four years like this.
EXCEPT the desk cabinet area where the box sits is backless. But it was so warm and humid that it didn't matter.
It might be an issue with the new nVidia drivers and Dragon Age. My friend was complaining about BSOD crashes occurring every 30 minutes or so with the new drivers when playing Dragon Age. He said he had a look at the forums and it was a pretty common complaint.
It's all caused by the Windows 10 crap that was secretly downloaded to your computer. :P
^Probably.
Well I just played Dragon Age for another hour without issue. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the new drivers combined with the temperature/humidity, but the BSOD happened yesterday after I had left the game. But thankfully it hasn't happened again and I can pass this machine to my older daughter with a clear conscience.
Don't fear the BSOD. It's Microsoft's way of letting you know you are loved.
Also be aware that if that tower has been kept in such an enclosed space, running abnormally warm due to reasons listed above, some of the heat transfer paste between the processor and heat sink may have been burned off by now.
I've had to reapply a fresh dose of it on some somewhat older computers that started occasionally freezing/BSOD'ing when running programs due to this slow wasting of the thermal transfer paste. When they run extra warm for years, it will wear down the paste (making it get flaky & evaporate) and the heat transfer will become less efficient after it slowly gets baked off to almost nothing.
I've seen a couple that had practically no paste left between them. Looked like a thin sheen of dust.
Just a heads up.
Repasting the the processor and sink might not be such a bad idea if Minigus #1 is going to get some milage out of Gus's old 'puter. Arctic Silver paste is cheap but good.
Duly noted. But for 4 years it's been running cool until this first instance. ALSO MiniGus 1 won't be playing much besides browser based games...this machine should easily have another 5 years unless juice is spilled on it or candy gets into its innards. My old-old computer (the one this one replaced) is now 8+ years old and is still running fine. MiniGus 2 gets that one. She's psyched :)
Well my computer is F##@D too. I get a black screen of death on startup and I quote the only think that appears "An operating system wasn't found. Try disconnecting any drives that don't contain an operating system. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart"
/sigh/
I'd been having some issues, but I was NOT expecting this one.
That's bad. Sounds like your hard drive went tits up. You could try to download a linux Ubunto or Mint distro on another comp and burn it to CD or put it on a bootable thumb drive and boot your sick rig from that. Then you could see if the drive is still readable and maybe save what files you can onto removable media. After that you could try to use some kind of online tool to try and repair the disk long enough to create an archive or image to load onto your replacement drive.
There were definitely some hard drive issues. I think some sectors were corrupted, because attempting to access programs that would bring up an error asking for program to be reinstalled. This ranged from OS to a variety of different programs. In the end, I couldn't even conduct a chkdsk through the command prompt prior to the black screen.
How does that happen?
Quote from: Bison on September 23, 2015, 06:11:38 AM
There were definitely some hard drive issues. I think some sectors were corrupted, because attempting to access programs that would bring up an error asking for program to be reinstalled. This ranged from OS to a variety of different programs. In the end, I couldn't even conduct a chkdsk through the command prompt prior to the black screen.
So not able to do a 'sfc_/scannow' OS check either?
It doesn't even boot now.
Very annoying and frustrating.
Well I've got my baby of the past several years on the table and have pulled the SSD drive. Just waiting for some tech support bubbas to clarify if my Win7 license is still good or if it was voided during the Win10 upgrade and if my SSD is still under warranty. Right now the plan is to replace the SSD and reload the OS and factory settings and hopefully that takes care of most of the mess and buys me more time before I go all out and just replace the entire rig. My other concern is that I'd been having some GPU issue, which I think were driver related but I'm not entirely sure of that either. The problem is the possible outlay in parts has the potential to be quite expensive too. Not as much as a new rig but it's getting up there and at what point do you stop trying to save 3-4 year old tech and just bite the bullet?
I'm also considering pulling the storage hard drive too and just replacing that too in case part of the issue is virus related.
The beautiful interior of my rig...:(
(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi830.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fzz227%2FBison36%2FIMG_0044_zps54s01a10.jpg&hash=f92990c949efdb25b073f4b5fff9ea3a2396ce98)
As you say above, why don't you just bite the bullet and put this time, energy and money into a new machine?
That sucks to hear Bison.
What kind of motherboard make and model do you have?
A few things to try and check first (if you haven't already):
- disconnect the problematic hard disk and check that the drive connectors (SATA I assume) are well connected. Try and boot again.
- boot and enter the BIOS (hit DELETE usually, but not sure about your system, watch the BIOS splash for information).
- Try to find something like 'boot settings' or disk Try to see if the BIOS detects all the hard disks that you currently have (if they still are) connected via hdd cables (sata or whatever you use). If that's the case, make the necessary corrections.
- Check the BOOT order (e.g. make sure you're still booting from the hard drive that contained your operating system, and not a USB or CD drive where you may have left a USB or DVD connected)
If none of that works:
- Do you have another desktop? You can try to swap the primary disk and see if it the suspect hdd works in the other computer, or take your other computer's hdd and plug it into the problem computer to see what works.
- Do you have a recent disk backup to restore to a blank hard disk?
On the positive side, your rig can't really be old, it doesn't look like it has much dust inside ;) My rig dates from 2009, only had some memory, new graphics card and a Samsung SSD to replace the old HDD, still holding up (waiting for Intel's Skylake CPUs to come out).
I keep up a pretty rigid cleaning schedule on my computers, so that explains the cleanliness. It's not terribly old, but in terms of technology it's certainly middle-aged. I think if a new SSD fixes the issues then the computer will be good to go for another year before I need any sort of upgrade.
The motherboard is still a good one. Asus P8Z77-V. It and my processor are fine and also the reason why I might just do some incremental modifications; i.e. up my RAM from 8 to 16 and replace the GPU.
Geez if that Asus P8Z77-V is 'middle aged', mine is an old senior.
https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P5N72T_Premium/ (https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P5N72T_Premium/)
SSD's make a huge impact for boot time and read/write operations. Huge performance boost without replacing that much hardware.
Well we are moving into the DDR4 era now. :)
Quote from: endfire79 on September 23, 2015, 08:48:14 PM
Geez if that Asus P8Z77-V is 'middle aged', mine is an old senior.
https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P5N72T_Premium/ (https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P5N72T_Premium/)
SSD's make a huge impact for boot time and read/write operations. Huge performance boost without replacing that much hardware.
What CPU are you using?
Intel quad Q9550, haven't felt much need to update for a newer board & cpu since then (or the time); nothing out there I'm into really screams for more power. But newer boards these days do support better SATA, and USB standards. I'll be shopping this Christmas O0
Yeah I'm pretty happy with my mobo/cpu setup. I pretty much just you it for gaming, but even then most of what I play isn't the most graphically demanding either. But there are a few titles coming out that may force me to upgrade my gnu at some point. Unless of course I have more issues then I think I do right now. I'm honestly hoping it's just a bad SSD and that my Win7 key is still valid. In which case, I'm good to go and will just roll with it for a few more years.
Quote from: Bison on September 23, 2015, 10:30:30 PM
I'm honestly hoping it's just a bad SSD and that my Win7 key is still valid.
You have an SSD now? If that's the case then you should be able to retreive all your files or maybe even clone it to the new drive. It's my understanding (and I could be very wrong) that the most common failure of a solid-state drive is that you can no longer write new data to it but that the data already on it stays viable. I'm not sure why you would get a 'no os' flag in that case though I can see why it might not actually run since the os wants to be able to write to disk quite often.
Bison did tech support get back.to you yet?
Quote from: Staggerwing on September 24, 2015, 07:18:36 AM
Quote from: Bison on September 23, 2015, 10:30:30 PM
I'm honestly hoping it's just a bad SSD and that my Win7 key is still valid.
You have an SSD now? If that's the case then you should be able to retreive all your files or maybe even clone it to the new drive. It's my understanding (and I could be very wrong) that the most common failure of a solid-state drive is that you can no longer write new data to it but that the data already on it stays viable. I'm not sure why you would get a 'no os' flag in that case though I can see why it might not actually run since the os wants to be able to write to disk quite often.
The no OS is the result of trying to reset the OS to recover the files that it said needed to be reinstalled. The SSD, I believe, failed to allow the OS to reset due to bad sectors and that is what is driving the no OS on boot up. There could be other factors at play too, because I was having graphic issues too. Which I though were a bad driver, but just as easily could be a bad gpu, power supply, or cables. At this point, I hoping it's an easy hard drive swap out because then you start entering territory of needing to test every little component to find the problem and I don't have another computer to test parts on.
Quote from: Gusington on September 24, 2015, 07:22:38 AM
Bison did tech support get back.to you yet?
They did but I was putting the kids to bed and missed the damn call.
Ah sometimes it's worth going with a reputable company with a real American doing the tech support. My future loyalty to the company is secured. Anyway I've got some win7 updating to do and a few more checks but my baby should be back up and running by the end of the night. The only question is do I go with win10 or not? I'm inclined to not do the upgrade because of all of the subsequent issues which not all are attributable to win10 but it was part of the whole debacle.
What was the damned issue man??
Well right now the major issue is with how the win10 update works. It does not play nice with 3d party programs like an antivirus program for example. It can cause file corruption and there are other issues with measures ms put in place to deny access to such programs. Other programs like razor synopse can also cause issues. Basically you need to do a clean win 7/8 install then upgrade to prevent 3rd party programs from creating a conflict. And in extreme cases it can completely jack up your os files which is what happened to me. I may still have an issue with my gpu but that is a matter of time before I'll know that. Because win10 also requires a special nvidia driver or you have graphics issues and if the gpu drivers were not install correctly you get file errors and gpu no responding messages.
^Noted for tomorrow.