Be Excellent To Each Other

My computer hates everything. Everything on Steam now crashes after about half an hour. I really have no idea what to do. I want to play my games, but it just keeps crashing, and it doesn't save anything I've done. Please help, I'm getting really fed up of having to redo missions and such, only to have it crash again and be lost. I've set everything to run as Administrator, and that seemed to make it last a bit longer, but it still crashes.

Wow. That crash just corrupted all my Skyrim saves. I hate my PC. Any ideas? Please?

Go to corrupted file using windows explorer
Right click on it and choose properties
Go to previous versions tab.
Restore an older, hopefully uncorrupt version.

Saved me when my dark souls save died.

Okay, thanks.

[EDIT] It worked! Thanks so much Dave!

I also forgot to mention that it Blue-Screens every few days.

Then you have a serious problem with some aspect of your hardware or Windows install and/or some of the software that's running on it.

What OS are you running? Is it all patched and up to date? What's the spec/hardware? When did you last update the drivers?

Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit
Checked windows update and nVidia website - Everything's up to date
Processor - Intel Core 2 Duo @ 3.00GHz
Graphics - BFG Tech 8800GTS OC 512 (I'm not sure about the OC bit)
Asus motherboard - P5Q deluxe (I think)
Asus heatsync thingy
8GB DDR3 ram (Corsair Vengeance)


Last driver update was when Windows update + nVidia control panel told me there was a new one.

In case you can't tell from up there, It's custom built.

Well I'd chuck the usual stuff at it, Memtest, CoreTemp (check for overheating), if it looks OK then run Prime95 with CoreTemp going, and so on.

Orthos is a good tool as well.

If you've got more than one stick of RAM reduce the PC down to a single stick , run Memtest, and then add them back in one at a time, running Memtest each time.

Memtest is good because it runs outside of your OS, but you will need to have the ability to burn the ISO out to a disc, this is native in Windows 7 so you just need a blank disc and a burner in your PC.

At a more basic level you could just check your hard drive for errors, which may well be present if you've been getting blue screens.

Has it just started misbehaving recently or has it been crashy for a while?

It's kinda been like this for a while, games crashing, and so on but they used to last about 2 or 3 hours. But only recently it has started blue screening and crashing every 10 minutes.

And the other thing that no-one has mentioned yet (and you havent) is what AV do you have installed / when was it last updated ?

Worth going to one of the websites which will do a scan for you (I know you mentioned a Java issue before as well)

There are basically two possibilities here

1) You have a hardware problem which will probably require at least something being replaced - AE's instructions above are a good start for investigating that

2) You have a software problem which could be something malicious on the machine or just a corrupted / dodgy driver - going back to a clean install of windows is one way out of this

That is a good point of course, but I just sort of assumed that everyone has Microsoft Security Essentials these days?

What are they? Also how can I see my Core Temperature?


Yup, i have this. I just let it update when it wants to, run a short scan every few days, and a full scan every few weeks.

I was planning on doing a full reset, but I have no idea how to, and my Dad said he won't do it until after Christmas.

Memtest is an application tests your memory, it's a good place to start with blue screens.

Prime95 and Orthos are basically CPU stressing tools, if your CPU ain't working properly/overheating, these will flush it out.

CoreTemp monitors the temperature of your CPU's cores, you can stop the tests if it gets too toasty.

A bit of Googling should sort you out, sorry dude I'm off now for Saturday night games but I'll be back later

If you've got a Win7 install DVD, then yes, a full reinstall of the OS should be very straightforward.

Usual caveats about getting the important stuff backed up first apply, but then again they should be already!

Have a look in C:\Windows\Minidump\

There will be a load of files with a .dmp extension

Post the last few here and I'll have a look with a debugger and maybe be able to see what the issue is.

Okay core temp

Idling - 34 Celsius
Skyrim on ultra - 40-46 Celsius
Stress Test - the load % went up to 100% on the CoreTemp thing while using Prime95, Temperature didn't go above 51 Celsius

Now for Memory test and to find those DMP files. (I'll edit this post when I do)

For MemTest, do i just burn the ISO onto a disc?

Your temperatures are fine, so that's not the issue.

Yes, just burn the ISO 'as' a disc rather than 'to' a disc, it'll be a bootable disc so you need to check in your PC's BIOS that it has the DVD drive as the first boot device.

Well, it looked like it finished.

So have a picture.

Also, @asfish how many of them do you want? just 2 or 3?

[EDIT] Just tried to upload it, but the extension dmp is not allowed. Will I put a few in a folder and try upload that?

Sounds it's most likely the hard drive, if it isn't even saving the files you think you've saved?

Write down the errors you see on the blue screens, that'll be helpful.

It does save files.
And the Blue screen disappears too quickly to be able to note down what it says.

The DMP files

Disable auto-restart on blue-screen.

http://www.technibble.com/how-to-disabl ... o-windows/

Okay, now just to launch a random game and wait.

I had trouble with my PC BSODing, sometimes it would be stable for days and days and other times it would fall over quite quickly. It would most often BSOD over night while I left it switched on to torrent Linux distros.

Turns out it was a bad stick of RAM, annoyingly it would sometimes fail memtest yet other times would pass without an error. Luckily Crucial were very good about swapping it for me and since then it has been pretty much rock solid.

My bsod was cured with a motherboard and cpu change, but I suspect it was the motherboard that was the issue.

Point being, it can be anything, it's just a matter of working out what...

So, your BSOD was cured by getting a new computer then

Considering I had already swapped the hard disk, ram, psu and you, and reinstalled the os, and then yes

You swapped me? You bitch.

bloody auto correct, that was supposed to say gpu

Looking at the dump files, they're all graphics related in some way. But that's not very conclusive, as you're playing a game and the graphics drivers will be running all the time, and one of them is just a general windows DoPaint. It fell over twice in KiPageFault (in steam and opera -- looks fairy random) and twice in VIDMM_GLOBAL::ReferenceAllocationForPreparation (which was being used by a windows thing).

So: Asumming you haven't updated your graphics card hardware or your drivers lately, then I'd say it looks like your memory or your disk is failing. If your memory is failing and you're getting random pointers etc, it'll start page faulting all over the place and the OS says bugger off, that doesn't exist, or if KiPageFault can't read the virtual page table on your disk, as it's not working properly.


So start by running memtest for a billion hours. Then try one of those S.M.A.R.T disk reading tools. I can't remember the name of the one I use, right now.

And then replace Craster.

After actually looking at the thread, I notice that asfish asked you for the dumps, and you didn't provide them randomly. (ps: with the dump files there's no need to write down the info on the bluescreen).

Also, I see you've actually run memtest. Well try it again Did it run to completion -- did it tell you it was finished? It takes many, many hours to do a full run. I can't remember what memtest looked like when I last ran it, and every version seems to move the numbers about, but I'm certain there should be more numbers in that 'pass' box than just a '1'? As in: you've only run 1 test?

Ehh, not sure if I've mentioned this already, (I thought I had) but my Graphics Driver crashes often as well.

Am I right in saying that this is bad?
(sorry for blurry picture - was using iPhone camera)

Yep, that's a fail which means you have at least one bad stick of RAM.

Yank one of them out and run the test with just a single stick.

The good news is that RAM is dirt cheap and very easy to replace!

8GB of RAM for £28.00:

http://www.ebuyer.com/369036-hypertec-8 ... p106008gbd

But I thought DDR3 was expensive! Or is that just because I bought it when it first came out?

Indeed, like all the latest tech DDR3 was expensive early on, but it's stunningly cheap now, a lot cheaper than DDR2, in fact.

See also, SSDs, which are now rudely cheap, to the extent that everyone who owns a desktop/laptop really should have a 128GB SSD in it.

As for your RAM, once you've worked out which stick is faulty, just leave it running on the remaining good stick (assuming they're both not faulty, which would be very unlucky or point towards a fault elsewhere) until you can replace them both.

Performance will be compromised as RAM likes to run in matched pairs, but it'll be better than the blue screens.

Since it's (just) under a year old, do you think they would replace it?

Assuming you've got some kind of record of the purchase I don't see why not, standard 12 month warranty should apply. (In fact, Corsair probably have a longer warranty than that.

A lot of places (Ebuyer and Overclockers for example) have a built-in order archive system with RMA functionality.

Where did you buy it from?

If you don't get any joy with the retailer you could take it up with Corsair.

I don't know, my parents got me it last Christmas, I'll have to ask them.

If they got it online you should be alright - I doubt they would have got it from a shop.

Yeah, it was defiantly from online. It didn't come until a few days after Christmas.

Corsair replaced my 2 year old ram, no questions asked really, and I'd bought it from scan. (I assume they tested it and also found it faulty). You can find a return form on Corsair's website somewhere.

You wanted one earlier, and this just happened. thought I might as well post it.
(Thanks goes to NervousPete for asking me to play a game(This happened))

Classic RAM BSOD (PAGE_FAULT).

Haven't you at least worked out which RAM stick is dodgy and yanked it?

There's always the risk of data corruption with a PC that's regularly blue-screening, one day you might get unlucky and you'll lose a critical system file and it won't boot again.

Nope, not yet. I don't have time tonight, but I'll get it done tomorrow.

Also, my dad suggested that they might not be in properly, (or something like that, 'seated' i think he said ) and that switching over where they are placed might fix it. Should I try that too?

You could try that, but I think that if it was badly seated it would be worse, and it would barely making it past POST.

Malc

Just work out which goddamn stick is faulty and yank the bastard!

Ehhhh...... POST?



*sigh* Fine.... tomorrow

The bit where it does the memory check, and looks for your HD and stuff! ie it wouldn't boot into windows more times than not.

Malc