BSOD during and after gaming.

[Yozen]

Hello Everyone.
I have seen a lot of people get help from this Forum. Lets hope that i have the same luck.

I have been getting one of 3 kind of system errors, The types of errors are BSOD's (and it seems to be a different error each time), complete freeze, or what i call 'GPU Crash' where the screen will freeze with random shapes and colors on top of static showing. This primarily happens randomly during games or when exiting a game to the desktop. Sometimes it would go days with no problem, and sometimes it would crash 3-4 times within an hour. It also happens rarely during normal computer use (browsing, iTunes, or sitting idle.)

If there are any suggestions, please let me know. I am just about out of idea
Thanks for any help
-Steve

 

[Core]

Uninstall AVG and reinstall your Radeon drivers from ati.amd.com.

 

[Yozen]

Tried both suggestions. Computer worked fine for 5 hours (playing videos, web browsing, photoshop, then sitting idle for the last hour), but it did a 'GPU Crash' and reboot about 5 minuets into running a game. At the windows splash, BSOD'ed and rebooted again (stop error x0A).

 

[TrainableMan]

If I'm reading this right, your latest DMP shows no ATI video drivers at all; perhaps the DMP didn't finish. As it is I cannot see the dated ATI drivers to know if it is up-to-date.

 

[Yozen]

I wouldnt be surprised if the dmp didnt finish. I'm attaching a screen shot of what i believe is the info you are looking for from Device Manager

 

[TrainableMan]

I think that is the latest non-beta; I suppose you could try the beta HERE (scroll down for the beta).

If these are graphic intensive games then be sure you have the latest game patches too.

 

[Yozen]

I have installed the Beta drivers and so far I am about 12 hours without incident. I will keep an eye out for any returning symptoms .

Thank you for your help

 

[Yozen]

Update

Computer ran games for about 2 hours last night, sat idle overnight, ran games again for about 2 hours the next morning.
It sat idle for about 30 minutes and froze. I reboot the machine, and it sat idle for about 5 minuets before i had a 'GPU Crash'. No .dmp generated.

Any other suggestions?

 

[TrainableMan]

That ASUS M4A89GTD motherboard offers a Turbo Unlocker & a Core Unlocker. If you are overclocking that could cause issues, set everything back to factory defaults.

Download & install the latest BIOS (ver 3029) if you aren't running that already. There is also a Beta version (3030) of the BIOS which might help (or might make things worse) but which you could try.

While you are there at the ASUS site make sure you update all your drivers.

I'm not an expert on Motherboards & RAM but I notice you mention you have three (3) 2GB RAM chips. Your motherboard uses Dual Channel memory architecture which I believe means it works best in pairs. Maybe try removing the odd RAM stick and see if it works better on 4GB paired (be sure the two you leave are in identically colored slots). If this helps stabilize your machine then consider adding a match for your odd RAM chip taking you to 8GB.

The fact is it may still be the video card driver; it sounds like the beta driver was a bit better. High-end Video Cards are known to have their drivers tweaked and re-tweaked constantly to handle specific games etc. Games also release patches to handle such issues. You may just be ahead of the curve and need the next update. Keep your drivers & BIOS up-to-date and your games patched. I don't know what else to suggest.

 

[Yozen]

Status Update
Made no changes last night and machine ran for hours gaming (Skyrim: graphic on max and League of Legends: graphics on High). 20 minuets after finishing, computer froze

I had never tried to OC anything in the BIOS, but i reset everything to factory defaults.
I removed one ram stick (currently at 2x2GB, both in the same colored slots)
Computer locked up after 30 mins of browsing

Updated BIOS to ver3029 from MB product website.
installed drivers provided by MB product website.
reinstalled latest stable (non-beta) video drivers provided by ATI website.
Machine has been running for about 3 hours with no issue since (longest its gone when not gaming)

This whole situation is bizarre, because until now, it seems that the machine will only work for long periods of time if it was running a game. And these games have been installed for quite a long time prior to these issues. No hardware changes recently either, last was a new HDD over a year ago. Maybe there is an issue with throttling down from times of high resource usage. Has anyone heard of something like that happening?

For now, im going to keep monitoring. hopefully something we did fixed the situation

 

[Yozen]

After the BIOS update, I started Skyrim, and let it run idle within the game. At some point within the next hour, the computer had did a 'GPU Crash'. Since then, i havent had much use of the computer and had it running idle on the desktop. It has been running straight for 4 days! I'm going to look into replacing the video card and running game updates, but for the time being, i believed you have helped me fix the problem.
I have questions for my personal curiosity: How could a stable machine run for years, just to suddenly need a BIOS update? I am currently still running 4GB of ram from a previous suggestion. I plan on putting the 6th GB back, but i wonder if it works fine, should i worry about getting a 4th chip or can i leave well-enough alone?

Thank all (two) of you for your quick responses and suggestions. I probably would have scrapped the whole thing without your help.
-Steve

 

[TrainableMan]

Well the biggest BIOS updates were for MOBOs upgrading to Vista or W7 to handle the new sleep functions. Having devices powered down and back up for sleep/hibernation is still a common time of BSOD issues. I had no way of knowing how long you had the machine or the components in it so it's just a good idea to update it.

The most common cause of BSODs is driver issues, especially when running GPU intensive games. The fact is, the Skyrim game or your video driver is likely the cause of your problems and one or both will need to be upgraded/patched to fix the issue; all you can really do is watch for updates on either side and try them.