PC randomly shutting down, trouble starting up on boot. No identifiable problem.. help! - Hardware & Software

Hey, So earlier I had a BSOD and thought nothing of it. They have been a frequent occurrence ever since I purchased my ATi GPUs (worst buyers remorse ever..) so I just waited for Windows to load and I carry on my business. Anyway, a few minutes later my PC crashes again, except this time there is no BSOD, it just straight up cuts out. My PC however stays on, it does not restart itself and I have to resort to force shutting down via the power button. During this time nothing appears on my monitors and they are receiving no signal (the on/off button flashes as it would if I had just turned of my PC normally and left the screens on.) I begin to notice an unusual sound coming from inside my case, it seems that a fan starts up and whirrs for a short while and then the RPM rapidly drops and then it speeds up, then slows down etc in this cycle. It kept on doing this for much longer than is needed for my PC to boot so I decided to turn it off and look inside the case. Nothing seems to be afoot, all connections are okay etc. So I plugged my PC in and turned it on, this time I could see all my components. It seems that the sound is coming from my 1st GPU (I have 2x 5770) but I don't know wtf is wrong, there is nothing stuck in the fan or anything like that. This time it eventually manages to spin up and then keep a continuous RPM instead of dropping down again and then my PC loads up. I do not believe this to be an overheating issue as my temps are fairly reasonable. Idling around 45-50 and hitting 75-80 under stress. Nor do I think it is a power issue, 650W is plenty. My specs are: 4GB DDR3 RAM AMD x4 Phenom II @ 3.2GHz 2x 5770 ATI GPUs Corsair 650W PSU Surprise surprise, I had this happen whilst I was writing this post. Thank goodness for auto-save. The only changes to my PC today are uninstalling Soluto and installing the latest version of Flash. Please help me! Thanks all.

try removing one gpu to isolate the problem. It sounds like one is broken or breaking, the odd fan sounds is from your motherboard trying to communicate with a gpu during POST and failing.

Yeah I have done, and the problem has now gone away it seems. I used it for several hours without incident last night. The problem card was an XFX 1GB 5770, I had actually had one of these before that was faulty and so I got a replacement. Looks like they are just destined to fail. On the upside now I have fucking lovely temps! 37C idle :) I will probably try and sell these cards and buy a shiny new nVidia model. It's just been nothing but constant trouble with ATi unfortunately.

[QUOTE=catch33;30985803]Yeah I have done, and the problem has now gone away it seems. I used it for several hours without incident last night. The problem card was an XFX 1GB 5770, I had actually had one of these before that was faulty and so I got a replacement. Looks like they are just destined to fail. On the upside now I have fucking lovely temps! 37C idle :) I will probably try and sell these cards and buy a shiny new nVidia model. It's just been nothing but constant trouble with ATi unfortunately.[/QUOTE] I've had over five ATi GPUs in these six years and I've never had a single problem with them. I'm absolutely certain the problem lays in your mobo, not in the GPU.

To confirm, swap the working gpu into the slot of the broken gpu. if the problem returns it is indeed your motherboard.

Well either the problem isn't fixed, or there is a totally new one altogether. I left my PC on overnight with no problems, and I used it for maybe 30-40 minutes when I woke up before I got a bluescreen error. I restarted my PC and this time when it loads into Windows the PC just hangs and freezes. I restart again. This time I boot into Windows and use it for maybe 2-3 minutes when the PC just cuts out and restarts. Then the next time it loads into Windows it cuts out pretty much instantly. However, in safe mode the PC is okay so I am assuming it is because of a program. I really need some fucking help here, my PC was absolutely fine 2 days ago and now it's utterly fucked. If I can get it to stop turning off I will try using the other GPU, but until this shit it was absolutely fine.

sounds like something's wrong with your video card drivers. if you post the bsod dump i'll analyze it

Yeah, ever since I bought my PC in 2009 I have had endless crashes and bluescreens all pointing to the ATi drivers, because they fucking suck ass. I had to stay on version 10.5 for a very long time because each driver release they put out usually completely fucks the FPS of games that I play. I am now on 11.3 and I went up to 11.6 but that fucked up the FPS of EVE Online so I had to go back down to 11.3. What a fucking joke. [url=http://www.mediafire.com/?76c4x780yy3xhlc]Here are the dump files[/url]. I am looking at them in BluescreenView and it hasn't got any recording of the last 4 crashes for some reason. Oh yeah, I was in safe mode for a while sorting out files so I could reformat (maybe that will help?). Now I'm back in the usual mode and it hasn't crashed yet, whereas before it would just turn off.. Why can't things just be consistent for once? So pissed off right now.. Thanks for the help!

PC was working fine for around 1 hour and then I get another BSOD ([url=http://www.mediafire.com/?76rh05fbijw6t26]dump file[/url]). Upon restarting after a few minutes I get another one, one I have never seen before. I am just going to try and reinstall Windows and see if that helps, because now I just keep getting fucking BSODs in normal mode and it is a different one each time ffs. Safe mode still works with no crashes so it must be an application or driver that I have installed at some point.

[code]Microsoft (R) Windows Debugger Version 6.11.0001.404 AMD64 Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Loading Dump File [D:\Naelstrof\Downloads\dumps\070811-21403-01.dmp] Mini Kernel Dump File: Only registers and stack trace are available Symbol search path is: SRV*D:\SYMBOLS64*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols Executable search path is: Windows 7 Kernel Version 7601 (Service Pack 1) MP (4 procs) Free x64 Product: WinNt, suite: TerminalServer SingleUserTS Built by: 7601.17592.amd64fre.win7sp1_gdr.110408-1631 Machine Name: Kernel base = 0xfffff800`01c11000 PsLoadedModuleList = 0xfffff800`01e56650 Debug session time: Thu Jul 7 20:05:44.828 2011 (GMT-6) System Uptime: 0 days 0:00:10.812 Loading Kernel Symbols ...................................................Unable to load image Unknown_Module_00000000`00000000, Win32 error 0n2 *** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for Unknown_Module_00000000`00000000 Unable to add module at 00000000`00000000 Loading User Symbols ******************************************************************************* * * * Bugcheck Analysis * * * ******************************************************************************* Use !analyze -v to get detailed debugging information. BugCheck 7E, {ffffffffc0000005, fffff80001dbc5f7, fffff880021bf938, fffff880021bf190} Probably caused by : ntkrnlmp.exe ( nt!ExAllocatePoolWithTag+517 ) Followup: MachineOwner ---------[/code] [code] Microsoft (R) Windows Debugger Version 6.11.0001.404 AMD64 Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Loading Dump File [D:\Naelstrof\Downloads\dumps\062911-17737-01.dmp] Mini Kernel Dump File: Only registers and stack trace are available Symbol search path is: SRV*D:\SYMBOLS64*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols Executable search path is: Windows 7 Kernel Version 7601 (Service Pack 1) MP (4 procs) Free x64 Product: WinNt, suite: TerminalServer SingleUserTS Built by: 7601.17592.amd64fre.win7sp1_gdr.110408-1631 Machine Name: Kernel base = 0xfffff800`01c11000 PsLoadedModuleList = 0xfffff800`01e56650 Debug session time: Tue Jun 28 23:32:05.240 2011 (GMT-6) System Uptime: 0 days 0:00:07.068 Loading Kernel Symbols ...................................................... Loading User Symbols Mini Kernel Dump does not contain unloaded driver list ******************************************************************************* * * * Bugcheck Analysis * * * ******************************************************************************* Use !analyze -v to get detailed debugging information. BugCheck 124, {0, fffffa80045b77a8, 0, 0} Probably caused by : hardware Followup: MachineOwner ---------[/code] [code] Microsoft (R) Windows Debugger Version 6.11.0001.404 AMD64 Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Loading Dump File [D:\Naelstrof\Downloads\dumps\062811-22495-01.dmp] Mini Kernel Dump File: Only registers and stack trace are available Symbol search path is: SRV*D:\SYMBOLS64*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols Executable search path is: Windows 7 Kernel Version 7601 (Service Pack 1) MP (4 procs) Free x64 Product: WinNt, suite: TerminalServer SingleUserTS Built by: 7601.17592.amd64fre.win7sp1_gdr.110408-1631 Machine Name: Kernel base = 0xfffff800`01c17000 PsLoadedModuleList = 0xfffff800`01e5c650 Debug session time: Tue Jun 28 07:58:34.552 2011 (GMT-6) System Uptime: 0 days 0:00:06.754 Loading Kernel Symbols ...................................................... Loading User Symbols Mini Kernel Dump does not contain unloaded driver list ******************************************************************************* * * * Bugcheck Analysis * * * ******************************************************************************* Use !analyze -v to get detailed debugging information. BugCheck 124, {0, fffffa80045c48f8, 0, 0} Probably caused by : hardware Followup: MachineOwner ---------[/code] [code]Microsoft (R) Windows Debugger Version 6.11.0001.404 AMD64 Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Loading Dump File [D:\Naelstrof\Downloads\dumps\062811-19656-01.dmp] Mini Kernel Dump File: Only registers and stack trace are available Symbol search path is: SRV*D:\SYMBOLS64*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols Executable search path is: Windows 7 Kernel Version 7601 (Service Pack 1) MP (4 procs) Free x64 Product: WinNt, suite: TerminalServer SingleUserTS Built by: 7601.17592.amd64fre.win7sp1_gdr.110408-1631 Machine Name: Kernel base = 0xfffff800`01c1f000 PsLoadedModuleList = 0xfffff800`01e64650 Debug session time: Tue Jun 28 12:09:52.537 2011 (GMT-6) System Uptime: 0 days 0:00:06.739 Loading Kernel Symbols ...................................................... Loading User Symbols Mini Kernel Dump does not contain unloaded driver list ******************************************************************************* * * * Bugcheck Analysis * * * ******************************************************************************* Use !analyze -v to get detailed debugging information. BugCheck 124, {0, fffffa80046048f8, 0, 0} Probably caused by : hardware Followup: MachineOwner ---------[/code] [code] Microsoft (R) Windows Debugger Version 6.11.0001.404 AMD64 Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Loading Dump File [D:\Naelstrof\Downloads\dumps\062111-25116-01.dmp] Mini Kernel Dump File: Only registers and stack trace are available Symbol search path is: SRV*D:\SYMBOLS64*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols Executable search path is: Windows 7 Kernel Version 7601 (Service Pack 1) MP (4 procs) Free x64 Product: WinNt, suite: TerminalServer SingleUserTS Built by: 7601.17592.amd64fre.win7sp1_gdr.110408-1631 Machine Name: Kernel base = 0xfffff800`01c05000 PsLoadedModuleList = 0xfffff800`01e4a650 Debug session time: Tue Jun 21 10:26:21.813 2011 (GMT-6) System Uptime: 11 days 0:34:32.368 Loading Kernel Symbols ............................................................... ................................................................ .......................................... Loading User Symbols Loading unloaded module list .................................................. ******************************************************************************* * * * Bugcheck Analysis * * * ******************************************************************************* Use !analyze -v to get detailed debugging information. BugCheck 7A, {fffff6fc400791b0, ffffffffc00000c0, abf20be0, fffff8800f236000} Probably caused by : ntkrnlmp.exe ( nt! ?? ::FNODOBFM::`string'+37bba ) Followup: MachineOwner ---------[/code] The latest one you gave me i couldn't do a bugcheck on for whatever reason, but most of these point to failing hardware. [editline]adf[/editline] As for the ntkrnlmp.exe bsod: a quick google says to update your motherboard. flash better bios onto it.

Ugh, fucking wonderful. Thanks for the help. I have reinstalled Windows now so I will see if I still get the crashes (who the fuck am I kidding? Of course I will!). I also already have the latest BIOS on my mobo. Oh yeah, something else that is really awesome: Now after reformatting, my PC takes several times longer to boot up! Woohoo! It used to stay on "Starting Windows" for maybe 10-15 seconds. Now I'm waiting 2 minutes. Fuck computers. I have an SSD drive too, what the fuck is this shit? In the boot settings I also have to make it boot from a different drive the OS is installed on otherwise it tells me there is nothing to boot from. What. The. Fuck.

I have managed to get the PC loading at the correct speed now (it was to do with my USB card reader). I also thought the problem had been fixed as I used my PC for maybe 1.5 hours without incident, but then I got a BSOD again. Fuck.. No fucking idea what I can do, is there a program I can get to try and test the motherboard? Also, I've noticed that once one crash happens, it seems that I get several more in succession. I usually just get fed up then and walk away, when I come back the PC is fine for a while and then I'll get a bunch of crashes again.. I have tried using my other GPU. Hopefully the other one is the problem causer. I have also installed the chipset drivers which may help too. Edit: PC was running absolutely fine for maybe 3 hours, went AFK for a bit and I come back to a bluescreen. Cunt!

I'm sorry you keep getting bluescreens, i'll analyze any you post to see if you can find the cause of them.

Thanks a lot, I appreciate it. I am now trying to see if it is a RAM problem. I have taken out one of my sticks, and so far it has been running fine for over 2 hours. If I find I still crash I will try it in a different slot. Then if another crash I will repeat with the other stick. If it still crashes I will try out memtest. I have also been running a graph for PSU voltages for the last hour and they have not changed whatsoever. If the PSU is still good (I imagine it will be, it's Corsair) then I will try to get my motherboard RMA'd. I don't think the GPUs are the problem as I have the error with both cards.

PC on for 6 hours now.. starting to look like it is indeed a RAM issue.

Well for the last few days I have been running on just 1 stick without any indicent whatsoever, PC is working great at the moment. So because of this I decided to try the suspected bad stick. I replaced the 1st stick in the same slot (2/4) and so far it hasn't crashed yet, and so far it has been quite a few hours (at least over five). So maybe my first mobo slot is faulty? I will try a single stick in there at some point.

Well the PC has been running fine on the other stick since my last post without crashing. I just stuck in the 2nd one so if it crashes I guess it is a mobo problem.