PC freezes, restarts itself, bluescreen of death - Please Help!

[pradip850]

Hello everyone

I want to share my PC problems here, I am hoping to help myself and others because I know someone did/will or is going through the same problem as I am and like the other posts on the net have helped me with previous PC problems, I believe so will this. Below I have attached the link of my PC specs which I found by using the software CPU-Z which is a free application that identifies your PC specifications (you can get this application from CPUID - System & hardware benchmark, monitoring, reporting), someone willing to help may find this useful;

 

http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb142/pradip850/PCSpecs.png

 

I brought this PC custom built from eBay.

I believe it has 700watt PSU (power supplying unit)

1tb Hard Drive splitted (partitioned) into 2, C:/ 150GB and D:/ 750GB

Using Windows 7 64 bit Operating System, (This happened even when I was using Windows 7 32bit, and XP 32bit)

The rest of the specs are shown in the picture link above.

 

The problem;

is that while I am playing games, my PC freezes and restarts itself, after restarting a little window pops up giving details of the error saying something like "Bluescreen" and bunch of code errors which I have no clue of. This normally happens when I am making my PC work hard. However this is less likely to happen when I am playing certain games. Like for instance this is more likely to happen while playing Counter Strike Source (CSS) comparing to Warcraft DOTA (Defence Of The Ancient), because I believe there are more game character movements going in the game during playing DOTA than CSS and I believe this makes my PC work hard (I am not saying that this doesn't happen during CSS, but less likely than DOTA).

 

It also happens rarely when I am not even playing games, like just browsing websites and etc. The PC freezes and restarts or the PC freezes and I have to restart.

 

This is one of the main reason why I get kicked out of games in DOTA because in the middle of the game my PC freezes and restarts and this unbalances the team (so I have been banned by many hosts).

 

This problem is really really annoying, as you never know when the PC will freeze, could be during games or during very important work.

 

If anyone of you have been through this problem and have solved it, please do share it, and unlike many other posts, I promise I will post comments mentioning what was the problem so to help others with similar situation.

 

I have heard this could be due to many reason, please write down the list in order you want me to carry out and I will do it and post a feedback according it.

 

If you are posting any instructions, please kindly write it down in clear steps so it can help me and others with similar problems.

 

Thank you very much for taking your time to read this. Any effort is very very much appreciated.

 

 

PS: If I've posted in the wrong thread, please tell me where to post this. Thanks.

[Dalo Harkin]

Do you know how to do a dxdiag report? if so post it here.

if not (open a cmd (command) window and type in dxdiag just post the dispaly 1 and sound 1 tabs here

 

If It was just crashing while gaming I would say GPU, but as its not I would say RAM, for the record in your system you should be running PC8500 not PC6400, 6400 will do but it's not ideal.

as you didnt build this yourself and its a few years old now RAM was VERY expensive around this time

 

Open control panel, then select administrative tools, then select Memory Diagnostic Tools (it will bring up a box asking to restart and then test, select that)

[pradip850]

Do you know how to do a dxdiag report? if so post it here.

if not (open a cmd (command) window and type in dxdiag just post the dispaly 1 and sound 1 tabs here

 

If It was just crashing while gaming I would say GPU, but as its not I would say RAM, for the record in your system you should be running PC8500 not PC6400, 6400 will do but it's not ideal.

as you didnt build this yourself and its a few years old now RAM was VERY expensive around this time

 

Open control panel, then select administrative tools, then select Memory Diagnostic Tools (it will bring up a box asking to restart and then test, select that)

 

First of all thank you very much for taking your time to help, below I've attached the picture link of the dxdiag report you've requested.

 

http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb142/pradip850/dxdiag.png

 

I also ran the "Windows Memory Diagnostic Tools", By default it was set to "Standard", there were 3 type of test in "Option (F1)", which were "Basic, Standard and Extended",

 

When I done the Standard test, everything seemed fine, PC restarted and said I have no errors, but when I tried running "Extended", the percentage bar would get stuck in like around 20%, I had to abort it because it was stuck in that percentage value for around good 5 to 10 mins, I tried the "Extended" option twice and the same thing happened, so I aborted it.

 

So does that mean the problem is arising because I am using PC6400 RAM instead of PC8500 RAM?

 

Once again thank you very much.

[Dalo Harkin]

If it cant pass the tests, then it would indicate that one or both of the sticks are faulty.

Remove one of them and re try the test, if the same happens then try the other stick on its own and see if it passes.

One should pass, as its VERY uncommon for both sticks to go at the same time.

 

PC8500 is faster RAM and it can be matched to the frequency of the CPU which means it runs better for Overclocking. If you dont plan on overclocking then its not the end of the world, but as one of your sticks are bad then its not worth putting PC6400 in, just get PC8500 as its about £30-40 for 2GB now

 

So run the test on each stick independantly and see if one passes

 

(if none pass then, try another set of DIMM slots as its not uncommon for these to go too)

[pradip850]

If it cant pass the tests, then it would indicate that one or both of the sticks are faulty.

Remove one of them and re try the test, if the same happens then try the other stick on its own and see if it passes.

One should pass, as its VERY uncommon for both sticks to go at the same time.

 

PC8500 is faster RAM and it can be matched to the frequency of the CPU which means it runs better for Overclocking. If you dont plan on overclocking then its not the end of the world, but as one of your sticks are bad then its not worth putting PC6400 in, just get PC8500 as its about £30-40 for 2GB now

 

So run the test on each stick independantly and see if one passes

 

(if none pass then, try another set of DIMM slots as its not uncommon for these to go too)

 

I done some research for application that will help me test my RAM, I found one application called "memtest86+" do you recommend me trying that as well before getting physical or do you think it's not necessary? Please let me know. Thanks for your response. Cheers.

[Dalo Harkin]

They all pretty much do the same thing, and you have to make an ISO image to run memtest, If you cant pass the windows one you dont have a chance with passing Memtest

[pradip850]

They all pretty much do the same thing, and you have to make an ISO image to run memtest, If you cant pass the windows one you dont have a chance with passing Memtest

 

They all pretty much do the same thing, and you have to make an ISO image to run memtest, If you cant pass the windows one you dont have a chance with passing Memtest

 

Hi there,

I am sorry I haven't posted any updates.

 

Ok, basically what I done was remove some RAM. Below I've shown the picture of the motherboard I've got to mention what I did. (It might be helpful to others who are going through the similar problem as me)

 

http://silentdigital.com/shops/images/N7AD-SLI%28Enlarge%29.jpg

 

Since there are 4 RAM slots in the motherboard that I've got (2 x yellow and 2 x orange) and I had total of 8GB ram, so each slot contained 2GB ram (2 x 4 = 8GB).

 

How did I know which RAM i should have replaced/remove?

 

Well few months back, I was using Windows 32bit, and the 32bit operation system i guess only allow you to use around 3GB RAM even though if you've got 8GB installed? I was still having problem back then, so I thought it must 1 or both RAM from the first 4GB that has the problem,

 

What did you do then?

 

All I done was replace the RAMs on the yellow ram slots by the RAMs on the orange ram slots.

 

So did you pass the "Windows Memory Diagnostic" test then?

 

Well, I dind't try the basic test because it was already fine (No Error) even when I had 8GB installed (If you read up, you will understand). So I went for "Extended" test and wierdly I still had the same problem, the loading stopped at around 20% so I aborted the test.

 

So are you still geting BSOD (Blue Screen of Death), PC Freeze..or the problems that you were having before after removing the RAMs?

 

Well it's been about 3-4 days that I haven't had any problems yet, but I will write another post in about another week or two to let you what is happing.

 

Thank you very much for your help and guidance "Dalo Harkin", and to the rest who are reading this post, I hope it has become some help to y