Fresh pair of eyes please!

[~Darkseeker~]

Okay, me and a couple friends at work have been bashing away at this problem for about 2 days now. We built an APU-based machine for a friend, then decided that the best way to improve its actually quite meager performance was to add a dedicated GPU anyway (Dedicated GPU was not much more than faster RAM, and we were re-using 1333MHz stuff, crap for APUs).

Anyway, we installed windows and it seemed fine. He takes it home, suddenly loads of bluescreens when it's idle.

For some reason my friend decided to install a cracked version of win7x64 Ultimate on it. I thought this was the reason, so I put a fresh install of Win7x64 pro (genuine) on it today. Grabbed all the latest drivers from the mobo manufacturer's website (Gigabyte) and copied data back onto it.

It sat on the bench in the office for about 3 hours, backing up, reinstalling windows, installing drivers and restoring files to it. didn't BSOD once. However, now he's got it home again, it's doing it again

It's still a way out of date early SP1 install, I'm thinking after the multitide of WUPDates it needs it will be alright - however I'm not certain enough to bet on that. The disk I used was a Dell OEM Win7 pro disk, pre-loaded to service pack 1.

We're seeing bugchecks relating to Driver IRQLs, paging faults and such. I'm thinking it could be faulty memory, or perhaps BIOS needs updating?

Some error codes we've seen: 0x0000001e, 0x00000050, 0x0000003b

In the past I've only ever seen the 0x50 bugcheck when memory was at fault, however 2 hours of memtest86 threw up no errors.

It only seems to bugcheck when it's idle. It'll sit there running Prime95 FPU/Blend tests or Valley/Heaven benchmark for hours and be fine. As soon as you let it idle for a bit, it bugchecks.

specs:

CPU: AMD A10-7870k (Black edition) @ 3.9GHz (Boost 4.1GHz) (Stock clocks, didn't overclock it!) - cooled with a CM AIO cooler

Mobo: Gigabyte F2A88XN-WIFI

GPU: Gigabyte R7 260 (OC Edition) - Didn't overclock this either!

RAM: Corsair XMS3 DDR3-1333 (Running at stock clocks in BIOS on auto-DRAM voltage)

HDD: Seagate SHDD 1TB

PSU: Corsair 550w semi-mod (CS series I think?)

Shout suggestions at me, I know I keep saying 'Friend' in reference to the gent who's PC it is, reality is he's also kinda my boss!

 

[crazyman143]

Do you think it could be trying to run some task during idle that causes the crash? Seems unlikely on a fresh install, but have you checked event viewer for anything enlightening? Sounds very odd.

 

[~Darkseeker~]

Sitting here thrumming it over, I think I might have cracked it.

Looking at the Mobo, it says it may need BIOS updates to work with Kaveri... and although the Godavari APUs are in the compatibility list, it seems likely that might need a BIOS update too - and there is an update available specifically for Godavari APUs on Gigabyte's site

Think that a BIOS issue might cause these completely random bugchecks? (I say random because every single time it does it, it's a different STOP code!)

 

[setishock]

The Dell disc is configured for a Dell machine. They have enough clout they can get MS to make bastard versions of windows to suite their requirements. I'd bet real money if you went and got a retail or a non machine specific disc it would work fine.

 

[BK_123]

Yeah give the BIOS update a bash and see what happens.

 

[cb600fshornet]

Right click on "computer" and go into system properties. Open up the device manager and expand the "Processors" section. If this is detecting your CPU correctly then chances are you don't need a BIOS update and this is a different issue.

If you're getting a multitude of different blue screen errors after a fresh installation then from experience it's normally RAM, Motherboard or CPU problems (prioritised in that order). Before you go swapping bits out, is your friend using any peripherals, external hard drives etc that might be causing a problem? Did the PC bluescreen at all when it was with you?

 

[~Darkseeker~]

Morning chums!

Yeah as it turns out, I think it was just a windows update situation. Had a chat with him over the weekend, seems after a multitude of windows updates had gone in, stability has vastly improved.

Was certain it wasn't a hardware issue, as after 2 hours of P95 blend tests it was fine, passed memtest86 after 2 hours and was rock solid in Valley benchmark for 2 hours also.

anyway, seems like it's all good now!

 

[cb600fshornet]

Sounds a bit weird to be honest, a PC shouldn't bluescreen simply because it's not updated, I built a lot of secondhand machines and they all performed fine even from fresh installation before all the updates went on. Maybe it was just bedding in, I recently bought some new RAM, fitted it to a PC and it bluescreened a couple of times. Since then I haven't had a problem!