Blue screen blues

[MajorMayhem]

Help! My machine is on the fritz and I can't figure out what the problem is. I know this is not a tech support forum but I know there are a lot for smart people here and maybe someone could look through my minidumps and tell me what they think. I believe all my BSOD errors are related to the same piece of hardware/software but I can't narrow it down.

[lurker]

And the error screen itself said?

[MajorMayhem]

Oh I had one or two Driver_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL and and and well it's in the dump files. GEEEEEEEEEZ!!!!!!! And don't say, "Oh you have a bad driver." I know that might be the problem. I don't know which one. I have tested my memory for 8 hours with memtest 86+ and it seems fine. I also recently installed a PCIE ATI 4830 that seemed to be working great but I will play some games for like hours and then either spontaneously or on shutting down Winblows I will get these forsaken errors. I am not new to PC troubleshooting but this one is proving to be a mother. I have reinstalled my OS, tried all different drivers for my Sound Blaster Live, removed all unnesessary hardware and moved my memory around. This crap is driving me up the wall.

[MajorMayhem]

Oh and did I mention the occasional spontaneous shutdowns. I want to throw a grenade in my case and duck for cover.

[MajorMayhem]

Oh and by the way Lurker....I am still trying to figure out just what the hell your avatar is supposed to be. I looks like that retarded dragon from the Sagwa the siamese cat show. He He... Don't hate me bacause I'm funny as all get out.

[MajorMayhem]

Sorry Lurker forgot the r....... in your name...... that is..........

[MajorMayhem]

Please forgive my poor spelling and tasteless humor.

[lurker]

Well the default app to open the dumps didn't do anything useful, looking at it as text was useless... So either give me some stop screen output or tell me what to do, I'm not interested enough to look up how to read them myself.

http://keychain.patternspider.net/archive/koc0001.html

[MajorMayhem]

Yes Sir, look here http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=35246 Don't be intimidated it is pretty easy. I know you probably could not care less but it really won't take much of your time and it is really something every Windows user should have installed and know how to use. It is worth you time to have this knowledge.

[Argh]

From the sounds of your problems... I'd say that you might be looking at trouble with the power supply, or the mobo. Have you checked to make sure you're not under-volted on any rails at full load? You said stuff about removing hardware and moving memory around- have you tried just keeping one stick in, OS HD only, and then seeing how long it goes before another crash? And have you checked for any new BIOS updates, or if you've done that since you bought it, have you tried rolling it back?

[SwiftSpear]

I've had bad RAM cause an Driver_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL bluescreen as well.

It's easy enough to run a RAM checker... always a good idea when a machine is bluescreening. If you can run a good 6 hours in the RAM diagnostic http://www.memtest.org/ then you can say with 99% certainty that it's not RAM causing the problem. Just run it over night.

Honestly though, it can just be unstable drivers when that happens. Have you updated your video or motherboard drivers recently? Installed any new hardware? Any other interesting info?

[MajorMayhem]

I have not gone to that extent but I have removed and uninstalled my TV card and 3 of my fans. I actually, perhaps prematurely, ordered a 650 watt supply with a dedicated PCIE connector that is waiting in my mancave to be installed. The other supply I had didn't have it's own PCIE connector but it did have SATA style for the hard drives so it wasn't that old. I don't keep up with all these PSU revisions like I probably should. A little history on the board it, it is an ASRock 939 dual SATA2 using the ULI chipset. It is one of the only boards that has both True AGP and TRU PCIE x16 slots. I had been using an AGP Nvidia 6800 for the longest time and it was rock stable. I have recently installed an ATI 4830 that instead of using a dedicated PCIE connector (with my supply didn't have) I used the supplied adapter that came with the card allowing you to hook up 2 of the oldskool molex connectors (the 4 pin type for the harddrives and whatnot). I felt when I first installed the vid card the machine ran really good for like a month and then the problems started. I was thinking along the same lines as you so hence the PSU which I will have to install tonight. Hey I got a good deal on the suppply. It was 50 bucks, latest revision, SLI certified which I don't care about and made by compucase which has good reviews. I just hope it does the trick. So do you think undervoltage could case all these erratic problems. I based my way of thinking on logic and experience. I was a bit hasty on the purchase without weeding out everything else first but I figured what the heck it was probably time for a supply update anyways as the whole adapter deal was halfassed imho.

[SwiftSpear]

Certainly the PSU can cause that problem... but it's pretty unlikely IMHO. Those adapters usually work fine.

Keep in mind, installing and uninstalling hardware always introduces the possibility you might have scratched or shocked one of the other components inside accidentally. There's really no guarantee it's a logically related part to something you've just worked with.

[Argh]

Yup, it could be something like static discharge, if you're handling the parts without good grounding first, etc.

That said... it sounds like you knew enough to put it together, so I have to assume you took basic precautions.

Try the new PSU, one stick of RAM, and the bare minimum to run your OS, see what happens. That eliminates a lot of possible causes. The change from the GPU on the AGP rail to PCIE, though... it really depends on how small a wattage your previous PSU was putting out.

And, given your symptoms, there's always the possibility it's heat-related, although I doubt it. Given the motherboard, though, I'd definitely look at BIOS updates- those exotic combo boards were a strange breed of hardware.

[MajorMayhem]

Thanks for the comments. Yeah I am like an oldskool PC freak from days long past. I have built a machine or 30 in my day. Actually I used to work for a company called Kinetics that was bought out by NCR. We made those self service touchscreen kiosks you get your boarding pass from in airports. Before that I worked for a PC retailer for a couple of years after I got out of school for electronics. I usually have to rely only on myself to fix these kinds of problems as most of the so called experts in the tech forums seem to only know how to take things so far before I lose them. I know there is a pretty sharp bunch in here and you guys haven't disappointed me with your suggestions. I don't know what it is but some times when you talk to people you can just tell who gets it and who doesn't. As far as the exotic board goes, yeah I was skeptical on going this route but it has really turned out to be an awesome machine. Before you all say things like "OH, that might be your problem!" I will reluctantly inform you that I have been OCing this thing 400Mhz since day one but it has always been rock solid and a AMD 64 X2 3800+ Overclock on this board has been well documented. To tell you the truth 400Mhz is mild for this chip. I have an Arctic 64 on it and it never gets above 116 deg F under full load which is nothing for an AMD chip. It's too early to say, but I put in the new PSU last night and things just seem snappier right off the bat so I am keeping my fingures crossed. Yes I do have the official latest BIOS update. There are modded BIOS out there but for the mild OC I am doing they are not necessary. You might say stop the OC or all else is irrelivant but this all seemed to start shortly after I started using my PCIE video card and non of the minidumps point to the video card so this make you believe it is putting too much drain on the system. Does that make sense to you guys. You see the minidumps point all over the place, first driver, then zonealarm (which I have never had any problems with) then it was something else random I don't remember and then it was the usb.sys and then the NIC driver. This along with the occasionaly sontaneous power offs (yes I have it set not to reboot on errors) brought back all those past experiences of kooky random issues I've seen before that send you on wild goose chases. Like for instance the time one of my machines what spitting out all kinds of random errors it turned out to be the HDD which failed within the week. None of the bluescreen indicated the HDD was the problem but I assure you it was. I mean I was getting all kinds of registry corruption and all kinds of things. Well, sorry to ramble, but hopefully this PSU fixs the issue cause if it doesn't everything I have just said is null and void. Shine on you crazy diamonds

[imbaczek]

holy wall of text batman

[SwiftSpear]

Fundimentally, a BSOD is a windows memory access error, so there's alot of potential hardware failures that can contribute to it's occurance, and several non hardware issues as well.

[Peet]

A BSOD is an uncaught exception at the kernel level...isn't always a memory access error. IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL means that the irq level is higher than it should be for windows to keep chugging along happily. Could be a memory or motherboard or peripheral hardware (anything issued an irq) issue but is just as likely a bad driver.

[MajorMayhem]

The only reason I am reluctant to think it's a bad driver is because I have used all these drivers before on XP Pro and thy worked fine. Like I said I took out my second matched pair and it seems better now but only time will tell. Still a little buggy but that's Windows for ya. If I do another reinstall at some point I am putting XP pro w/SP2 back in because this home edition with SP3 is not winning me over.