Diagnosing mobo dying?

**Kuishen** · 2012-11-15 18:58

So been getting a few random blue screens, and most times it fails to fully dump physical memory while in blue screen.

Talked with my friend and he thinks it is my mobo dying but obviously would like more than one opinion and a lot of you are more tech savvy.

Computer specs:
AMD Phenom II X4 970 3.50GHz
NVIDIA GTX 460
8g RAM
Windows 7 (64 bit)
MOBO: ASUS M4A89GTD PRO/USB3
500w power supply

The first time it blue screened I was able to restart it fine and didn't have any problems for the rest of the night. The next morning it happened again while I was in the bathroom and restarted it, went to the Event Viewer and it blue screened again. Started it up in safe mode looked around Event Viewer couldn't find anything that I could understand well enough to do anything about and attempted to start it up again normally. This time it froze on the mobo screen a couple times and so I turned it off and left it for about an hour. Come back and start it up normally and it has been working fine ever since, this was 4-5 days ago.

Ran anti-virus and spybot SnD, nothing big came up.

Today it blue screened again, (would like to note that all times were when nothing big was really running. The first time was while playing Killing Floor on steam and the other times were basically with just Pidgin and Itunes running). So decided I need to start testing components to figure out what is dying.

I ran prime95 (64bit) to test my cpu and ram. 30 seconds into the test it blue screens again, fails to fully dump physical memory and I have to manually restart it. As it's booting up it gets stuck before the MOBO screen, restarts, this time it makes it to the MOBO screen but gets stuck and restarts, this time it makes it past MOBO screen but freezes before Windows screen and restarts, finally it gets to Windows screen and a blue screen shows up for half a second and it restarts and then fails to do anything. I didn't touch anything during this process it was just going on it's own.

Based on this my friend is convinced it is my MOBO dying, with possibility of cpu and power supply being involved.

I let it sit turned off for an hour or so and came back and it's running fine. I'm monitoring my temps with SpeedFan and everything looks normal (CPU at 36C, core at 36C).

What do you guys think?

EDIT: Please note I'm really not that tech savvy when answering.

**Jintu** · 2012-11-15 19:11

Just start happening or is this a somewhat new motherboard? If not new, have you changed any hardware/installed software or attempted to oc anything recently? Is it possible for you to download bluescreenview and purposely bsod again and post the log?

**Kuishen** · 2012-11-15 19:34

Originally Posted by Jintu

Just start happening or is this a somewhat new motherboard? If not new, have you changed any hardware/installed software or attempted to oc anything recently? Is it possible for you to download bluescreenview and purposely bsod again and post the log?

Just started happening, 2 year old mobo. Haven't changed any hardware, haven't changed any drivers, the only thing that I changed as far as software are regular windows updates and I bought a wired xbox 360 controller and installed the drivers for that but the first blue screen happened before that.

How do I post the log? Just right click and copy item on the most recent minidump file and then paste it here?

**Kuishen** · 2012-11-15 20:50

Sorry for double but in safe mode atm and want to get this posted before it dies again here is the blue screen from just now:

Spoiler: show

**Crowort** · 2012-11-16 07:56

First thing I'd do is download and burn Ultimate boot CD, you might need to do that on a working PC. After booting from it run mem86 from the memory options. Leave it to do as many passes as you can stand, overnight is good. RAM is one of the easiest things to test and cheap to replace.

**Artemicon** · 2012-11-16 11:15

I would try reseating your DIMMs and trying them individually in DIMM slot A1.

Based on whats said here and my experience (mainly with HPC servers)

DIMM > MB > CPU > PSU

That's my priority for fallout for me because DIMMs and MBs tend to be shite more than CPUs PSUs.

**chiyio** · 2012-11-16 12:13

what brand is your ps? My bet is on heat, or a cheap power supply.

**Kuishen** · 2012-11-16 19:16

Raidmax, it came as a bundle with my tower.

I do the mem86 thing tonight and post the results.

**kuronosan** · 2012-11-17 12:29

When my motherboard was dying I was getting constant memory errors. Usually the PSU will die before the Mobo. I made the mistake of replacing the board first only to find out it was the PSU that had died (because the new board wouldn't boot). Generally a dying board will give you POST errors before BSOD.

PSU death can mimic the symptoms of a dying Mobo really closely because the components will not be getting enough power.

If you have a spare PSU hook it up and see if the problems go away.

**Jintu** · 2012-11-17 18:18

afd.sys is normally networking related, possibly a memory leak from the NIC. Have you attempted to update your network drivers?

Any chance you can get a bluescreenview log of the next dump?

**Kuishen** · 2012-11-17 18:19

I don't have a spare PSU but I'll buy a new one since mine is most likely really cheaply made anyways.

Here are the results from memtest86 that I ran overnight last night:

Code:

Time: 10:34:20  Iterations: 6  Test_Sel: Std  Pass: 11  Errors: 1

Tst: 3  Pass: 5  Failing Address: 00000100014 - 1.0MB  Good: ffffffff  Bad: fff8fff  Err-bits: 00070000  Count: 1  CPU: 2

I have no idea what any of that means so input would be appreciated.

EDIT: To my knowledge have not done anything with network drivers. The next dump after that was also afd.sys.

**Jintu** · 2012-11-17 18:24

Assuming you have 2x4gb sticks, remove one from your pc and run the test again on 4gb and see if there is an error. Run the test again with the other stick of ram and see if it reports an error as well.

**Kuishen** · 2012-11-20 18:21

Tested each stick individually, only one had an error. Put them both back in but switched slots, it bsod'd again today, took stick with error out, started it back up again and it bsod'd again right away. Took it outside, cleaned out dust and made sure all the fans are working. Running fine again, for now... It seems to be that when it bsod's if I leave it off for a couple of hours I can run it fine again for days. I don't know if that is indicative of anything.

So I'm positive that based on having each memory stick in a different slot, only having the non-error one in and it still having issues, it's not the RAM, my friend also said that a single error on RAM isn't exactly proof of anything anyways.

What's my next move?

EDIT: On both bsod's today comp restarted before it had time to create a dump file so I can't post logs of them. :\ I didn't catch what the cause was either.

EDIT: bsod before bed was caused by dxgmms1.sys will do some google fu to see what it is, still not dumping properly so no actual logs.

**Jintu** · 2012-11-21 16:16

Have you made sure your settings are set to create a small memory dump? Start>Run>sysdm.cpl>Advanced>Startup>Settings>Unde r System Failure-Automatically Restart checked, Write Debugging Info-Small memory.

You can also try and pinpoint a faulty driver via Driver Verifier: http://www.sevenforums.com/crash-loc...s-drivers.html

**Kuishen** · 2012-11-21 18:37

It was set to do a Kernel Memory Dump, but set it to small memory dump.

I downloaded and did a clean install on my gpu driver because after googling dxgmms1.sys it said that a faulty driver is most likely the cause for it, and gpu is the most common one. I'll try using that driver verifier.

**Kuishen** · 2012-12-05 06:31

Alright been a busy few weeks, I appreciate all the help I've gotten so far.

Quick Recap on what I've done: (Some of these steps came from googling the individual causes of the BSODs)

Ran anti-virus and spybot checkers.
Ran prime95 to stress ram and cpu, it BSOD'd quickly after starting test.
Ran memtest86 on both sticks and then each stick individually (one had 1 error), moved both sticks around, tried running with just one of each of the sticks, no dice.
Clean install of GPU driver.
Uninstalled AVG 2012 Free.
Installed Microsoft Security Essentials.
Ran chkdsk twice, no errors both times.

And finally I ran Driver Verifier. Here is where it gets interesting. Following the steps on that forum, I edited the settings in Verifier.exe just like it said to in the link. I rebooted, and it BSOD'd right as the windows logo started to come up. I restarted computer a number of times and it would BSOD in the same exact spot every single time. I had to run Startup Recovery from my Windows CD to get back onto my computer. Hopefully this is indicative of a simple driver problem.

So my question to you is, where can I find the dump file for Driver Verifier and what else do you guys need with it to help me solve this?

**Jintu** · 2012-12-05 21:00

You still haven't gotten a minidump? Is your minidump folder present? C:\Windows\Minidump

**Kuishen** · 2012-12-06 16:14

I uploaded all of the minidumps from this issue into a zip file on bgbox. There should be more because I've had way more BSODs than that but like I said it was having issues dumping the memory a lot. Here's the link, I have no idea what to do with these. Based on the dates on them I'm not sure if it actually made minidumps for the driver verifier test I did... But it would be in the last 3-4 or so.

http://files.bluegartr.com/1c171b174...a20caf7fd1.zip

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