[SOLVED] Let's work this one out together - Noobs and Old Timers

[SilverLeaf]

LOL....just seen so many of those back in the days of Via and SIS chipsets......on ultra cheap systems built with quantum or maxtor hard drives, S3 vid cards, kingston value RAM.....always systems we enjoy throwing into the garbage can with an authoritative SLAM DUNK!

I've always disliked Biostar boards in the past as well. But a few years back, I decided to re-purpose my PC at home into my bench machine at the shop, and build something new for home. I was on a really, really tight budget, so I opted for a Biostar Sandy Bridge (H67) board from Newegg with some crazy half-price rebate thing. Damn thing has been running virtually non stop for over two years now without so much as a hiccup. Of course the new WD blue drive I put in it is already throwing bad sectors and failing self-tests with read errors.

You said gamer system, In any of those I am going to check the fan on the video card. Seen too many clogged beyond belief, and they do tend to run for a while before they crap.

Back on topic (sorry for the diversion):
I don't know how long the machine had been running, but looking at the original post, Speccy reports acceptable temps. Also, the fact that it reboots and continues to run again for the same amount of time seems to point to something task/schedule related rather than temps.

 

[atlanticjim]

OK, I'm game. The first thing I would do is test the hard drive. First the SMART short test, and, if it passes, the extended test.

Not the first thing I did but ... SMART Was ok and the drive showed no faults under testing.

 

[atlanticjim]

Test the memory as part of standard diagnosis - and HDD as CG said.

Also, stop the machine from rebooting on Blue Screen and check out what it actually says.

For the noobs, yes the first thing to do is disable reboot on bsod and enable mini dumps.
The bsod was a generic 0x000000f4 error, not much to work with but since IMHO 80% of bsod are hardware and 80% of those are memory, I ran MemTest from a live cd for six hours.
RAM is all good.

 

[atlanticjim]

This is the correct first step in my opinion. Not only this but you should verify how consistantly the system BSODs at 1 hour and 30 minutes by comparing bsod to system logs.

Edit: Oh right this is for newbies too, the reason why I would be doing this is to determine how I will proceed with my diagnosis. If the system BSODs every single time almost exactly at 1 hour and 30 minutes im going to determine whats happening at that time. First steps would be to check task scheduler and probably have process monitor running before that mark.

Logs and procmon were no help.

 

[atlanticjim]

All of the above but as you mentioned it I would like to see the tools he used from the desktop. Rebooter Pro isn't in there is it, or something like it?

CCleaner and SAS. Not very sophisticated.

 

[mr m]

For the noobs, yes the first thing to do is disable reboot on bsod and enable mini dumps.

I do this on all PC's I work on. Why MS wants a problematic system to reboot after a BSOD makes no sense to me.

 

[atlanticjim]

Regarding the pirated OS.
I obtained permission from the owner from the very start to nuke and pave. He also agreed to purchase a valid license if necessary.
I did a sfcscan and found no errors.
I did an OS update via WSUS offline update and it still bsod'd.
I nuked and paved and loaded a fresh OS.
Still BSOD

My two cents about pirated OS. I will work on it but if I suspect a crack is the problem, I stop and recommend purchase of a valid license.

 

[HFultzjr]

Check power supply specs and if ok, check if power supply is bad.

I've seen some Home Gaming machines where the power supply was not sufficient for the hardware used.

Gaming machines need power and lots of it.

Can't run a decent gaming system on a 350W power supply.

 

[ABTECH]

It is a gaming rig I am leaning towards video drivers as being the problem or overclocking on the CPU. You have already done all of the testing I would have done but a lot of times on those rigs video can be an issue.

Edit: My apologies for testing purposes I would test the video card on the gaming rig as part of the hardware diagnostic. It is logical to look at video or CPU issues on a gaming rig.

 

[damitman]

talking to customer,get an idea of what they know or don`t, who built it,when, what they are doing when machine bsod`s, what is on it you need saved and so on would determine if I backup parts of it or the whole drive.

then pop the case, look it over, blow out the bunnys, then hook it up, fire it up and start checking event logs and hidden tasks ect.

home built gaming rigs are a pita, from cheap parts to compatability issues to a host of wrong or improper settings in ram timming to voltages, this list is very long

biggest problem is cheap boards and psu, bad power regulation from (motherboard)power starved hardware (power supply).these are hard to trouble-shoot, need a supply of good knowns to swap out. Vid cards are a pain all by themselves,wrong driver, borked install of right driver not seated good, srewy fan, bad paste, (not enough power scotty) "im trying JIM"

if it has been running a while, even if bluescreenview spells it out for you, i still remove ram, vid card ect. clean the contacts with 91% alcohol and reseat, as a thats just me kinda thing

after finding and repairing first problem, i would run a stress test on the machine to see if i could cause anymore errors before returning to customer.

 

[ComputerRepairTech]

Logs and procmon were no help.

but it does happen like clockwork right?

 

[atlanticjim]

To address a few more comments and suggestions:

I ran a heavy duty burn in on both the CPU and the GPU. And the temp monitors were all WNL.

I ran a hardware diagnostic from a live CD and it was all good. Then I left the cd running for four hours and did not bsod. Hmmmm.

I checked and updated all the drivers, I was specifically thinking video, but no love, the BSOD reoccured.

I pulled the video card, reloaded win 7 with only the generic MS drivers and used the onboard video. Still bsod.

 

[atlanticjim]

but it does happen like clockwork right?

I never actually timed it, but it did seem to happen like clockwork.

HINT: at the bottom of the BSOD screen I noticed "physical memory dump FAILED with status 0xC0000010"

 

[atlanticjim]

First Priority Back The Machine Up:
- Remove the HDD slave it to another machine
- Smart short Test it
- If all good, back it up with an image.
- If not good, do a datagrab from D7.
- Then whilst slaved check the bluescreens.

I ALWAYS backup machines, too many times Ive seen bad HDD's go downhill very quickly and if I hadnt have backed it up, it makes my life a lot harder.

Of course the drive was slaved and imaged at the start. And the data was backed up with FABS.

 

[atlanticjim]

Check power supply specs and if ok, check if power supply is bad.

I've seen some Home Gaming machines where the power supply was not sufficient for the hardware used.

Gaming machines need power and lots of it.

Can't run a decent gaming system on a 350W power supply.

500w is plenty

Filler

 

[NOOB_TECH]

I’m late to the game here.
If it’s pirated, I will not work on it. I won’t even troubleshoot it…. game over.

Assuming that it is blue screening I would start with the following:
Hard drive health check
Check drivers in device manager
Check inside the case-Is everything plug in correctly/ heat sink seated properly
Then I want to check in safe mode and see if the same problem happens.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

500w is plenty

Filler

But is it an honest 500? Or a cheapo 500 where 500 is really a stretch...and it's a dirty 500. What brand?

 

[damitman]

500w is plenty

Im sorry sir, but this is incorect, amps rule, how many rails, how many amps, a 500W turd with 15 amps won`t cut it, on a single rail. a real gaming rig is hungry.

 

[ABTECH]

Is it too late to recommend an exorcism? Just an added suggestion . Seriously your BSOD error would lead me to believe memory but you said you did a thorough hardware test.

Did you try one RAM module at a time in the machine to see is one was causing the faulty behavior?

 

[ComputerRepairTech]

Alright at this point if you've experienced or heard of this situation before then you should have the answer already.

The main things to keep in mind here is that it does crash like clock work (or so i've heard in the past). He already reinstalled windows.

There is only a few situations where something like this can happen so reliably. Unless im mistaken here and I don't think I am this only leaves 2 primary possibilities.

1. Something is influencing the power every 90 minutes...which i suppose is possible but not likely for a residential gamer.

2. Something is telling something to do something every 90 minutes and you already know reinstalling windows doesn't fix it.

Edit: hmm you know now that I think about it...was the issue every 90 minutes or every 60 minutes? I can't recall.