Tech Support Guy System Info Utility version 1.0.0.2
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium, Service Pack 1, 64 bit
Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) II X4 630 Processor, AMD64 Family 16 Model 5 Stepping 2
Processor Count: 4
RAM: 4094 Mb
Graphics Card: AMD Radeon HD 6670, 1024 Mb
Hard Drives: C: Total - 466936 MB, Free - 427217 MB;
Motherboard: ASUSTeK Computer INC., M4A78LT-M-LE
Antivirus: avast! Antivirus, Updated and Enabled
I apologise first of all if this is the wrong section. I don't know yet if this is caused by my OS, hardware or what. I've been having BSODs and reboots that appear random for the past... 3? 4 weeks? Something like that. I had made no hardware or software changes before they happened, it appeared to be out of nowhere.
To start with I was getting BSODs more often than I am now. It could happen when loading windows or it could happen after I had been using the internet for 3 hours - there was no discernible pattern. The only thing that stood out was that playing Minecraft was guaranteed to throw up a BSOD within 5 minutes. I could play any other game without a BSOD so you can imagine for quite some time I thought Minecraft was the culprit and stopped playing it. However the BSODs didn't go away.
First I tried scanning for viruses, then I did a defragment of my hard drive, checked for outdated drivers, updated a few of them anyway.
I then checked the temperatures of my hard drive, CPU and GPU. Hard drive was a little on the toasty side but still well within acceptable limits. The GPU and CPU were just downright cold even right before a crash. I was lucky enough to spot my CPU and memory usage right before a crash and they were both low.
I opened up my computer and checked for dust - quite a lot had amassed in a short space of time so I removed as much dust as I could as carefully as I could with my fingertips and some compressed air. I also removed the CPU fan to get the dust out of the heatsink as I'd never done that before because I used to think it was more complicated than it actually is. After I closed it all up and switched it back on I noticed a drastic drop in crashes and BSODs. Even with Minecraft I struggled to force a crash - but I did eventually. The problem was not gone, just reduced in severity.
Next thing I tried was running Memtest overnight. Several passes later, no errors, not a single complaint so I finally went to bed at something like 3 in the morning.
Something I had wanted to do for some time was reinstall Windows 7, just for a clean slate. Ruling out a corrupted OS seemed like the perfect excuse to do so, so I reinstalled my OS. It resulted in a MASSIVE performance increase and the BSODs seemed to be gone.
They weren't gone, I just wasn't getting them every day any more. They still do happen now and again, and I still can't play Minecraft without it eventually causing one. As before, any other game is just fine. But as before, the crashes can occur any other time too, such as while browsing the internet or innocently listening to the Windows sounds to pick a nicer sounding one for the error messages.
Another thing to consider is that I had AVG before the reinstall but I read online that a new version was causing a BSOD on some computers so I decided to go with Avast this time.
Next I tried testing my hard drive for errors. I tried Seagate's Seatools since that seemed to have the least complaints in the reviews, but it said it couldn't test my hard drive in Windows and I needed to burn the DOS version to CD and boot from it? Something like that. Anyway I did so and ran both the quick and long tests. No errors, hard drive "passed" all tests, including the acoustic test since I simply couldn't hear it and I have good hearing.
I'm aware there's still a lot more out there I can try but I lack the knowledge to go any further than I have in my search for the cause of these bluescreens. Oh! There was one more thing I did... I downloaded bluescreenview and while the cause of each bluescreen seems to be different each time, one file that does keep popping up as a possible cause is ntoskrnl.exe. This was both before and after the OS reinstall.
Can anyone please help me come up with other ideas that I can try?
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium, Service Pack 1, 64 bit
Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) II X4 630 Processor, AMD64 Family 16 Model 5 Stepping 2
Processor Count: 4
RAM: 4094 Mb
Graphics Card: AMD Radeon HD 6670, 1024 Mb
Hard Drives: C: Total - 466936 MB, Free - 427217 MB;
Motherboard: ASUSTeK Computer INC., M4A78LT-M-LE
Antivirus: avast! Antivirus, Updated and Enabled
I apologise first of all if this is the wrong section. I don't know yet if this is caused by my OS, hardware or what. I've been having BSODs and reboots that appear random for the past... 3? 4 weeks? Something like that. I had made no hardware or software changes before they happened, it appeared to be out of nowhere.
To start with I was getting BSODs more often than I am now. It could happen when loading windows or it could happen after I had been using the internet for 3 hours - there was no discernible pattern. The only thing that stood out was that playing Minecraft was guaranteed to throw up a BSOD within 5 minutes. I could play any other game without a BSOD so you can imagine for quite some time I thought Minecraft was the culprit and stopped playing it. However the BSODs didn't go away.
First I tried scanning for viruses, then I did a defragment of my hard drive, checked for outdated drivers, updated a few of them anyway.
I then checked the temperatures of my hard drive, CPU and GPU. Hard drive was a little on the toasty side but still well within acceptable limits. The GPU and CPU were just downright cold even right before a crash. I was lucky enough to spot my CPU and memory usage right before a crash and they were both low.
I opened up my computer and checked for dust - quite a lot had amassed in a short space of time so I removed as much dust as I could as carefully as I could with my fingertips and some compressed air. I also removed the CPU fan to get the dust out of the heatsink as I'd never done that before because I used to think it was more complicated than it actually is. After I closed it all up and switched it back on I noticed a drastic drop in crashes and BSODs. Even with Minecraft I struggled to force a crash - but I did eventually. The problem was not gone, just reduced in severity.
Next thing I tried was running Memtest overnight. Several passes later, no errors, not a single complaint so I finally went to bed at something like 3 in the morning.
Something I had wanted to do for some time was reinstall Windows 7, just for a clean slate. Ruling out a corrupted OS seemed like the perfect excuse to do so, so I reinstalled my OS. It resulted in a MASSIVE performance increase and the BSODs seemed to be gone.
They weren't gone, I just wasn't getting them every day any more. They still do happen now and again, and I still can't play Minecraft without it eventually causing one. As before, any other game is just fine. But as before, the crashes can occur any other time too, such as while browsing the internet or innocently listening to the Windows sounds to pick a nicer sounding one for the error messages.
Another thing to consider is that I had AVG before the reinstall but I read online that a new version was causing a BSOD on some computers so I decided to go with Avast this time.
Next I tried testing my hard drive for errors. I tried Seagate's Seatools since that seemed to have the least complaints in the reviews, but it said it couldn't test my hard drive in Windows and I needed to burn the DOS version to CD and boot from it? Something like that. Anyway I did so and ran both the quick and long tests. No errors, hard drive "passed" all tests, including the acoustic test since I simply couldn't hear it and I have good hearing.
I'm aware there's still a lot more out there I can try but I lack the knowledge to go any further than I have in my search for the cause of these bluescreens. Oh! There was one more thing I did... I downloaded bluescreenview and while the cause of each bluescreen seems to be different each time, one file that does keep popping up as a possible cause is ntoskrnl.exe. This was both before and after the OS reinstall.
Can anyone please help me come up with other ideas that I can try?