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Frequent, but inconclusive, BSODs


wlw

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Just my two cents but did you tried if the problem was the same with another system (not windows 7) ?

From the problems you reported, it could be be hardware problem and most likely of MB / RAM / CPU. I would underclock cpu (if your bios support it) and put a base GC to test.

When testing ram with memtest make sure to do at least 4 passes.

To test the cpu, you can run several prime at the same time.

As one core of the cpu is already damaged, the others might not work properly so that's most likely the culprit.

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Since my last post everything is back to normal, meaning I cannot make it crash.

I have *no* idea what is going on here, I have suspected a hardware problem for some time now, namely North Bridge, but what kind of hardware problem comes and goes awayas it sees fit?

Still trying to collect the dump, failed twice so far. The "You fail at failing" demotivator comes to mind :(

ED: How ironic. The second I clicked the "Post" button the browser froze, along with the whole system, so, knowing what's going on, I pressed ctrl+alt+del - it was stuck again on loading security settings or whatever, and then boom - BSOD F4.

And again, Collecting data, Initializing disk and nothing further.

I have, in the meantime, changed the destination of the dump file to another hard disk, so it's not a problem with the disk...

So apparently it might not be possible to collect full memory crash dump at all...

Edited by wlw
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4GB, I had the file at 4096 + 50 = 4146MB, but incresed it's size to 4200 and moved it to another HDD after it failed for the first time.

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If the paging file is not RAM+300MB (ish) on the same volume as the \Windows directory, you won't get a complete memory dump (no matter where the dump file is set to be created). This is a bit different from previous versions of Windows, unfortunately.

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Microsoft says RAM + 1MB, the forum says RAM + 50MB and apparently RAM+100 isn't enough too... Anyway, I set it to 5000 and we'll see.

Another find: when the system freezes (where I can move the mouse and click the desktop icons but nothing works) and I don't do ctrl+alt+del forcing it to BSOD, it will stay like that for some time with the HDD LED on, and after a minute or so the screen goes black with just the mouse pointer on it, which I can move. From that point on nothing happens. Only option left i hard reset.

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@cluberti is there an official document which shows the required size?

There won't be an official document out there with a fixed number. The Best Practice values people cite are the average ones.

A frequently asked question is “how big should I make the pagefile”? There is no single answer to this question, because it depends on the workload on the computer, how much RAM there is and how much virtual memory space that workload requires.

So basically if the best practice value isn't working you have a couple options:

- do memory performance testing on the system to find out its current requirements

- just set it to a higher number

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2267427

http://members.shaw.ca/bsanders/WindowsGeneralWeb/RAMVirtualMemoryPageFileEtc.htm

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I set the pagefile to 5000MB. Had another freeze, ctrl+alt+del gave STOP F4 after a while, but it got up to "Initializing disk..." and hung there again.

Also both the USB Mouse and Keyboard go dark so my guess is that part of the main board stops working, I'm not sure if this makes any sense but it looks like this.

Edited by wlw
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I am supercooling the PC with a meter high tower fan laying on it's side, so far no issues, so it seems to be indeed the north bridge failing, despite what ASRock support said (that they're hot but their fine)

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