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My computer is scary...


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Hey, I'm getting blue screens, and I'm getting nervous... Just recently, FSX started throwing blue screens right and left. Odd, thought I, but not long before I also started getting strange near-freezes (sim halts for x minutes, then continues like nothing ever happened) that were mostly taken care of by reducing scenery to the lowest setting (autogen etc., not the mesh). Now, instead of these near-freezes, I get a blue screen whenever I enter the 3D world. The BSOD mentions IRQL_something_something_something.

Until recently, I would say that this does not happen with X-Plane 9 (which incidentally sits on another HDD - and a much older one), but just the other day I had a blue screen there as well. When I run Scandisk/chkdisk/whatever they're calling it now, I see a whole ton of stuff that's on 'orphaned nodes' or something.

 

What I have done is run a RAM test - Memtest86+ 4.20, I think, courtesy of Linux. I have not observed this in Linux, which is installed on the same HDD as FSX (Linux, to be fair, has nothing that puts the system to the strain comparable to FSX, though), and I haven't played much else in Windows at the moment - going through some videogames.

(I'd be interested to see what happens in NWN2, but with that game I have issues like you wouldn't believe... NORMALLY. What the snap? It wasn't like this back in 2006...)

 

Tips/suggestions? Can someone help me troubleshoot?

 

[update]Uh... Well, Linux doesn't have BSODs, but you get my point... OR ELSE! :P


Edited by Silent Warrior
... I r dumb.
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How long has it been since you reinstalled windows?

i7-4820k @ 3.7, Windows 7 64-bit, 16GB 1866mhz EVGA GTX 970 2GB, 256GB SSD, 500GB WD, TM Warthog, TM Cougar MFD's, Saitek Combat Pedals, TrackIR 5, G15 keyboard, 55" 4K LED

 

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Reinstalled? :) It's my first Win7 install - I don't remember exactly when I installed it, though. I didn't get it in the initial craze. (I notice that the WinXP-computer I keep right next to it (didn't want to throw out the old gear after the upgrade) runs just fine, with less fresh components...)

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First step for me would be to check temperatures on as many components as possible. As you note, you don't have things that tax it as heavily in Linux, so there might be minor faults caused by overheats or similar.

 

Second step is to take a close look at drivers - especially graphics card drivers sometimes decide to go funky with remnants of old drivers conflicting with new ones etcetera.

 

A good way to figure out where to look is if you go into Event Viewer (Start > Run > Event Viewer) and find the error reports in there. Less guessing that way. :)

 

Oh, and reinstalling windows on some weird time schedule is just silly. With crap OSes like XP and older it might be easier than actually fixing whatever got broken, but old stuff like that shouldn't be used nowadays anyhow. :P

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Daniel "EtherealN" Agorander | Даниэль "эфирныйн" Агорандер

Intel i7 2600K @ 4.4GHz, ASUS Sabertooth P67, 8GB Corsair Vengeance @ 1600MHz, ASUS GTX 560Ti DirectCU II 1GB, Samsung 830series 512GB SSD, Corsair AX850w, two BENQ screens and TM HOTAS Warthog

DCS: A-10C Warthog FAQ | DCS: P-51D FAQ | Remember to read the Forum Rules |

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... What... the... HELL?? Uh, as it's a warning, and time stamps imply this isn't the blue screen, but I see a warning about some VSS being denied access to the root volume - "Denying administrators from accessing voume roots can cause many unexpected failures, blablabla". What... is my computer doing to itself? :huh: Effin start and play games, don't go chasing shadows!

 

...

AAAAAAAAAH! What is all this stuff?? Dude, I'm gonna need until May to find out what I'm supposed to be looking for... 55000+ events for Applications alone!

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Look for errors. They should be defined separately from the rest of the events (Warnings have a yellow symbol next to them and errors have a red one).

 

Search for Event 41 which is a Kernel Power event (indicates that Windows forced itself to shut down). Also, look for the .dmp file (C:\Windows\Minidump). It should be relatively easy to find, and there are a number of free tools that will tell you what is causing your crash, or at least tell you why your computer is crashing.


Edited by Pyroflash

If you aim for the sky, you will never hit the ground.

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... What... the... HELL?? Uh, as it's a warning, and time stamps imply this isn't the blue screen, but I see a warning about some VSS being denied access to the root volume - "Denying administrators from accessing voume roots can cause many unexpected failures, blablabla". What... is my computer doing to itself? :huh: Effin start and play games, don't go chasing shadows!

 

...

AAAAAAAAAH! What is all this stuff?? Dude, I'm gonna need until May to find out what I'm supposed to be looking for... 55000+ events for Applications alone!

What antivirus? And are you using bitlocker? BTW try this.

 

Open a Command Prompt (With Admin rights)

 

Type:

 

icacls C:\ /grant system:f

 

hit enter.

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Pyroflash: ... And all of a sudden we have progress. The crash dumps don't point to the same cause, though - one pointed to the HDMI-connection driver (not used - WTF?), another dxgmms1.sys, yet another at corrupted memory, one more... that looks like the bluescreen, and I can't make a shred of sense from it. Pool Corruption looks sort of significant. There are still others, a few memory corruptions... Nothing is consistent. I guess it could be heat, then, but I'll try making a clean reinstall of my graphics drivers first. If I can figure out how - they don't appear in the Uninstall a program list anymore...

 

RIPTIDE: Antivirus: Avast Free, latest available. I think. The last major update was a while ago, now. I'm also using Win7 Home, so BitLocker shouldn't even be an option. I have to confess, though, that I haven't actively investigated.

 

[update]

Oh, get the **** outta here! I was just restarting, and THEN it threw a BSOD! Now I'm getting frustrated for real!


Edited by Silent Warrior
New BSOD.
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You wrote "...When I run Scandisk/chkdisk/whatever they're calling it now, I see a whole ton of stuff that's on 'orphaned nodes' or something...". This seems to me like hard-drive dying (check smart-status). If some important files are lost/damaged/truncated, there is no other way out of this mess but complete reinstalling...

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SMART... I know how to check that in Linux, but in Windows...? Anyway - if that's really the problem, Samsung needs a good beating. This disk isn't even one year old. (Well... at least I THINK it isn't... Time does fly, and all that.)

Meh. Download speedfan.

 

http://www.almico.com/speedfan445.exe

 

Run the S.M.A.R.T. analysis. Report back. BTW I've noted you haven't reported back to me the result of the command line instruction I gave you. Have you done it?

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Oh, right. Well, it said '1 file(s) processed, 0 file(s) failed'. Nothing at all besides.

SMART analysis report:

Your hard disk is a SAMSUNG HD503HI with firmware 1AJ100E4.

The average temperature for this hard disk is 30C (MIN=22C MAX=39C) and yours is 27C.

Your hard disk's S.M.A.R.T. attributes are now being analyzed and a full report about the reliability, health and status of your hard disk is generated:

Your hard disk is not below any attribute threshold. This is good.

Your hard disk was never below any attribute threshold. This is good.

Your hard disk is now being compared to real data used to define normal values for your specific hard disk model. This way, the analysis can automatically use proper operating ranges. The images give you an idea of how each attribute is within such range. Current and raw values are shown for easier reference for experienced users. There are 3001 hard disk models in the current archive.

 

 

Attribute Current Raw Overall

 

Raw Read Error Rate

100

64

Very good

 

Throughput Performance

252

0

Very good

 

Spin Up Time

86

4520

Very good

 

Start/Stop Count

100

808

Very good

 

Reallocated Sector Count

252

0

Very good

 

Seek Error Rate

252

0

Very good

 

Seek Time Performance

252

0

Very good

 

Power On Hours Count

100

3339

Very good

 

Spin Retry Count

252

0

Very good

 

Calibration Retry Count

252

0

Very good

 

Power Cycle Count

100

791

Very good

 

GSense Error Rate

100

1

Normal

 

Power Off Retract Count

252

0

Very good

 

Hardware ECC Recovered

100

0

Very good

 

Reallocated Event Count

252

0

Very good

 

Current Pending Sector

252

0

Very good

 

Offline Uncorrectable Sector Count

252

0

Very good

 

Ultra DMA CRC Error Rate

200

0

Very good

 

Write Error Rate

100

99

Very good

 

Load Retry Count

252

0

Very good

 

Load Cycle Count

100

812

Very good

All of the attributes of your hard disk have normal values. This is good.

 

 

 

The overall fitness for this drive is 100%.

The overall performance for this drive is 100%.

 

It's funny, though - all of a sudden FSX has decided to work normally again... (That is, no BSOD, only random and far-apart near-freezes. Yay.) W3rd, but it would imply something was up with my graphics drivers in this case. I'll have to see what happens when Mass Effect 3 hits this baby.

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I was having horrible trouble with a HDD, I found the SMART test on that drive said it was fine & dandy and healthy, but then I checked it with this utility http://www.hdtune.com/ and found that it was running at 10% the rated speed. Not sure why SMART didn't say anything about it, I guess it was running healthy & fine, just at 10% speed.

 

On the other front, AVAST is a fine antivirus if you are an IT nerd with too much time on your hands. When used by an average computer user AVAST can throw a wrench into just about anything. If you're not 100% sure that you know what you're doing with AVAST you might be well served to try disabling/uninstalling and trying something different.

2600K @ 4.2GHz, MSI P67A-GD55, 16GB G.Skill @2133 , GTX 970, Rift, SSD boot & DCS drive

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beers: I've been using Avast since the millennium was young, if not before, and never had a problem of any kind with it. Well, besides the annoyance of their VIRUS DATABASE UPDATED message - way too loud back then. It has played nice with everything so far, and kept out of the way. Spybot Search & Destroy is another can o' worms, though... (It's already uninstalled - interfered with something, but I don't remember what.)

I'm running HDTune now (free trial), and everything is again said to be OK. Running an error scan, and the speed typically lies between 90 and 100 MB/s. 102.8 seems to be the top speed. [update: The speed does decay - halfway through it's hovering around 80 MB/s. That doesn't worry me, though.]


Edited by Silent Warrior
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Oh, and reinstalling windows on some weird time schedule is just silly. With crap OSes like XP and older it might be easier than actually fixing whatever got broken, but old stuff like that shouldn't be used nowadays anyhow. :P

 

Reinstaling may not be the fix, but whenever I reinstall everything is faster and it's clean again. I don't have a schedule that I go by, but normally it's at least one time every 2 years. Installing and uninstalling different programs and other crap starts to clog up the system.

i7-4820k @ 3.7, Windows 7 64-bit, 16GB 1866mhz EVGA GTX 970 2GB, 256GB SSD, 500GB WD, TM Warthog, TM Cougar MFD's, Saitek Combat Pedals, TrackIR 5, G15 keyboard, 55" 4K LED

 

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Ah, my apologies then. I read your post as mirroring something I often see where people compulsively reinstall every couple months because they just don't know how to look after their system. 2 years median is totally acceptable. :)

[sIGPIC][/sIGPIC]

Daniel "EtherealN" Agorander | Даниэль "эфирныйн" Агорандер

Intel i7 2600K @ 4.4GHz, ASUS Sabertooth P67, 8GB Corsair Vengeance @ 1600MHz, ASUS GTX 560Ti DirectCU II 1GB, Samsung 830series 512GB SSD, Corsair AX850w, two BENQ screens and TM HOTAS Warthog

DCS: A-10C Warthog FAQ | DCS: P-51D FAQ | Remember to read the Forum Rules |

|
| Life of a Game Tester
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