Can you help me diagnose a freezing issue?

Hey guys,

So the history of my desktop is kinda long...but I'll try to shorten it. July 2011 I purchased a desktop at around $400 (including an AMD GPU). Slowly upgraded PSU, RAM, mobo, and CPU. CPU was second-hand. PSU was second-hand. I sold my original computer, took the upgraded components out of what I was running, and purchased a GTX470, Obsidian 700D, and WC stuff from a buddy. I had really obnoxious freezing issues. CPU I bought second-hand was an FX4100 used for Benchmarking. I sold my GTX470, picked up a 7950, swapped a whole mess of WC stuff out, and am still having freezing issues.

I initially thought it was my RAM but then started to think it's my GPU. I have been having multiple failure modes. It has restarted "normally" as if someone held the reset button. It has shut down with no restart. It has crashed into this weird screen with a whole bunch of vertical stripes. It has also crashed into screens of one solid color. It has also crashed into just a black screen, and then it crashed and the screen has gone into the "No video input". When it crashes, sometimes it'll crash a dozen times in a row without staying on for more than a few minutes. Sometimes, it'll run for multiple hours running two full iterations of modern games simultaneously without crashing. It'll crash during the game AND while it's idling. Running GPU-Z data logging, I see my GPU Core voltage jump from the voltage I set (1093mv, I think) to 1.24v for like 5 or 6 data points a few seconds before it crashes.

I bought brand new RAM, same crashing with just the new RAM and the RAM in different slots. GPUZ also shows my GPU geeking big-time. The screenshot below should make that clear.




So I was totally convinced it was the GPU. THEN, I decided I was going to clean all of my graphics drivers and start over AGAIN. Something I've done multiple times, now...including before I ever ran this card. I followed this guide. Well, if you read the WHOLE thing (which I didn't do) you'll notice a line that says:

Well, that's not making me happy. Is there any way that that's it? How can I test/fix that? Also, right now, my CCC won't come up...even after multiple reboots and reinstalls. It says "Could not load file or assembly "CLI.Implementation" or one of its dependencies. The system could not find the file specified. I'm running the 12.11 Beta version.

To show the freezing screens, I'm uploading some pics and a clip of what my computer looks like when it crashes. Sorry for the quality, it was all taken with my phone.



Edited by victorzamora - 11/11/12 at 9:09am

I've got a buddy with a Radeon X600.....but my computer fails so sporadically and I think it'd be mean to take his GPU for long enough to figure out whether that's the cause or not. It might take the majority of the day, and it's his only computer. I'm going to try it if he's okay with it, but there's no guarantee.

As far as a fresh W7 install goes, I've got a W7 Lite build I've been wanting to try out. If it works, it'll be a major upgrade over standard W7 Enterprise, which is what I'm running now. I'll install it the standard W7Enterprise on an HDD I've got lying around and see how that goes. After doing all of the backing up and saving info for that, I'll have the perfect excuse to try my RT7Lite build.

I probably won't be able to do that until Wednesday/Thursday because of school work, though. Any other quicker suggestions?

I just set my desktop up to do an AMD Catalyst Drivers uninstall and am about to start reinstalling the newest chipset drivers.

Jukem, I'll let you know how it goes once it happens.

Jerry, what makes you think BSOD? Of all of the crashes I've had (literally hundreds), I've only gotten two BSOD's. They were both yesterday, and the both had the word "POOL" in their error codes.

Also, after I did a full uninstall/reinstall of Catalyst, my computer ran great straight through about 12 hours. Longer than my typical runs on it. I then restarted it and got a red screen with darker red and white vertical stripes. REALLY frustrating. I thought that might've fixed it. I was literally typing this up to say I think I might've fixed it when it crashed again.

Because y'all have been awesome, I'm reinstalling W7 Enterprise now in its stock form onto a new HDD (Samsung Spinpoint F1). I'll worry about getting my data later. For now, those HDD's are unplugged and the data's not going anywhere.

So I tried reinstalling W7 and it says my ISO has a corrupt/missing file...or some such nonsense. However, I noticed something today that's bugging me a little bit. I have my voltage set to stock, and yet both CPU-Z AND my motherboard are telling me I'm running 1.424V at stock clocks, and that I'm running 3725MHz.

Could this be a sign of a dying CPU or mobo? 1.424V stock is NOT what I expected. I mean, shouldn't stock be around 1.2/1.3V ??

So I've gotten two BSOD's today with the same error: "Memory Management" When I say I got a BSOD, I mean I got the full-fledged , textbook BSOD.

One thing I'm doing that I think might be excessively ghetto is I have an extension that doesn't completely fit. It's an 8-pin extension that is plugged into my PSU kind of unhappily. The other end is plugged into my original 8-pin power cable. Well, the ends didn't fit so I had to cut a groove in the extension to get the power cable to plug in to it. Could that be causing the BSOD stuff? An 8-pin cable being "mostly" plugged in properly?

About it being memory, I just don't see it. One set of RAM goes bad. Get a brand new set. Brand new set is bad instantly. I just can't imagine that's it. About it being the GPU: back when it was going funky colors I could see it being the GPU....but now that it's doing a "proper" BSOD I'm thinking whatever's causing this BSOD is also what was causing those stripy lines. Those stripy lines never moved/changed no matter how long I left them up (over 24 hours at one point, checking that the freeze was stable.

I've installed new drivers multiple times after another round of fresh-wiping all of the drivers. Also, I ran " SFC /SCANNOW ". I got problems the first time. Ran it 3 more times on my SSD with no problems to report. Then twice on my HDD, No errors. I believe I may have gotten a BSOD after that, but can't remember for sure.