Endless errors

[Stockholm1984]

Some of you may remember helping me out with a few BSOD errors a little while back. After leaving it a bit I updated my graphics drivers which seemed to solve the problem for a few weeks. Now they have come back again and am back to square 1 in terms of getting my system working again until, possibly, now.

Have just run MemTest86+ v1.7 for 2 hours and it came out with 8,192 errors. Now being very new to diagnosing problems I'm not entirely sure what this means. Firstly, does MemTest86+ fix RAM errors or just discover them? Secondly, with this huge number of errors does that simply mean that my RAM is just screwed and needs replacing or could it be a symptom of a problem with another part of the system such as the Northbridge or maybe even a software fault? Am getting pretty tired of this machine not working and not having any idea of how to solve it.

[slytherock]

Have u tried with another PSU?

[Stockholm1984]

Not yet am using a 700W PSU so wouldn't have thought it would have been the problem. Could it?

[slytherock]

had a similar problem a long time ago: ended up it was a faulty PSU. It killed all my rig.

[Stockholm1984]

Did you have a series of BSODs before hand too? Have been getting a few DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL Stop: 0x000000D1 PartMgr.sys errors and Stop:0x0000008E win32k.sys and same stop error with no particular file specified. I just need a PSU to test it with. An error with the PSU would make sense though as the problem only occurs (so far at least!) when the systems overclocked and stressed through games or stress tests and all temps are nothing extreme. Only components I don't know temps of are PSU and GPU and the GPU isn't overclocked.

[Stockholm1984]

Oh just had another crash. An anonymous error with STOP: 0x000000D1 caused by ACPI.sys. I have read that it has some relation to the motherboard and hard drive controllers? Any thoughts about this one?

[slytherock]

Yes I was having BSOD problems. But the DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL error suspect a Driver error. Find an old version of Driver cleaner (new ones are not free) clean ur VGA drivers and reinstall them.

But still suspect the PSU

[Killa_Ape]

If someone has ram I'd try swapping that out and see if that fixes your problem. Also since you stated it was overclocked, put it all back to regular speeds and see if the problem occurs again. You could just be having a massive motherboard issue too with the harddrive controllers and the RAM but I could be off on that one.

[Stockholm1984]

Have been suspecting the GPU drivers for a while as a while back when I installed a new update for the 8800GT the problems seems to go away so I overclocked the system again for a few weeks before they started happening again. Have tried a driver cleaner and wiped away all the files I could and reinstalled the drivers but that hasn't made any difference unfortunately. With regards to RAM I don't know anyone with a PC of a similar spec (they all own crappy old Dell's and PS3s) so haven't got any to swap in. I killed the OC the other day back to stock and just after that was when I got the last BSOD caused by ACPI.sys, which I did mean to put in my last post. :)

I have had some problems with data getting misplaced on the HD when I've done disc check in the past and if ACPI.sys has something to do with HD controllers on the motherboard it is concerning me that I could have a faulty motherboard that is now out of warranty (typical!). Is there any way of checking the motherboard itself for errors?

[XcOM]

my bro has just had the same issue the last few days, we found the problem was nvidia drivers causing the problem, reverted back to the last WHQL release of drivers and its been fine since.

[Stockholm1984]

Yeh thats what my thoughts were, I installed the most recent WHQL nvidia driver but still no joy I'm afraid. Have tested the RAM thoroughly in MemTest+ at 800 and 1066 with both sticks in and each stick individually in both A and B slots and haven't seen any errors in those despite getting the 8000 odd errors when I tried it before. Wondering if those errors were a symptom of something else just don't have a clue what!

[BuzzKillington]

It may sound stupid but maybe try new sata/ide cables. I remember a while back when I had my desktop the clamp on the sata cable eventually got tired of the position it was stuck in and wouldn't stay in straight. Anyway, Once it crashed and wouldn't start back up... took me a little while to find out why.

As said before, it sounds like a mobo or driver issue. Personally, I don't see a psu giving you acpi crashes but then again, I've had some crazy errors due to an overheating/bad psu...

[Drum Thumper]

Yeh thats what my thoughts were, I installed the most recent WHQL nvidia driver but still no joy I'm afraid. Have tested the RAM thoroughly in MemTest+ at 800 and 1066 with both sticks in and each stick individually in both A and B slots and haven't seen any errors in those despite getting the 8000 odd errors when I tried it before. Wondering if those errors were a symptom of something else just don't have a clue what!

This leads me to believe that either the RAM wasn't seated properly or you might have a bad board. Are you still getting these errors?

[Stockholm1984]

Last night I ran a ChkDsk on my C: drive, it fixed a few erroneous file attributions, took ages to verify the free disk space and then crashed. The system wouldn't start up again until this morning having been left switched off at the wall overnight. The crash ended with yet another BSOD with no heading but gave me 0x0000008E ACPI.sys etc. It definitely looks as though there's something with the hard drives. I'm almost 100% certain that it isn't the drive itself as I've had this problem before after running chkdsk so I upgraded to the drive I have now. Does this error ring any bells to anyone?

To answer your question DrumThumper I'm pretty sure the RAM was seated fine as the system then didn't error when I ran MemTest+ on the lower setting. I haven't run MemTest+ since the last time I posted but will try again tonight and see if the errors appear again after last nights crash.

[NightrainSrt4]

I would try running memtest again, and let it run for a while, especially if it seems okay. Usually if memory is popping errors intermittently in memtest its signs of something else i.m.e, but make sure you run it long enough and not just a couple minutes.

I don't see how it could be the gpu drivers though, as memtest gets run before windows itself boots up, hence before the nvidia drivers, no?

As per usual, make sure everything is connected well, re-seat everything to make sure there is good connections. Start removing unnecessary components to see if the problem insists.

[Stockholm1984]

Ran MemTest+ for 3 and half hours yesterday and nothing came up. Changed my SATA cables and switched to ACPI 2 in the BIOS to see if that helped as is usually the ACPI.sys file that causes the problem. I left a chkdsk running over night but when I got up this morning I had another blue screen waiting with DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL 0x000000D1 error waiting for me. Have looked at the system log but I can't make out head or tail of what its telling me. If I posted the details would anyone be able to work out what components are causing the problem from the various strings of numbers?

[XcOM]

my bro has just had the same issue the last few days, we found the problem was nvidia drivers causing the problem, reverted back to the last WHQL release of drivers and its been fine since.

sorry if i didn't make that clear, but when i said last, i ment previous version, not the latest release, the Nvidia drivers all talk to each other, makesure you use the old nforce drivers too,

We were getting random errors and different DLL's and SYS files causing errors, like i said in the end it was the latest nvidia drivers.