BSOD... hmmm

[joshieboy]

Hey everyone,

For the last three days, everyday, I've encountered a BSOD. I'm not quite sure what the causes are but I've narrowed it down to one of two things. A hardware malfunction (I'm just guessing) or an application has been installed that should not.

On 8/24, my computer installed a couple of updates. These are listed below:
-Microsoft Visual C++ 2012 x86 Redistributable (app reconfig)
-NVIDIA PhysX (app installed)
-USB Compositive Device (driver installed)
-USB Input Device (driver installed)
-HID-compliant consumer control Device (driver installed)
-USB Audio Device (driver installed)

I was prompted to restart my computer and the updates installed. Two days later on 8/26, my computer had it's first BSOD. Since then I have continued to experience BSODs everyday.

The biggest reason I've suspected that one of the applications above should now have been installed is because I don't have an NVIDIA graphics card. I have a Radeon HD7870. Although, I'm not sure if this NVIDIA application is used for other uses.

hardware spec info:

-8gb ram (I recently just replaced a stick of ram that had been failing and I suspect the new stick could possible be failing...?)
-Radeon HD7870
-ASRock Z68 Extrem3 Gen3

If any needs more spec info, I can provide it just ask.

As for dump info, I'm not sure how to upload files of it. I have the documented reports on my Windows "Reliability Monitor" Application so here is the info I can provide from the "description" info. This was from the first dump on 8/26:

The bugcheck was: 0x0000003b (0x00000000c0000005, 0xfffff8000313b3f7, 0xfffff880079deb50, 0x0000000000000000).

I have a dump saved for every BSOD that has occurred (it's automatic as I'm sure you all know) but I'm not sure how to access that.

ONE MORE THING, prior to this event, on 8/18 I re-installed all my graphics drivers because I was having video issues that were causing BSOD. However, after I re-installed the drivers, the problem disappeared until the BSOD on 8/26(as mentioned above).

I hope this information is useful and if anyone needs further info, let me know.

Thank you!

 

[Tmagic650]

Since you don't have an Nvidia video card you need to remove any and all Nvidia software or drivers. Do you see any yellow exclamation points in the device manager? What version of Windows are you running? Make sure you have the latest motherboard drivers installed, using the ASROCK support website

 

[joshieboy]

Last I checked there were no exclamations In my device manager but I'll have to check when I get back into town to be sure. I'm running Windows 7 and I'm pretty sure I have my latest motherboard driver but I'll check that as well. If everything checks out, could the BSOD problem be caused solely by that one NVIDIA app that was installed? It seems unlikely.

 

[Tmagic650]

" If everything checks out, could the BSOD problem be caused solely by that one NVIDIA app that was installed? It seems unlikely"... It does seem very strange that Windows Update installed any Nvidia stuff, and the BSOD really doesn't indicate anything other than slight Windows instability, so we will see

 

[joshieboy]

I'm not sure if I have the latest Motherboard drivers but when I checked the site, the latest drivers came out a month before I purchased the motherboard I currently have so I'm pretty sure I should have the most recent drivers.

Other than that, I haven't seen any yellow exclamation marks on my devices list but maybe I'm looking in the wrong place. On Windows 7 I click on Devices and Printers from the start up menu and that's what I'm looking at.

I uninstalled the Nvidia program but I haven't notice any differences.

Also, I am trying to play a video game, Garry's Mod, and every time I try to join a game the game crashes stating that the program has stopped working. I think this may be something about the graphics card.

 

[Tmagic650]

In the control panel you should see a "Device Manager" and that's where the exclamation points would be. You have an Intel Z68 chipset on that motherboard. Under the CPU settings in the bios, look for C1E and EIST and make sure these are disabled. Any settings for "power saving" purposes should also be disabled. See how game play goes...