Computer suffering random and severe crashes

[Phanixis]

About a year and a half ago, I built a new computer. It has been as solid as a rock until two weeks ago. At that point, a suffered I nasty crash which including screeching sounds from my speakers until the computer automatically rebooted while play a game of Diablo 3 with some friends. I could not reboot the computer until I ran windows repair from the boot menu, and I had to run windows repair twice before I could get the system to run again, as my first attempt resulted in an error. Upon rebooting windows recognized their was a problem and reported it as a video hardware error.

I have since updated to video drivers but that failed to rectify the problem. This time windows crashed while play Dishonored. I was able to enter task manager, but before I could select end process on Dishonored the machine froze with a black and white pattern of streaks on the screen. Again I needed to run Windows repair from the boot menu. Again my first attempt at repairing Windows failed, this time with a bluescreen displaying decimal hex. After the first failed attempt, the machine would not even boot past the BIOS screen. I had to turn the machine off for a minute before booting and running Windows repair, which successfully brought the machine back online.

At this point I am considering replacing the video card, which is unfortunately a very expensive component. However, I was hoping someone could help me better understand what is going wrong before I dump $300 on a new video card.

System Specs:

Motherboard: MSI X79A-GD45
Processor: Intel Core i7-3820
RAM: 4 GB DDR3
Video Card: Radeon HD 7870

I have attached a minidump file from the first crash in a .zip extension as well as a data file associated with the second crash. Unfortunately, the second crash did not generate a minidump file. If you need more system information, please do not hesitate to ask.

Thanks for the help.

 

[Tmagic650]

The posted minidump is pointing to a hard (boot) drive issue. This could be caused by corrupted data from the crashes though...

 

[Phanixis]

Considering each time I had to repair the Windows after the crash, the repair program crashed and I had to attempt again, this could be the case.

I am still working on the problem. Purged all the old ATI drivers using DriverCleaner.NET, but now I can't even reinstall the video drivers. Everytime I try to install the Catalyst drivers, I am told I am missing an INF file.

 

[Phanixis]

I am still having major problems. I thought I had fixed them a week ago by moving my video card to a different PCI-E slot. The problems went away for about a week and then returned.

I have also noticed that if enter into safe mode after a crash, I can then restart and enter Windows without further problems. But it I enter Windows without going through safe mode first, the installation becomes corrupted and I must run system recovery in order to boot back into windows.

I managed to retrieve a second minidump file. The first pointed to the hard drive, even though everthing else seems to indicate it is a video card problem. Can someone please check this second minidump and determine if it also implicates the hard drive or if it points to another piece of hardware.

Thanks for the help.

 

[Phanixis]

I ran a program called WhoCrashed and it has pointed to ATI/AMD module atikmdag.sys, which is associated with my ATI/AMD drivers, as the culprit. I quick google searched has revealed this has caused other people problems similar to mine. I have no idea how to go about fixing it, unfortunately.

 

[Tmagic650]

Go here:
http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/graphics/7000/7870/pages/radeon-7870.aspx
Look up the latest driver for your Radeon HD 7870 download and install it

 

[Phanixis]

Those would be the 13.12 AMD Catalyst drivers. Installing them was the first thing I did after these problems began. Unfortunately, that corrected nothing.

I suppose there might be something more specific to my gpu than the catalyst drivers, but if they exist I cannot locate them on AMD's site.

 

[Tmagic650]

There might be a problem with the video card itself...

 

[Phanixis]

That is a definite possibility.

I am going to update my BIOS first. If that doesn't work I may look into replacing the card.

 

[Tmagic650]

Okay, sounds good

 

[Benmar]

Try to replace your video card....