Random blue screens/game crashes/boot loop

[xoki93]

Hi
My PC started to act weird. About a month ago after I pressed the power button, psu started working, coolers spin up, cpu cooler too, than restarted, after that countinous boot loop before POST. After the 5-6th restart it powers on without problems, and everything was fine for a few days, than it happened again. So I bought a new PSU. Replaced it, started it, it happened again... After few restart it started again... and NO PROBLEM. The PC worked for 3 weeks without any problem after that. Later after reinstalling windows, every game started to crash, and sometimes random blue screens after the crashes, or just while browsing the internet. (uploaded a pic with bluescreenview) So I started to check everything.
VGA stress test- no problems
ram test - no problems
hdd smart and tests - nothing found
cpu - nothing
temps are all ok, (35-40 normal, 60-70 while playing games)
Today at the morning, the same happened what I described in the start (boot loop)
Tried pulling out everything from the motherboard and puting it back again. BUT the problem is, after few power off- power on it starts up and works fine the whole day, and because of this can't test the PC hardwares, cuz its "fixes" itself somehow. (hope you know what I mean, english is not my native)
now more about the game crashes: random times it crashes with .exe error, sometimes just dissapear like when you press alt+f4. Happened in win 10 first, reinstalled win 8.1 but still happenes, also happened with up to date and later driver versions.

Intel Core 2 Duo E7400
4gb ram
Gainward Geforce GT 430
Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R

So I registered here, hoping for some good tips to find the bad hardware. Tried reading a lot of forums, but all I see is test it one by one, puting back to mobo always 1 hardware, but this is not good for me because it becomes good after a few power up anyway...

Sorry for the wall of text

 

[Cycloid Torus]

If you haven't done so already, turn off "automatic restart on error" as this helps us see the "first" error.

Looks like you have done everything to find the problem. It doesn't seem to be software, as you have replaced all that and it crashes at different times in slightly different ways.

You have worked over the hardware. I hope in the process that you have removed and reconnected everything - including each stick of RAM and the video card including any power connections. One often overlooked area is the motherboard to chassis connections at the standoffs - try loosening and re-tightening these screws.

My best guess is that you have something marginal which fails when it is cold, but 'heals' when it warms - possibly a cracked solder joint or a 'cold' joint. This is incredibly tough to find. Strong light, magnifier and careful examination may locate it.

https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-guide-excellent-soldering/common-problems

The good news, it will get worse. The bad news, it will mess things up for way too long for the issue to be apparent.

You might want to try removing every non-essential component and to power it up after a good cooling - while re-examining the solder on what you have removed - as this might isolate the problem.

Tough to find. Good luck.

 

[xoki93]

If you haven't done so already, turn off "automatic restart on error" as this helps us see the "first" error.

Looks like you have done everything to find the problem. It doesn't seem to be software, as you have replaced all that and it crashes at different times in slightly different ways.

You have worked over the hardware. I hope in the process that you have removed and reconnected everything - including each stick of RAM and the video card including any power connections. One often overlooked area is the motherboard to chassis connections at the standoffs - try loosening and re-tightening these screws.

My best guess is that you have something marginal which fails when it is cold, but 'heals' when it warms - possibly a cracked solder joint or a 'cold' joint. This is incredibly tough to find. Strong light, magnifier and careful examination may locate it.

https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-guide-excellent-soldering/common-problems

The good news, it will get worse. The bad news, it will mess things up for way too long for the issue to be apparent.

You might want to try removing every non-essential component and to power it up after a good cooling - while re-examining the solder on what you have removed - as this might isolate the problem.

Tough to find. Good luck.

ty for your reply
Hmm didn't try to turn off automatic restart, so I'm going to do that now, and I guess I'll see next morning what happenes.
Also didn't test each ram stick, just the 2 together with memtest. But if I remove both from the motherboard, still restarts before post. Also after I wrote this post got a restart again, but now I had a beep code too. endless short ones: something like - beeep, little pause, beep little pause end never ended, just after force shut down.
Guess than its something with the motherboard, because yeah, like you said, it heals up when warms up... gonna check what u said too.

 

[Cycloid Torus]

http://www.gigabyte.com/support-downloads/faq-page.aspx?fid=816 beep codes

continuous = RAM problem

keep one stick installed and test that, then switch

http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000996.htm

 

[xoki93]

http://www.gigabyte.com/support-downloads/faq-page.aspx?fid=816 beep codes

continuous = RAM problem

keep one stick installed and test that, then switch

http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000996.htm

Sorry for the late reply.
Looks like it will be a ram problem, Now testing it one-one by one. Also borrowed a ramstick from a friend. Looks like some very small problem (and very annoying one), cuz memtest didn't find any error after 1 hour. But now gonna run it again with one stick in the mobo. But I think it's also possible that one of the memory slots in the motherboard has some issues.
Today the PC is fine, I had one short freeze (with a little sound loop) while watching a stream - this also refers to a ram problem right?

 

[Cycloid Torus]

Unclear about 'short freeze'. Could be a minor driver problem in addition to RAM and even something else. While multiple coincident issues are rare, it does happen.

Memtest86 is best run overnight continuous full test on each single stick - prepare and boot utility from media - http://www.memtest86.com/technical.htm

If you make it two nights without errors, then we may want to worry about CPU cache - which can be tested with
http://www.mersenne.org/download/#stresstest

 

[xoki93]

Unclear about 'short freeze'. Could be a minor driver problem in addition to RAM and even something else. While multiple coincident issues are rare, it does happen.

Memtest86 is best run overnight continuous full test on each single stick - prepare and boot utility from media - http://www.memtest86.com/technical.htm

If you make it two nights without errors, then we may want to worry about CPU cache - which can be tested with
http://www.mersenne.org/download/#stresstest

Sorry for the late reply again. The problem discovered. After 4 days of testing the ram sticks and the cpu, nothing found, also the PC works fine atm, but it's the motherboard.
"My best guess is that you have something marginal which fails when it is cold, but 'heals' when it warms - possibly a cracked solder joint or a 'cold' joint. This is incredibly tough to find. Strong light, magnifier and careful examination may locate it. "
I found the problem somewhere around the memory slots, after examining it.
The pc service said they can fix it. Thanks for help.