I have a 3 month desktop custom built by a reliable shop.
For 2-3 weeks I've been experimenting crashes, freezes and BSOD's randomly during my work and almost daily during the night.
1. 90% of times the computer will have a BSOD and restart when left unnatended for a while and definitely at some point overnight so in the morning I can see that it has rebooted. Power settings?
2. I've tried to make sense of minidumps with windbg but it's beyond my expertise although I can see certain parameters being present in many logs but not in all as sometimes the cause reported it's different. The main ones being CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED, KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR and sometimes IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL.
3. Windows RAM check, video memory test and SFC all reported no errors.
4. I've tested all HDrives with Hard Disk Sentinel, Seatools for DOS and chkdsk/f/r/x and the tests reported no errors. However, sometimes Hard Disk Sentinel states a test fail in my main storage drive when I do a quick selftest but not always.
Note, chkdsk generated BSOD when run directly in windows but it completed without errors when runing after booting with the command window option found in the recovery advanced startup.
5. I cannot enter safe mode, all I get is a black screen with my cursor mouse.
System specs:
OS:Windows 64 8.1 N
CPU:Intel I7-4770K
MB:Asus Z87M-Plus
GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 770 4GB + Integrated Intel HD Graphics 4600. Dual monitors plugged into the Geforce.
RAM: 16GB DDR3
Drives: Main 238GB Samsung SSD 840 Pro ; 2nd: 3TB Seagate ; 1 TB USB3 external for backup
I agree with going back to the supplier. Especially if this problem has persisted for quite sometime or near to the purchase of the computer.
It is a high end custom system and for that reason there is a lot that can go wrong. Its one of the reasons why I pretty much stay out of the computer building business. In my opinion, you're better off buying a name brand system that's been well tested and tens of thousands of them have been produced. With a mix and match of parts on high end systems there is almost always some kind of incompatibility with BIOS settings, RAM settings, firmware versions, etc. Sometimes it can take several days or weeks to finally narrow it down.
I hear what you are saying about custom built systems. However this was built by a shop specialized on high end and I totally trust them.
After trying many different suggestions from different forums, I ended up changing the connections to the SSD and data hard drives to a different port in the motherboard. This immediately stopped the bluescreens (1 week since the last one)as well as numerous errors in the windows event log. Chances are that the one of the connections was loose.
Thinking back I realized that a couple of weeks ago I needed to test an external USB drive that was giving me errors and I connected it directly to one of the SATA ports so that a chkdsk test could be done more reliably than over the USB cable. After I did that is when the troubles started now that I'm thinking about it so it was proly my fault as I must have reconnected my internal HD not tightly enough.
However, the problem of not being able to enter any of the safe modes still remains and I keep getting a black screen with a moving arrow cursor.
I've been reading on dozens of forums and tried all the suggestions to no avail. It looks like this is a bug dragging as far back as Vista and apparently with many possible causes as some people has been able to find a solution.
It is not the commeon situation where the explorer shell can be restarte by entering the task manager with ctl-alt-delete and executing explore.exe. I can't invoke the task manager.
It looks to me like when you go to safe mode, the drivers are loaded to a minimum as intended so the external video card is disabled but then the onboard video doesn't kick in so I'm left with a black screen ? Although if there was no video at all I wouldn't see the cursor either and I can see my mouse arrow moving so there is some video …
My BIOS has three options to deal with the primary display: Auto, iGPU and PCIE I've tried all three and still get a black screen when trying to go to safe mode. There is also a setting for iGPU multi monitor as enabled or disabled (default). Played with those too … same result.
Hi, Well done on sorting out and getting to the bottom of the Blue screens.
I think the general consensus here is that for the other issues, its time to get the vendor to fix it.
Its important that you do not try and do too much (or anything that could potentially prejudice your position in regards to the consumer protection legislation application in your jurisdiction or guarantee, warranty or service agreement that may apply.)
Good luck and post back and let us know how you get on.
