Random crashing on Windows 7 homebuilt system.
Hello, Just recently I have encountered this problem of my PC just randomly crashing. It seems to happen more often when I'm doing a couple of things at once or while playing games. I've been searching and thinking for possible problems but I can't seem to be able to troubleshoot whatever is going on here. After a crash happens, the system remains on with the power light blinking, the screen will go black but remains powered on and to turn it off I have to switch the power button off on the power supply. When I check event viewer it gives this vague error code (Event ID 41). I haven't found anything to resolve the problem yet. I've tried a memory test, which the results were not reported but the test finished and I tried scheduling a check disk which can never be completed because it crashes before the test can fully finish. Can anyone point me in the right direction here?
May 17th, 2011 1:32pm

It could be a number of things, you'll need to narrow it down a bit. Has it worked with Windows 7 ok for a while? Have you updated anything? Added a new GFX card? If it's a homebuilt PC, have you got a decent PSU? That'll cause drop outs, what's the M/B Manufacturer? Also it might not help, but is there any more info in the System Reliability Monitor?
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May 17th, 2011 2:09pm

Thanks for the quick reply. I've always had the graphics card in my system because the motherboard doesn't have on-board video. I was running dual monitors on the card (it's supported) and first noticed the crashing. I even went back to a single monitor and its crashing. Here are my specs: MSI 870A-G54 Motherboard AMD Athlon II X4 630 Processor (2.8 GHz) 4 GB RAM Seagate 500 GB HDD Rosewill 700W PSU Radeon HD 4670 Graphics card The system reliability monitor is giving the same information as event viewer.
May 17th, 2011 2:24pm

Ok, Well that event ID just lets you know it was an unexpected shutdown, though you can glean a bit more info from it, like whether it had time to write back to the disk, but that might not help much. Have you got something like MSI Afterburner? You can grab it from http://event.msi.com/vga/afterburner/download.htm which might help to determine if it's an undervolt problem. Did it start crashing when you went to 2 screens? How long was it running without problems before that? Have you tried different monitor combinations (i.e. putting the other monitor on only) to see if it stablises?
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May 17th, 2011 2:59pm

I'm going to try afterburner right now. I built this system in December 2010 and the crashes started happening in late April. As for the monitors I have an Acer and an LG, both 20 inch. It doesn't matter which is connected the system still crashes.
May 17th, 2011 3:16pm

Also, using the system reliability monitor, check what was installed in the day/days before, and work back, sometimes patches etc will effect other things, needing you to re-install drivers for m/b or gfx card etc. One more thing, have you opened it up recently and checked for dust? Worth checking that all fans are running, as that'll causeoverheating which will shut it down. Setting alarms on CPU temp can help with that. Also it's worth checking the BIOS to see if there's a failsafe shutdown temp and that the alarm is set for that. (Taking a vacuum cleaner to a machine can *sometimes* do wonders!
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May 17th, 2011 3:21pm

There is hardly any dust in the case. I usually clean it about once about a month. All 3 fans are working the case. I'll check BIOS now and set alarms and in the mean time I'll figure out how to use afterburner and post whatever it displays.
May 17th, 2011 3:32pm

Well I went into BIOS and there are no options anywhere to set alerts for overheating. I did check the system health and looked at the temperature of the system and cpu. The cpu was running 45 degrees Celsius (113 Fahrenheit) and the system was running 40 degress Celsius (104 Fahrenheit), isn't that a bit high just for being in BIOS?
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May 17th, 2011 4:15pm

maybe a bit, but it depends how hot your room is. I would suggest checking system reliability monitor for installed patches just before the crashimg started, even for installs of programs around that time. O guess you've re-applied gfx drivers, and mb drivers?
May 17th, 2011 4:33pm

I double checked the reliability monitor and erased some of the programs that I thought may have caused it and it still crashes? I reinstalled/updated the drivers for everything as well. I'm still scratching my head at this one. It got up to 61°C right before it crashed as I was monitoring the cpu temp.
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May 17th, 2011 5:24pm

can you ramp the CPU fan speed up? Perhaps either the fan is on it's way out, or the Thermal gel has dried and isn't making contact. try upping the fan speed in Afterburner, see if it hold the temp lower.. Reseating the CPU fan might help, from all I've read about it, it shouldn't get about 50 degrees while gaming.
May 17th, 2011 6:03pm

Also, the temp is probably higher cause of the warmer weather unless you've lived in an air conditioned house the whole time you've had it. The max operating temperature of the cpu is 71 degrees, but there's alot of talk of them not liking heat. Perhaps seal off any missing blanking plates and make sure you have decent airflow, else, the other way, keep the side off...
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May 17th, 2011 6:08pm

You may boot in Clean Boot Mode as BSOD can be caused by programs that are running in kernel mode. Perform a clean startup to determine whether background programs are interfering with your game or program If the issue persists in Clean Boot Mode you can try to check the driver signature. To do so, in Start Search box enter sigverif.exe. Then click the start button in “File Signature Verification”. In the result list, please pick up *.sys files, rename one of them and then shut down or restart to check if the issue still occurs. If the issue persists, rename another *.sys file listed in the result of driver signature verifying, and check result again. By doing so we can determine which un-singed driver is the root cause. Another way is enable muni-dump and use Windbg. Please refer: How to read the small memory dump files that Windows creates for debugging You may paste the result in your next post for analyzing.Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.
May 19th, 2011 4:36am

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