BSOD troubleshooting help

[SilverZ06]

Hey guys,
Today out of the blue I got the dreaded BSOD. I restarted my pc and it booted right up like normal. After about 15 minutes or so windows crashed on me. I had to press my power button to shut down. It shut down the instant the button was pressed, not a hard reset where you have to hold down the power button for it to shut off. I rebooted again and the computer booted up again with no issues. I went to go get a bite a eat and when I returned my screen was frozen and locked up. I powered down the computer again and installed my memtest 86 cd to start troubleshooting. The memtest ran and showed I had 0 errors. I booted into windows and ran malwarebytes and that came up clean. I'm in the process of doing a full system scan on MSE but so far nothing has been found. I also used ssdlife to check my ssd and according to that my ssd is fine. I find it strange that I have only gotten the BSOD one time and that was at the beginning of these issues. Does any one have any suggestions on what to check next?

System Specs:
I5-2500k @4.6
H80 cooler temps in the 38-42c range
Asrock p68 extreme4 gen3
16GB Gskill RAM 1600
64GB Crucial SSD for OS
1TB WD Black for storage
XFX HD6950 2GB running 3 ASUS VS247 monitors
W7 Home Premium 64bit
Thermaltake 800watt Black widow Power supply

Built August 2011
 

[SilverZ06]

Screen freeze



BSOD: NOTE:This is not the same BSOD error I originally got.
.
.




EDIT: I did some searching on that BSOD and it seems a lot of people get it with poor overclocking. My PC has been running on this overclock for over two years. I went ahead and set the bios back to default to see if that helps. I am not too optimistic though since my pc has been running trouble free with that OC for so long. I would think I would have gotten these problems a long time ago. I beginning to wonder if my power supply isn't starting to crap out on me. I will be very disappointed if it is.

[SilverZ06]

Stock clock speeds did not help. The computer just keeps freezing and now I have to do a hard reset and then it only works for a few minutes at a time until the next freeze. I guess I need to buy a power supply tester tomorrow and see what that says 

[XxDaSTaRxx]

Stock clock speeds did not help. The computer just keeps freezing and now I have to do a hard reset and then it only works for a few minutes at a time until the next freeze. I guess I need to buy a power supply tester tomorrow and see what that says  

Not sure this would be a power supply problem.

[SilverZ06]

Not sure this would be a power supply problem.

Yeah I agree. I'm reading up on PS failures and it doesn't sound like what I am experiencing. It seems PS failures are more like someone unplugged the computer, not just freezing it. I wasn't sure if a possible voltage trailing off would cause my issues but it seems like most of what I am reading indicates its either on or off in terms of power supply issues.

[The Fugitive]

whats your CPU temp showing?

Is your cooling system working?

How long since you put the cooling system on the CPU? Badly applied or dried heat sink compound may not be transferring the heat well. Also the cooling system may have slipped off.

[XxDaSTaRxx]

Yeah I agree. I'm reading up on PS failures and it doesn't sound like what I am experiencing. It seems PS failures are more like someone unplugged the computer, not just freezing it. I wasn't sure if a possible voltage trailing off would cause my issues but it seems like most of what I am reading indicates its either on or off in terms of power supply issues.

I was gonna say, if you payed for an 800 watt power system it darn better work!

[SilverZ06]

whats your CPU temp showing?

Is your cooling system working?

How long since you put the cooling system on the CPU? Badly applied or dried heat sink compound may not be transferring the heat well. Also the cooling system may have slipped off.

CPU temp 40*C on the hottest core the rest of the cores are around 37*C. the one core has always run hotter from the start.
It's an H80 water cooling system that has been installed for over 2 years.

[SilverZ06]

Well I don't think it's the CPU either. I'm running a burn in test and so far so good.



Hmm..maybe not a hardware problem? 

[SilverZ06]

I put my windows cd in and did a windows repair and so far it seems to be working okay. I didn't see what (if anything) was actually repaired by the windows repair tool but it seems to be working as of now. If anyone still has any suggestions on what to check/look for I'm all ears. 

[XxDaSTaRxx]

Well I don't think it's the CPU either. I'm running a burn in test and so far so good.
(Image removed from quote.)


Hmm..maybe not a hardware problem? 

It is most likely a hardware problem, but then again I am no computer expert.

[SilverZ06]

Well that didn't last long. I went down stairs to let my wife in the door, came back up and my pc was rebooting and I ended up with this screen. Once powered down and back up it booted just fine.  

[BaldEagl]

I'm thinking it's either your PSU or your mobo since memtest came up clean.  One thing you could try is to make sure everything's clean and seated properly including all your PSU connections and give it another try.

Have you opened it up when it does this to see if the mobo's giving you an F code error?  Do you get any beep codes when it happens?

Another thing since it's asking for a boot device would be to try plugging your HD into another port and trying a different connector cable.  You'll probably have to reassign it in the BIOS.   Speaking of that have you tried resetting the BIOS to default settings?

[MrRiplEy[H]]

If your old stable overclock fails, the reason may well be your PSU. I had a computer that did exactly this - previously stable overclock refused to boot one day. Dropping the clocks helped for some time but with time the system become unstable even on near stock settings.

Replacing the PSU with a new XFX black series made the overclock rock steady again.

[SilverZ06]

Is there any way to actually test the power supply besides the cheap testers? I read the cheap testers have been known to pass intermittently failing power supplies. I just pulled the power supply out of the machine and inspected what I could see and it doesn't look bad. The capacitors are not bulged or blown from what I can see. The big capacitor has a yellow goo on the side of it but looks like something from the assembly process because that same yellow goo is present on some connectors on the opposite side of the circuit board in the power supply. I have not taken the PS apart because there is a 5 year warranty on it but I want to make sure that is the problem before I go through the hassle of trying to return it.

One thing I did notice is I can now make my pc freeze on command. Anytime I try to run a hardware monitor application like cpu-z the machine will freeze while the program starts to detect the hardware. I'm wondering if that is more related to a MB or PS issue?

EDIT: Also worth noting. The MB posts fine every single time and there are no codes showing on the onboard "dr. debug" diagnostic led panel