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Help with troubling BSOD related to hardware...

RapidFire4Life
Level 7
So for quite a while I've been having trouble with BSOD's, with error messages such as MEMORY MANAGEMENT, PFN LIST CORRUPT, APC INDEX MISMATCH, SYSTEM SERVICE EXCEPTION, and so on.

I ran driver verifier and it came back saying that it thought it was my Nvidia driver. I tried re-installing the drivers, using older drivers, swamping video cards, and even re-installing windows and not installing any drivers. I still had BSOD issues.

I tried running Memtest86+ several times and on the last time i ran it for 34 hours with a total of 30 passes and never once received an error.

I've tried running diagnostic tools on my HDD and SDD, and found no errors with them either.

I've updated the bios on the motherboard and that didn't fix the error either.

I've checked the 5V and 12V output from my power supply and they are both extremely stable.

I've basically run out of Ideas of what the issue could be.

What I have noticed is the problem seems to occur after my system has been off for an extended amount of time (overnight anywhere from 8-16 hours). When I turn on the PC it often blue screens anywhere from 3-10 times on the windows loading screen with varying error messages before finally getting to the log in screen (sometimes it crashes once or twice more after log in). After it is on for a few its stops crashing and stabilizes. I can leave it on for days and never experience a crash, even restart the machine for windows updates and it will come back fine without a crash. So the problem only seems to occur after the machine has been shut down for some length of time.

This has lead me to believe that the problem possibly lies in the mother board and that the reason it acts like this is that maybe some capacitors in the mother board aren't holding a charge when the machine is off and that's why it blue screens several times then stabilizes.

Let me know what you all think, does this sound like a valid conclusion. Should I RMA my motherboard (under warranty still) to ASUS and have them replace it?

System Specs:
CPU: Intel Core i5-3570K Ivy Bridge 3.4GHz (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...)
MoBo: ASUS SABERTOOTH Z77 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...)
RAM: CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...)
GPU: EVGA SC+ GTX 680 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...)
SSD: SAMSUNG 840 Pro Series 128GB (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...)
HDD: SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 500GB (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...)
PSU: CORSAIR TX Series CMPSU-750TX 750W (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...)
18,310 Views
7 REPLIES 7

RapidFire4Life
Level 7
Anyone have an opinion on this, please? I'm so tired of these issues but I've heard the ASUS RMA process is terrible and I don't want to RMA my board if its not the problem.

Arne_Saknussemm
Level 40
Hi Rapid 🙂

Do you have the chance to try a second PSU (I know you said the PSU seems stable but this is very hard to tell without an oscilloscope). Is the SSD firmware up to date? have you tried a windows install on another disk drive....replaced SATA cables?

RapidFire4Life
Level 7
Well sadly I don't have another PSU powerful enough to run my machine so I can really test that. And no spare drives either (other than old IDE drives) but I may be buying another HDD soon anyway and if so I will try that. I just find it odd that it would be either of those since it runs perfect until being turned off for several hours (Been running it for days, restarting, and updating without a single problem). Honestly the only reason I haven't started the RMA process is that all I've seen is horror stories about the RMA process. I'm genuinely afraid that if I do an advanced RMA i'll receive a refurbished board that will be in worse condition than mine, or that the asus warehouse will damage my board upon arrival and then charge me for it (as these seem to be the two most prominent cases).

Arne_Saknussemm
Level 40
Well, there are a lot of horror stories on a support forum...despite the majority of cases being successfully resolved I suspect. A referb that works, is better than a new board that doesn't...

It does sound like board might be dodgy but the power thing could equally apply to the PSU so I guess you are going to have to swap out one of them. You might just have to bite the bullet and RMA...

RapidFire4Life
Level 7
Yeah I probably will, thanks for the reply!

Zka17
Level 16
What I would do is this:
1. Remove the battery for overnight to reset BIOS at it's defaults.
2. Remove all storage devices and run memtest86+ to be double-sure that the memories are OK (since you already did this, do just like 2 cycles)
3. Re-install the OS, but have only one drive attached (on which the OS will be)

HiVizMan
Level 40
The narrative in your first post shouts out PSU to me. But as you correctly say it could be a capacitor that is no longer retaining a charge.

A change of cmos battery should resolve the clock issue.
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