Currently typing this up on my dad's PC whilst my PC memtests, and apologies if this is the wrong forum.
Basically this is a problem that I have been having for a while now. I am getting sporadic blue screens during gaming. This has occurred most commonly in Civilisation V but also in GTA IV and Just Cause 2, although there are one or two other games that I haven't had this problem in (Skyrim, although that just CTDs instead, PES13 and FM13 have been fine, although FM13 isn't a graphically intensive game).
These BSODs have so far centred around two things, 'Page fault in Non-Paged Area', the odd 'IRQL_not_less_or_equal' and most recently a 0xBE error (An Attempt was made to write to read-only memory). This issue has directed me to believing the RAM may be at fault hence the current running of Memtest86+. It has been on overnight and has just completed it's 4th pass after 12 hours with no errors as of yet. I'm not quite sure how long I should leave it running before I can be confident that is not at fault. I have also ran FAH sessions on the CPU and GPU (which is full load on the cores) and in the past done a Furmark burn in test on the GPU, which put it at full load. Both ran fine and not one blue screen. Alongside this I have done some instances of RAM benchmarking with no issue, although I haven't done a Prime95 test.
These blue screens have only ever occurred in games, with no errors opening in Windows which generally indicates to me that the problem could be with faulty hardware that can't handle being on full load (which if that was the cause should've failed on the stress tests), but at the moment have ran out of ideas on where to look. DXDiag has reported no problems, and all my drivers are uptodate as far as I can tell.
My system specs:
MOBO: Asrock 970 Extreme 3
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE @ stock 3.4Ghz
RAM: G.Skill RipjawsX 1600 CAS9 16Gb (4x4Gb sticks)
GPU: Sapphire 2Gb Radeon HD6950
PSU: Thermaltake Toughpower 575w (I believe)
SSD: 64Gb Crucial M4 (Windows Installation)
HD1: 1.5Tb Seagate Barracuda (data drive)
HD2: 1Tb Samsung F3 (partitioned into three drives for games, programs and page file)
I have got a RAMDisk operating on the PC, at 4Gb which is where cache files for Spotify, browsers and Zip files are extracted to if I only need them once or twice go. I did change the software that ran it but these errors occurred before and after that change.
I also have DaemonTools installed but don't run it when I don't need an .ISO mounted. I only start it up and create a virtual DVD drive as and when needed and close it when I've finished. I have read that people have had issues with that in the past with blue screens but like I said it's inactive during gaming sessions.
The System is not currently overclocked. I did have an overclock running which I tested to be stable but for some odd reason Civ 5 decided it wanted to blue screen every ten minutes or so in the game. That was running with the CPU at 4Ghz and the RAM having a rating of 8-7-8 (or 8-8-8) with no touch to the voltage. At the moment the RAM is running at it's stock 1600 speed since the board runs it at 1333 overwise, although I've no idea why this could cause issues since it is running at the spec stated. The board has four RAM slots with all populated. I do have a custom air cooler installed (a Noctua D-14) so overheating is not an issue, although the size of it has made the RAM very difficult to access, but there is a clearance and nothing is making anything short.
I have a 16Gb Pagefile on a partition on HD2, and running a small page file on the SSD for Windows to write dumps to, since the SSD is only 64Gb and space fills up damn quickly if I'm not careful and conservative with it.
Memtest86+ is currently working on it's fifth pass with no errors (halfway through Test 4 as I'm writing this), should I stop it soon after and assume the RAM is free? This is the standard test in Memtest86+ btw.
Basically I'm running out of options as to why it is giving out these sporadic blue screens in games, since it is only in games that the issues occur (or have done so far). I've ran several VMs with no errors of the sort.
Basically this is a problem that I have been having for a while now. I am getting sporadic blue screens during gaming. This has occurred most commonly in Civilisation V but also in GTA IV and Just Cause 2, although there are one or two other games that I haven't had this problem in (Skyrim, although that just CTDs instead, PES13 and FM13 have been fine, although FM13 isn't a graphically intensive game).
These BSODs have so far centred around two things, 'Page fault in Non-Paged Area', the odd 'IRQL_not_less_or_equal' and most recently a 0xBE error (An Attempt was made to write to read-only memory). This issue has directed me to believing the RAM may be at fault hence the current running of Memtest86+. It has been on overnight and has just completed it's 4th pass after 12 hours with no errors as of yet. I'm not quite sure how long I should leave it running before I can be confident that is not at fault. I have also ran FAH sessions on the CPU and GPU (which is full load on the cores) and in the past done a Furmark burn in test on the GPU, which put it at full load. Both ran fine and not one blue screen. Alongside this I have done some instances of RAM benchmarking with no issue, although I haven't done a Prime95 test.
These blue screens have only ever occurred in games, with no errors opening in Windows which generally indicates to me that the problem could be with faulty hardware that can't handle being on full load (which if that was the cause should've failed on the stress tests), but at the moment have ran out of ideas on where to look. DXDiag has reported no problems, and all my drivers are uptodate as far as I can tell.
My system specs:
MOBO: Asrock 970 Extreme 3
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE @ stock 3.4Ghz
RAM: G.Skill RipjawsX 1600 CAS9 16Gb (4x4Gb sticks)
GPU: Sapphire 2Gb Radeon HD6950
PSU: Thermaltake Toughpower 575w (I believe)
SSD: 64Gb Crucial M4 (Windows Installation)
HD1: 1.5Tb Seagate Barracuda (data drive)
HD2: 1Tb Samsung F3 (partitioned into three drives for games, programs and page file)
I have got a RAMDisk operating on the PC, at 4Gb which is where cache files for Spotify, browsers and Zip files are extracted to if I only need them once or twice go. I did change the software that ran it but these errors occurred before and after that change.
I also have DaemonTools installed but don't run it when I don't need an .ISO mounted. I only start it up and create a virtual DVD drive as and when needed and close it when I've finished. I have read that people have had issues with that in the past with blue screens but like I said it's inactive during gaming sessions.
The System is not currently overclocked. I did have an overclock running which I tested to be stable but for some odd reason Civ 5 decided it wanted to blue screen every ten minutes or so in the game. That was running with the CPU at 4Ghz and the RAM having a rating of 8-7-8 (or 8-8-8) with no touch to the voltage. At the moment the RAM is running at it's stock 1600 speed since the board runs it at 1333 overwise, although I've no idea why this could cause issues since it is running at the spec stated. The board has four RAM slots with all populated. I do have a custom air cooler installed (a Noctua D-14) so overheating is not an issue, although the size of it has made the RAM very difficult to access, but there is a clearance and nothing is making anything short.
I have a 16Gb Pagefile on a partition on HD2, and running a small page file on the SSD for Windows to write dumps to, since the SSD is only 64Gb and space fills up damn quickly if I'm not careful and conservative with it.
Memtest86+ is currently working on it's fifth pass with no errors (halfway through Test 4 as I'm writing this), should I stop it soon after and assume the RAM is free? This is the standard test in Memtest86+ btw.
Basically I'm running out of options as to why it is giving out these sporadic blue screens in games, since it is only in games that the issues occur (or have done so far). I've ran several VMs with no errors of the sort.
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