Here's the four page write up in case it's of any value.
April 23, 2015 It’s been a week since I found what seems to be the solution to my BSOD woes and it’s not something you’d think of right off the bat. Currently, I’m typing up this post in Word 2007 while listening to some music from Extrememusic.com using Flash via the Chrome engine in Avant Browser. What usually happened when I did this kind of thing for a period of time was an error, a sound distortion, and then the familiar BSOD and cryptic reason. So far, I’ve been typing and listening to good music without a problem for several hours.
The BSODs ran the gamut:
- IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
- MEMORY_MANAGEMENT
- BAD_POOL_HEADER
- PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA
- PFN_LIST_CORRUPT
- DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE
- Driver Mismanaging System PTES
- Error in Storport.sys
- Display driver nvlddmkm stopped
- Dxgkrnl.sys related BSOD
- Ntoskrnl.sys related BSOD
- Ntkrnlmp.exe related BSOD
- Probably a few others I don’t remember
As of this post creation, I ran across this article that might have been a lot more concisely helpful than all the BSOD research I did and programs I used:
Best viewed with Firefox or IE because Chrome seems to block the article images (At least for me).
Google: How to solve Windows 7 crashes in minutes - Network World - Apr 18, 2011 - After booting up the system, BSODs would happen even when I left the OS alone for several minutes to go do something else. I’d come back, see the BSOD screen, the error reason, and think, “****?!”. Very perplexing, very annoying.
- Ran three different antimalware programs, albeit not outside the OS environment, but every full scan came up clean.
- Downloaded the most current version of the Memtest86+ USB iso file and ran every test on every CPU multiple times over several hours with no errors.
- Initially used NirSoft’s free BlueScreenView program and WhoCrashed from Resplendence. Unfortunately, neither program was very good at nailing down the problem. WhoCrashed seemed to do more of a handoff to WinDbg from what I could tell from the info it gave. So, I switched over to the Standalone Debugging Tools for Windows (WinDbg) via the Windows Software Development Kit for Windows 8.1:
Google: Standalone Debugging Tools for Windows (WinDbg) The problem with WinDbg was that it would say something like ntoskrl.exe was to blame or svchost.exe caused the crash. Really? The OS kernel decided to be screwy? Which svchost.exe? There’s at least a dozen listings for svchost.exe (Host Process for Windows Services) under Task Manager at any given time that take care of dozens of other programs running under the hood. So, just like Microsoft BSODs in general, WinDbg is nice, but not very informative in a helpful sense.
- Used Driver Verifier that comes with the OS and some tutorial instructions I got off of the Instructables website. Whatever DV stressed out to the point of BSODing the system, I uninstalled. Regardless, the BSODs kept happening.
- Thought I’d uninstall and reinstall my Logitech M510 drivers since they were the last manual thing that interacted with the Avant Browser prior to a BSOD. Well, as I already posted, that caused some minor problems that I resolved and posted on the Logitech Mouse & Pointer Devices forum. Still, the BSODs kept happening.
- Found there was a long standing problem with Vista Timeout Detection and Recovery (TDR) Errors and Nvidia and AMD video cards:
Google: NVIDIA Statement on TDR Errors Display driver nvlddmkm stopped I tried the TDR registry fix mentioned, but it didn’t fix the BSOD issues.
- After experiencing a few Nvidia video driver BSODs or complete video blackouts that were sometimes accompanied by full speed fan events, I decided to do some regressive driver testing. First, I went to Wikipedia to find when the GeForce 560 GTX was released and use that release date time period as my driver date download starting point. After various driver installs, uninstalls, and cleanings with DriverSweeper 3.2, nothing seemed to work.
While searching on Google for other possible leads, I came across this blog detailing Nvidia video driver issues that were causing problems:
Google: nVidia stability issues on GeForce 400/500 series - December 1, 2013 Afterwards, I went to Nvidia’s website and did something I really didn’t want to do, i.e. read every Release Notes PDF doc for video drivers released between the time the GeForce 560 GTX was released and the first GeForce 600 series card drivers were released to see if these issues had been fixed. Eventually, I found some good news:
Changes and Fixed Issues in Version 340.52 Chrome browser fails to render content after a period of use. [1447322]
Changes and Fixed Issues in Version 332.21 [Fermi-class GPU]: Browser freezes and crashes. [1358403]
Changes and Fixed Issues in Version 331.65 Firefox browser may crash while running Adobe flash videos. [1363639]
Changes and Fixed Issues in Version 295.51 [GeForce 500/400 series]: Fixed the occurrence of some “Display driver stopped responding” error messages that appeared when playing multiple videos. [915993]
[GeForce GTX 590]: The GPU fan randomly spikes to 100% and then takes a few seconds to return to normal. [895797]
So, I installed driver 340.52, but it gave me problems. Then, I installed driver 332.21 and I’ve stayed with it since it didn’t give me any problems. Although, because Avant Browser’s Chrome webkit and Firefox gecko engines would still cause BSODS as per WinDbg feedback, I reluctantly downloaded Firefox 37 and started to work on migrating over to it.
- As a last resort, I decided to do an in place repair of Win 7. Everything went fine, including the umpteen hundred updates that automatically should cause MS to release SP2 for Win 7, but that’d make too much sense. Unfortunately, even that effort didn’t fix the BSOD issues.
- Just for the heck of it, I decided to re-reset my mobo BIOS to default settings and then configure them to the point where the system would boot into the OS. As I was looking over the memory settings, I noticed the clock skew for channels A & B seemed odd. Channel A was Delayed 450 ps (picoseconds) and Channel B was Delayed 300 ps. This was their default value when the memory speed was manually set for 1066 MHz. Any other time for memory speeds 400 MHz – 800 MHz, both channels were “Advanced” 150 ps.
After confirming this clock skew setting was also the default setting in a previous BIOS version, I re-flashed the BIOS to the most current BIOS version, set the clock skew on Channels A & B to Advanced 150 ps, and hit F10 to save the settings and reboot. After counting past a minute without a POST beep, I powered down the system, used the mobo jumper to reset the BIOS to default levels, and then set the clock skew on both channels to Normal. After getting the same no POST beep result, I reset the BIOS to default, and set the clock skew for Channel A to Normal and Delayed 150 ps for Channel B. “BEEP” said the POST routine.
The OS loaded without a problem and worked just fine for a couple of days. I was able to use Avant Browser’s Firefox and Chrome engines without any BSODs, which is fantastic vs. the Firefox migration. Everything else I did in the normal course of using the system worked without a problem too. Even so, I eventually set Channels A & B to Delayed 150 ps in order to stay consistent with the clock skew time pairing pattern established with the lower memory speed ranges, i.e. 150 ps for both channels.
Maybe it doesn’t matter if Channel A’s clock skew is 150 ps faster at Normal than Channel B’s clock skew at a Delayed 150 ps. I guess I could always run Memtest and a freebie gaming performance program to see if there’s a stability difference. Regardless, I’m glad I’ve got this issue resolved for the moment because it’s been sucking up way too much of my time. Of course, Windows XP Pro worked just fine without having to make this clock skew adjustment.
post edited by DBF68 - 2015/10/03 23:51:14