Desktop Black Screening and restarting Randomly

phlegms · 03-12-2009 02:28AM #1

My Self Built desktop (Only a month or so old) has this problem where it likes to randomly restart itself and I cant, for the life of me, figure out why.
It started doing it a week or so after I built it, but it happened so infrequently I never thought anything of it. However, the past 2 days it has been doing it every 20 minutes or so. What will happen is, the screen will go all black but the Pc itself stays running. It hangs on the black screen for about 10 seconds then restarts itself. Have googled around and cant find anything on it. Pretty sure its not a windows 7 issue, although I could be wrong.
Any help you can give me is greatly appreciated as this is wrecking my head!

Ruu_Old · 03-12-2009 02:30AM

Possible that something is overheating. Have you got Speedfan or a similar application?

Overheal · 03-12-2009 02:31AM

Black Screen of Death, caused by a recent patch that went FUBAR.

http://news.google.com/news?q=black+screen+of+death&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&ei=2yIXS5X6C4a1tge8-PXrBA&sa=X&oi=news_group&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CBIQsQQwAA

phlegms · 03-12-2009 02:42AM

Ruu wrote: »

Possible that something is overheating. Have you got Speedfan or a similar application?

Its definitely not a temp issue as far as I can tell.
Have been monitoring my temps and they seem normal enough.
And by normal I mean my cpu maintains at 28-30c and my gpu steadies at about 35-40c when not under stress.

As for the Windows 7 black screen of death issue, from what I have read that only occurs when you boot up.

Keep the suggestions coming tho!

Overheal · 03-12-2009 03:34AM

Are you triggering Hibernate or something?

zenno · 03-12-2009 05:47AM

phlegms wrote: »

My Self Built desktop (Only a month or so old) has this problem where it likes to randomly restart itself and I cant, for the life of me, figure out why.
It started doing it a week or so after I built it, but it happened so infrequently I never thought anything of it. However, the past 2 days it has been doing it every 20 minutes or so. What will happen is, the screen will go all black but the Pc itself stays running. It hangs on the black screen for about 10 seconds then restarts itself. Have googled around and cant find anything on it. Pretty sure its not a windows 7 issue, although I could be wrong.
Any help you can give me is greatly appreciated as this is wrecking my head!

a bit more information on the computer specs would help ?

if i was you i would first try removing the graphics driver and use a program called drivercleanerpro to remove the leftovers of the graphics driver files. then install a different earlier driver (seen that you have not given any info on your computer internals it's hard to figure. but try a different graphics driver whether it be nvidia or ati. after that if you still have a problem i would recommend downloading EVEREST free edition to see what your cpu temps are incase your cpu is overheating.

ok i see your temps are ok...

info on your psu
gpu
memory
hard disk
mobo

zenno · 03-12-2009 05:54AM

phlegms wrote: »

Its definitely not a temp issue as far as I can tell.
Have been monitoring my temps and they seem normal enough.
And by normal I mean my cpu maintains at 28-30c and my gpu steadies at about 35-40c when not under stress.

As for the Windows 7 black screen of death issue, from what I have read that only occurs when you boot up.

Keep the suggestions coming tho!

your temps are perfect so it's either the graphics card driver or the memory
double check in the bios to make sure everything is set to the way it's supposed to be as well.

info on using drivercleaner pro http://www.overclock.net/downloads/138459-driver-cleaner-pro.html

download driver cleaner pro http://www.afterdawn.com/software/desktop_software/other_tools/driver_cleaner_pro.cfm

phlegms · 03-12-2009 12:21PM

I have been getting a new error as of last night in which the pc will crash and go to a white/grey screen and hang there indefinitely

I'll give the driver clean thing you suggested a go now.

Pc specs as follows;

Intel i5
4 gigs DD3 ram
Ati Sapphire HD 5850
1tb Hard drive
Asus P755D EVO motherboards
Corsair TX 650 w PSU

Biggins · 03-12-2009 01:14PM

Overheal wrote: »

Black Screen of Death, caused by a recent patch that went FUBAR.

http://news.google.com/news?q=black+screen+of+death&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&ei=2yIXS5X6C4a1tge8-PXrBA&sa=X&oi=news_group&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CBIQsQQwAA

Could indeed be a remote possibility.
Seen those reports only yesterday from a number of sources including BBC and Sky news.

Another example:

http://www.techradar.com/news/software/operating-systems/microsoft-investigating-black-screen-of-death-655047

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10407090-83.html

phlegms · 03-12-2009 05:27PM

The plot thickens...

I un-installed my graphics card driver, restarted, and went to download the drivers and install them again. However, mid-download it Blue screened on me as opposed to the Black screen or Grey-striped screen I had gotten before.
Any ideas what this is an indication of?
Im pretty sure its a graphics card issue at this stage..

Overheal · 03-12-2009 06:00PM

Did you build it wrong?

phlegms · 03-12-2009 06:03PM

Overheal wrote: »

Did you build it wrong?

Been working perfectly up until 2 days ago

Overheal · 03-12-2009 06:23PM

you saids its been happening since you built it though not as frequently. so it sounds like something went wrong with the build. Reseat the components - ram, cards, etc. Reseat the cables. Double check your drivers, run some diagnostics on a linux boot cd, etc.

and if you get a blue screen memorize the code/write it down.

phlegms · 03-12-2009 06:42PM

Overheal wrote: »

you saids its been happening since you built it though not as frequently. so it sounds like something went wrong with the build. Reseat the components - ram, cards, etc. Reseat the cables. Double check your drivers, run some diagnostics on a linux boot cd, etc.

and if you get a blue screen memorize the code/write it down.

Well the problem only happened once or twice after I built it then didnt happen for a while.

I took out everything last night and reset it to make sure everything had been put in right, and as far as I can tell nothing is out of place.

I'll take down the BSOD code next time it comes up.

Overheal · 03-12-2009 07:13PM

and its definitely not overheating? have you gotten to read the temperatures yet?

danjo-xx · 04-12-2009 09:03PM

Overheal wrote: »

Black Screen of Death, caused by a recent patch that went FUBAR.

http://news.google.com/news?q=black+screen+of+death&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&ei=2yIXS5X6C4a1tge8-PXrBA&sa=X&oi=news_group&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CBIQsQQwAA

I got that last night with XP restarted 3 times and no joy, went into safe mode (lucky I knew a little, very little about that) and from there did a system restore.

Has it been fixed now, is it safe for me to accept window updates now?

Overheal · 04-12-2009 09:12PM

danjo-xx wrote: »

I got that last night with XP restarted 3 times and no joy, went into safe mode (lucky I knew a little, very little about that) and from there did a system restore.

Has it been fixed now, is it safe for me to accept window updates now?

considering its been mainstream news for a week, im sure Microsoft has pulled the update by now.

danjo-xx · 04-12-2009 10:25PM

Overheal wrote: »

considering its been mainstream news for a week, im sure Microsoft has pulled the update by now.

fair point and thanks, I only became aware of it yesterday.

phlegms · 08-12-2009 03:17PM

Ok lads, bit of an update here.

Basically, if I have the gfx card drivers uninstalled it gives me a BSOD. These are the error codes I'm getting;

0x0000007E

and

0x0000001E

There doesnt appear to be a more recent driver for my gfx card so am I entirely screwed? Or is my gfx card even the issue?
Thanks for any help you can give me, I really want to avoid someone having to pay someone to fix it for me..

Cuddlesworth · 08-12-2009 03:47PM

Go to this location,

C:\Windows\Minidump

Attach the most recent files to a post on this form.

phlegms · 08-12-2009 04:59PM

Here ya go:

Memory Dump file 1

Memory Dump File 2

phlegms · 08-12-2009 07:28PM

Is there any help anyone can give me?
This is seriously starting to eat away at me now. I have tried uninstalling drivers and reinstalling older ones,checking all my components are fitted properly, I have done memory tests, virus scans, improved my temperatures etc. etc.. and still no luck.
At this stage I'm ready to throw the fúcker out the window..

phlegms · 08-12-2009 10:59PM

No help then?

Overheal · 08-12-2009 11:34PM

have you tried a reformat?

phlegms · 08-12-2009 11:38PM

Overheal wrote: »

have you tried a reformat?

I doubt a reformat will help as I have been getting this problem since I built it. Or am I completely wrong there?

Overheal · 09-12-2009 02:55PM

phlegms wrote: »

I doubt a reformat will help as I have been getting this problem since I built it. Or am I completely wrong there?

I dunno. Are you?

And are you sure you've explored all driver options? What about a CMOS reset? Is the Intel MAtrix Storage Manager driver installed? Is the BIOS firmware up to date?

Why so adverse to a reformat anyway if youre pulling your hair at? Dont get me wrong I dont mind short hair but male pattern baldness wakes me up at night.

cardol · 17-12-2009 05:12PM

I have been getting the same thing. It only happens when I try to upload a video to YouTube. The video today is only 407MB so well within the limits of YouTube specs. I was getting the same thing about a month ago, then it seemed to fix itself because I uploaded a video since, but today it's happened again. My computer goes to black screen, and although it is still running it requires my password to start it up again. It then goes to this webpage - http://wer.microsoft.com/responses/Response.aspx/10/en-gb/5.1.2600.2.00010100.3.0?SGD=d9d605bc-4fbb-4afa-95a9-e5a010d5512d . As far as I know, I have all the latest drivers (none are showing as being outdated or not working correctly) so I don't know what to do.
Since it doesn't happen for every video, I'm very confused.

My PC specs are:
AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2100+
1.74 GHz 1.00 GB RAM
Microsoft Windows XP
Professional
Version 2
Service Pack 3

ressem · 17-12-2009 06:14PM

Another possibility is hard disk errors. Vista doesn't seem to act predictably when this occurs.

A colleague recently had their laptop repeatedly suspend at unpredictable times in the middle of use, and no amount of changing the power options in the control panel or bios would fix it.

A week or so later, it began to fail at boot, and repair would stall.
Turns out to be bad blocks appearing on the hard disk.

Can you carry out a full backup, identify what manufacture of hard drive is in the laptop?
Most Hard disk manufactures (except Toshiba) provide tools in the form of a bootable CD ISO image which let you do a full in-depth scan looking for problems.

If this is the case there are tools like ddrescue on linux which allow you to clone your hard drive onto a new drive.

Cuddlesworth · 18-12-2009 11:52AM

phlegms wrote: »

Here ya go:

Memory Dump file 1

Memory Dump File 2

Hi OP, I only spotted this now. Both Blue screens were caused by memory corruption. I would do a long check of both your ram and hard-drive(page file errors can cause it as well). I'm sure somebody on the forum could recommend ways to do that.

Cuddlesworth · 18-12-2009 11:55AM

It also might help in future if you point out your using a 64bit OS.

Cuddlesworth · 18-12-2009 11:59AM

One last thing, if your using symantec anti-virus get rid of it. Uninstall and reinstall your antivirus if your using another. They can mask as the above reason for a blue screen.

Desktop Black Screening and restarting Randomly

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