Gaming Minidump/ sysdata errors

[Acetic Orcein]

Hey everyone!
Recently I purchased a new computer- well individual components lol.

I seem to have an odd problem. Computer runs fine generally, but may crash spontaneously. After rebooting, the windows error thing makes reference to the minidump and sysdata stuff. Googling this has led me to believe it's due to memory issues? Though running memtest... it says nothing is wrong? Which is rather odd...

I have a second problem (generally these two problems cooincide together, and it appears to occur rather randomly, not repeatedly, but enough to get annoying) where the monitor will flash up with very odd stripes of varying colours. This will then continue, or the computer will reset itself. If the computer resets itself, it displays the whole minidump error. Otherwise, it doesn't if I'm forced to manually restart it. Occasionally, the computer fails to boot up and windows repair is launched- prompting for a system restore, which i've had to do a few times... (sometimes the computer can load without the need for a restore)

Running Windows 7 Ultimate with:

ASROCK SKT-AM3 M3A770DE
AMD Athlon II X3 2.9 GHz Processor
ASUS 5770 (not sure exactly what card it is, but it's in this series)
Western Digital 1tb hard disk


Argh... i'm trying to figure out what the memory was... it's 2 x 2gb
I believe it was OCZ optimised for core i7 or something like that?

I think that might have been the issue?
I'd try swapping out the memory, but I have no other ddr3's in the house lol. So perhaps i'll purchase more.

Anyway, ironically the computer just froze while typing this post, and had to be restarted (i.e there were no, not responding errors, the screen just remained stationary).
Does anyone have any suggestions? I've updated malwarebytes, and performed a scan with no errors. Same for DrWeb Cure it and AVG (though AVG has been a little annoying recently, saying certain system files have an invalid structure and can't be read?). I've also ran ccleaner, fixed registry issues and removed some junk with it.


Thank you for your time! Sorry for my confusing and incoherent post.

(I'd like to say that the computer runs fine generally, it's just these annoying crashes!)

 

[raulpica]

Download memtest86+ and give it a run

You can find it here

 

[Acetic Orcein]

Yes

I've ran the test before with no errors

(I did it again anyway lol)

Still nothing...

Mmmm I notice when running CHKDISK utility, it always seems to want to repair files or something. That's prob just normal though?

 

[Deleted member 35947]

Mmmm I notice when running CHKDISK utility, it always seems to want to repair files or something. That's prob just normal though?

If it keeps crashing on you, then yes. You could run a more through scan just to be sure there's no physical errors to the disk.

The odd colour flashing could be a number of things. Is it graphic artifacts on the screen that progressively get worse? If so, could be damage to your gpu, which would then cause the crashes.

 

[raulpica]

Well, then the next idea would be writing down what the blue screen says. Usually Win gives you a good hint on what's the problem.

Example: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/images/Windows_XP_BSOD.png
Here you can see "PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA"

Search for something similiar. Also the STOP number is pretty useful. Just as the thing beneath it.

Never got a bsod with Win7, so I'm not entirely sure that the Final one uses the same BSOD screen style, but it should.

Good luck

EDIT: Btw, run a chkdsk /f on your HD. You probably have some small issues on there, derived from the sudden crashes. That should fix them.

 

[Acetic Orcein]

Thank you for your wonderful responses.

@ Edhel- no, the stripes appear all at once (vertically) across the screen. They can be of varying colours, and the colours can be quite interesting (stripey crimson, purple, blue) burning my eyes in the process haha. Erm... when that happens, the entire screen becomes stripes- the computer no longer functions? Though if I move the mouse around, the colours can change, like a kaleidoscope!

@ Raulpica- yes! I wanted to examine the blue screen, but the computer restarts before I can get a good look at it. Blue screen may appear after the computer reboots (before the login screen) after a crash, then it restarts and asks if I'd like to do system repair etc. Occasionally windows does inform me specifically of the error number and stuff upon rebooting. i.e windows has experienced an error that has preventing it from working- blue screen OS (or words to that effect). Foolishly I've not wrote this down, but I'm sure it'll happen again so... yes lol.

Thank you for assistance. So far, I've had no crashes after running that memtest 86 the second time...
But it's only a matter of time!

*ominous music*


I'll keep you updated lol.

 

[Deleted member 35947]

@ Raulpica- yes! I wanted to examine the blue screen, but the computer restarts before I can get a good look at it. Blue screen may appear after the computer reboots (before the login screen) after a crash, then it restarts and asks if I'd like to do system repair etc.

You can prevent Windows from auto rebooting when it blue screens. Go to system properties -> startup and recovery. Look for a section there under 'system failure'. Untick a box that has automatically restart. Should give you plenty of time to take note of the exact error.

 

[raulpica]

When your PC starts. press F8. That will take you to the Windows pre-boot options (the same menu where you can enter Safe Mode), you should find "Disable Automatic Restart on System Failure" there. Just press Enter, and Win will boot normally, only it won't reboot when the BSOD occours

Or you can just do as Edhel says

 

[Acetic Orcein]

lol thanks everyone

It's done!

So now I must wait lol.

 

[Chris_Skylock]

run memtest overnight and see what happens.

it could be a driver virus or so. I wish I can see the minidumps myself

if you can log in in safe mode, it's a virus.

 

[Lee79]

Upload the minidump files to rapiadshare or something and I can debug them for you and tell the exact cause of the blue screens Usually the path to this file or files will be C:\Windows\minidump , unless Windows is installed on another drive. Minidump files are labled by date and in order of their occurence (mini092509-01.dmp would refer to the first error on 09-25-09). Put them all in a zip file and upload them.

or you can learn to do it yourself it is a good skill to have here is a good guide
http://www.ghacks.net/2008/06/04/analyse-system-crashes/

 

[Acetic Orcein]

Yes, I experienced another blue screen and have a memory dump now, erm I'll probably upload it.
I'm sorry for taking so long also

Mindump files (I think)

I followed that link and tried analysing it myself lol!
Erm the default bucket ID indicates the main issue?
It says VISTA_DRIVER_FAULT

and it mentions ntkrpamp.exe

a few times.

 

[Deleted member 35947]

Is it possible to upload it to another site? Rapidshare one keeps telling me there's no free download slots.

 

[Acetic Orcein]

Yes certainly!
Minidumps with zshare

I'm sorry the last one didn't work.

 

[Acetic Orcein]

Also just a late addition, I've noticed that I've apparently used 660GB of hard drive space out of a possible 937.
However, I really only think i've used about 45-60GB so far? (I've added up the total for each of the files on C).
I've ran CCleaner and that's only released about 115MB. So... I'm trying to work where that 660GB of space has gone. Or is it just reporting incorrectly?

Maybe I should check the bios lol.

 

[Cermage]

could be a number of reasons, im pointing to a faulty motherboard.

first i'd back up all your important stuff and do a format. if the problems persist use the onboard(if you have one) graphics card, if it still crashes, take out one stick of ram at a time and see if it crashes. do the same with your hard drives/dvd drives. after all that, and you still have problems swing asus and email and see if you can do anything with warranty.

 

[Acetic Orcein]

Alright

Well I found out I didn't have the latest drivers for my graphics card, so that has been updated.

So far so good...

I've discovered that about 550GB or so was taken up by a folder called avg9. So I'm guessing it has something to AVG...
Is it worth uninstalling, and installing Avast or something? (There is nothing in the virus vault or anything)

Thank you for your suggestions also

EDIT: Right, apparently AVG has been making dumps every few days. On a particular day, for an hour or so it has made one dump every minute? That is quite odd? It's quite scary actually. They date back to January, and have used up 584GB. It should be safe to delete these files right? Or maybe it's just worth replacing now...

Ok... the computer nearly died. It failed to boot- system repairs failed and the BSOD mentioned: MEMORY MANAGEMENT
I tried booting in safe mode, but then a BSOD occured and said: PEN LIST CORRUPT

It was saved by 'last known good configuration' option.

It's a good thing everything is backed up haha.

 

[Deleted member 35947]

584GB!!? AVG should have an option to delete those files. Check through the program. If not, then yes, I would manually remove them.

 

[Acetic Orcein]

Yes that's been done!
Anyway I do feel the issues lie with the memory. So I'll probably have to run a more thorough memory test, I only ran it for 3 cycles last time. So I'll give each stick the time it deserves.

So yes. I really should pay more attention to advice people give lol.

 

[Acetic Orcein]

Memory test has been ran over night! No errors found in either stick lol. I still believe they might be the main cause. Anyway err, I've attached a sort of debug summary thingymajig.

It points to a smss.exe error?

I know this is quite important, but I am unsure what causes this?

Spoiler

CRITICAL_OBJECT_TERMINATION (f4)
A process or thread crucial to system operation has unexpectedly exited or been
terminated.
Several processes and threads are necessary for the operation of the
system; when they are terminated (for any reason), the system can no
longer function.
Arguments:
Arg1: 0000000000000003, Process
Arg2: fffffa80057e9330, Terminating object
Arg3: fffffa80057e9610, Process image file name
Arg4: fffff80002bd6240, Explanatory message (ascii)

Debugging Details:
------------------


PROCESS_OBJECT: fffffa80057e9330

IMAGE_NAME: smss.exe

DEBUG_FLR_IMAGE_TIMESTAMP: 0

MODULE_NAME: smss

FAULTING_MODULE: 0000000000000000

PROCESS_NAME: smss.exe

EXCEPTION_CODE: (NTSTATUS) 0xc0000409 - The system detected an overrun of a stack-based buffer in this application. This overrun could potentially allow a malicious user to gain control of this application.

BUGCHECK_STR: 0xF4_C0000409

CUSTOMER_CRASH_COUNT: 1

DEFAULT_BUCKET_ID: VISTA_DRIVER_FAULT

CURRENT_IRQL: 0

STACK_TEXT:
fffff880`0239eb08 fffff800`02c59142 : 00000000`000000f4 00000000`00000003 fffffa80`057e9330 fffffa80`057e9610 : nt!KeBugCheckEx
fffff880`0239eb10 fffff800`02c05269 : ffffffff`ffffffff fffffa80`05801820 fffffa80`057e9330 fffffa80`057e9330 : nt!PspCatchCriticalBreak+0x92
fffff880`0239eb50 fffff800`02b89c74 : ffffffff`ffffffff 00000000`00000001 fffffa80`057e9330 00000000`00000008 : nt! ?? ::NNGAKEGL::`string'+0x17a06
fffff880`0239eba0 fffff800`028cd153 : fffffa80`057e9330 00000000`c0000409 fffffa80`05801820 00000000`00000000 : nt!NtTerminateProcess+0xf4
fffff880`0239ec20 00000000`7787017a : 00000000`00000000 00000000`00000000 00000000`00000000 00000000`00000000 : nt!KiSystemServiceCopyEnd+0x13
00000000`0056f2c8 00000000`00000000 : 00000000`00000000 00000000`00000000 00000000`00000000 00000000`00000000 : 0x7787017a


STACK_COMMAND: kb

FOLLOWUP_NAME: MachineOwner

FAILURE_BUCKET_ID: X64_0xF4_C0000409_IMAGE_smss.exe

BUCKET_ID: X64_0xF4_C0000409_IMAGE_smss.exe

Followup: MachineOwner