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Question

PC Crashes as if power was cut. Afterward, multiple BSOD

Sep 3, 2016 7:07AM PDT

As of Wednesday, I have a frustrating problem where my computer will crash in one of two ways. I have done everything I know to diagnose the problem, but I have failed.

I have been playing the Legion Warcraft expansion roughly 18 hrs/day since release on Tuesday. This is relevant because high usage, and I physically moved my PC for the LAN - though only about 100 feet to my living room. Obviously this problem hasn't prevented me from playing the game, but the frequency has dramatically increased from 2/day to within minutes of logging in.

The first symptom: PC instantly powers down, as if the power was pulled. This has happened very randomly, although obviously I was playing WoW during every one. This happened several times before the second symptom occurred. Because this acts like dropped power, there are no dumps or crash logs for these. I checked system/application logs, and there are no entries leading up to the crash. Starting up takes a couple minutes; the system log had nothing pre-crash for ~5 minutes, and application had newer irrelevant entries.

Second symptom: Memory related BSOD. These have not been quite as random. They have been generally during potential memory intensive activities during WoW, such as loading a new zone or starting up the game. Many times, I have had WoW crash alone, which also has memory related errors. Once WoW crashes ONCE, then every time I try to log in it will crash similarly (see WoW crash logs) - and eventually BSOD the whole PC. Rebooting temporarily keeps the problem at bay.

To be clear, BOTH symptoms are still happening. But, I wanted to be clear which happened first.

I've tried a bunch of troubleshooting, with some details & theories below. The latest problem is the PC sometimes doesn't boot at all. During the writing of this post - with just chrome and logging applications open - the PC was stable for hours. I then hoped one more time it would fix itself, and it crashed within a minute of launching wow.


Upload: http://www.filedropper.com/cutpowerhelp
-> 2 reports from WhoCrashed. One from Windows' .dmp files, one from Warcraft's
-> All logs from C:\Windows\Minidump. These do NOT include crashes where power simply cut
-> All logs from C:\Program Files (x86)\World of Warcraft\Errors

Here is my list of hardware:
Video card - Gigabyte GTX780 GDDR5-3GB 2xDVI/HDMI/DP OC Graphics Card GV-N780OC-3GD REV2.0
CPU - Intel i7-4930K
SSD - Intel SSDSC2BW240A4
Motherboard - ASUS P9X79 LE LGA 2011 Intel X79 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
Memory - G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory F3-12800CL10D-16GBXL
Power Supply - CORSAIR HX Series HX750 750W ATX12V 2.3 / EPS12V 2.91 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply

Possible issues:
1. Power strip - Definitely not
Ethernet switch shares the same power strip. If it lost power, others on that switch would have seen problems.

2. Power Cord - Probably not
I swapped the power cord with my other PC, and it crashed w/ a power failure just the same.

3. Memory
All the BSOD problems have referred to memory as part of the problem have memory related keywords. You'll see that in the WhoCrashed report.

First, I used Windows' memory diagnostic tool with both cards plugged in. It found no problems.

Second, I tried removing one memory card at a time, and using my computer. Both still exhibited the crash, however one was FAR worse. That "worse" one alone is when the unique BSOD for "win32kbase.sys" happened. I also tried with that card in the other slot - so I don't think this is a problem of memory not being in the "primary" slot. As I write this, only the "less bad" memory card is plugged in.

I ran memtest on just the "less bad" memory card. I didn't use both, because using both now prevents the PC from booting. memtest completed 9 passes without an error before I closed it.

4. Power supply?
Possible. I don't have a great way to test this. I don't see how this would cause memory problems, but I'm not a memory expert. If the voltage became unstable would that corrupt data? Or, have the repeated power failures CAUSED the memory issue?

5. Drivers?
I don't see how old drivers would cause a new problem. I've been using this PC for 2 years without issues. However, after about 2 days of accelerating crashes, I did go to device manager and update video drivers.

All the WoW crashes claim it is due to "third party driver". I only checked video drivers, and did get new ones. I also use logitech's software for an extra keyboard, and Razer's mmo mouse. I don't *think* those interfere at a level of memory that would crash WoW.

6. Virus?
Its possible a virus could cause memory corruption, right? I use Spybot Search & Destroy (premium), and it caught the first "high risk" threat I've ever seen on Monday. However, that was "cleaned" the day before these problems started happening.

7. Heat - no
18 hours per day? Your Video card is overheating!
Ambient temperature is about 68 degrees, so these have not been hot summer days. After one crash, I checked CPU temperature in the BIOS, and it said 95 degrees Fahrenheit. Heat is not the issue

All fans inside the case appear to be functioning properly. I have a big 3rd party cooler on the CPU, which is working, and the video cards' are functioning as well. They aren't really dirty, but calling them clean would be dishonest.


8. Overclocking?
My CPU/mobo support overclocking, however to my knowledge I don't have it activated. After one crash, it automatically went to the BIOS (?), and said "oh no overclocking failed! I didn't see any single option for "disable overclocking", though I did change settings to default; however, that seemed to ENABLE memory/CPU overclocking, by the names of the settings that changed.

Edit a couple hours later:
This has only gotten worse...

While I wait to fix this, I swapped over my old PC - which I downloaded legion on ahead of time, in case something came up.

I tried to power it on - nothing. My backup PC suddenly can't power on?! The light on the power supply turns on when I plug it in, but pressing power does nothing.

In all honesty, when troubleshooting my original problem, I took out my old PC's memory to see if that could solve the problem. It isn't compatible (DDR2 vs DDR3), so I just put it back in. However, even if I screwed up the memory, the fans should at least start up right? I'd expect to get to BIOS (without display) without memory even INSTALLED. I looked up the old mobo manual and checked I have the jumper plugged in right - and checked by manually shorting the power jumper.

Is there anything that could have blown two power supplies, so that one fails outright and the other just dies after a while? I tried plugging my primary PC into a different wall socket and observed no improvement.

Discussion is locked

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Answer
The thing is
Sep 3, 2016 7:22AM PDT

You can't call out it's not this or that. I've lost count of it being a heat issue when the client pushes it's not. The movement of the PC can be a factor as this is not a new PC and heatsink compound is well known to dry then crack over time. So the move is part of the story.

I'd treat it to a fresh build approach. Reduce what you can in the machine (no optical or extra drives), one stick of RAM and dismiss the idea it's not heat and redo the compound on the heatsinks.

Then measure that CMOS battery as it's been awhile. I use a Volt meter, folk that don't want to do that, just replace it.

At this point you have the basic PC and if it fails to power up you have to keep removing parts. For the i7 CPU model there's no onboard GPU so you can't move to onboard so try each GPU.

You are definitely into finding what part or parts are troublesome or failed. The way most find it is to keep reducing until it powers up and stays up. If you reduce to just motherboard+CPU+PSU+1 stick RAM and it's not staying up, then those parts are suspect.

Be sure at that point to pull the motherboard out and on to cardboard and retest. I've lost count of extra mounting posts that wait years to short out the backside of the board.

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RE: The thing is
Sep 9, 2016 7:40PM PDT

Thanks for the response Proffitt.

At this point, I've decided this is a PSU problem. I looked up reviews with this model - and while they are overwhelmingly positive, many do specifically mention this problem. However, it does work MOST the time, so I've been using it all week, with a power loss every couple days; time will tell if that was a bad decision.

The problem with your suggestion of reducing the hardware down to just memory+PSU+motherboard is this takes a long time to surface. I often don't see it until many hours into a session - and never while the PC is doing an easy task (not wow). However, if the PSU doesn't resolve the problem, I may need to resort to something like my multimeter.

Your suggestion about motherboard screws shorting is a good one, for my backup PC. I'll try pulling it out of the case and powering it up. I have noticed there are a bunch of motherboard screws missing, which wasn't the case when I built it 8 years ago...

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How about this.
Sep 10, 2016 10:19AM PDT

Is the PSU working hard? I mean, if you put the PC on a P3 Watt Meter (or similar) is the total Watts over 50% of the PSU rating? If it is, you may have found it.