Alright I'm starting to exhaust my options here so I'm coming to the PC community to help me from losing my mind. My PC has been riddled with BSoD's (blue screen) and recently almost all of my games end up crashing but there's a decent amount of explanation needed first so bear with me.

It started when I decided to take a road trip several states north of me to visit old friends and I wanted to bring up my PC. I arrive at my destination to find that my PC repeatedly boots into the UEFI BIOS whenever it's restarted or turned on/whatever. This started due to the SSD that Windows is installed on getting disconnected presumably from the road trip. I reconnect it but still have the BIOS come up every time.

I don't fix the boot issue till I'm back home from the trip but before I did fix it my PC would encounter numerous blue screens with many different errors. They would range from system service exception to page fault in nonpaged area. Google led me to believe that they could be driver related but I didn't see any abnormalities in the device manager. I became so frustrated from the BSoD's and eventual game crashes that I did a refresh wipe of my SSD that stores Windows (I left the 2TB HDD alone which contains all my games and other media).

Shortly after the refresh I encounter yet another BSoD (pictured left). So far this has been the only one I've encountered since the refresh which occurred 2 days ago but my real issue has been all my games crashing. I launch MGSV to have it almost always crash at the title screen or 5 minutes into gameplay. Witcher 3 lasted me 10 minutes, Arkham Knight 20 min, Cities Skyline can vary from 10-40 min, and Advanced Warfare 10 min. I'm thinking is my video card fucked? I stress tested it with furmark for 30 minutes with zero issues. I tested my RAM with the Windows Memory Diagnostic and found no issue. I've been waiting for more BSoD's so I can check out the event viewer and narrow down my issue through the error codes but so far it's been more games crashing than anything else.

Right now I have no idea if it's hardware or software but my gut says it could be hardware. Maybe the mobo is fucked in a way that isn't critical but just enough in the sense that the many USB ports in use might have a faulty connection to the mobo thanks to the road trip I did. I simply don't know and that's what frustrates me the most because I don't know if this is an easy software fix or a costly hardware replacement.

So please guys any suggestions would very much be appreciated.

My specs are below

• i7 4770k
• 16 gig RAM
• GTX 980
• 128 gig SSD
• 2 TB HDD
• Windows 10

Here are some troubleshooting steps you can try:

1. Make sure everything is properly seated and has power, including your CPU fan and things like that.
2. Pull unnecessary hardware and leave it disconnected until you have isolated the problem.
3. Pull GPU and run PC with the iGPU on the 4770k, try to replicate problem.
4. Run on one stick of RAM. Try different sticks. Try different RAM slots.
5. Install Windows on a new partition or on a clean hard drive, see if the problems persist.

Just off the top of my head it sounds like it could be a video card driver issue since it's mostly crashing when you're playing games. I'd use a program like Driver Uninstaller and completely remove all your video drivers and then reinstall them. Also make sure to disable Windows Update inside the program if it asks. Try using one stick of RAM at a time just to make sure one of the sticks isn't going bad. If all else fails you could just format and reinstall Windows. That may sound like a shitty solution but sometimes that's all you can do.

Have you tried checking your temperatures? My computer blue screened once after transporting my PC and the heatsink accidentally got moved out of place. I doubt that's it but you never know I suppose.

Otherwise I dunno. Try unplugging everything and plugging them back in if you haven't. Try an old graphics card if you've got one laying around. If all else fails try reinstalling Windows?

Hope you fix the issue.

Was the refresh done using the in-built refresh function in Windows (looking at your BSOD, it would appear your running 8.1 or 10)?

If so you could be looking at a bad refresh due to component store corruption, essentially the libraries that contain the core Windows files.

The good news is that if this is the case the situation is easily remedied provided you don't end up with some wacky hash validations (I had fun with a bad openCL library after a bad Windows 10 patch recently that involved a few more hoops).

Fire up an elevated command prompt (run as admnistrator) and enter the following command.

sfc /scannow

This will scan your existing Windows install for any existing corruption and attempt to repair from the component store. In the event that there is bad store information SFC will report an problem attempting to perform the repair.

The next step would be to use the following command from the elevated command prompt.

dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /Checkhealth

This will scan the component store and validate the files against Microsofts hash table, if there is any corruption is will find it and report back.

If the check health doesn't come back with a clean bill of health run the following

dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /Restorehealth

That will pull down and replace the corrupted elements with clean versions from the Windows update servers. Once completed re-run the original sfc /scannow command to repair the install itself.

Now needless to say if none of this works or no corruption is detected you could be looking at something a little more serious (like a hardware fault somewhere).

@korwin: It was a refresh through Win 10's built-in option. I'll try out your suggestion tomorrow.

@turtlebird95: temps are all good.

@spiceninja: I was downloading my driver before I read your comment but I my second BSoD since the refresh as you can see on the left.

@mike:I don't know if I can do #3 because I think the cpu I got didn't have the gpu. I think but not sure, need to double check when I get more time tomorrow.

Appreciate the suggestions guys! I'll update you all when I got more time to troubleshoot tomorrow.

@colourful_hippie: Every 4770k has an iGPU.

@korwin: Decided to do the scan before bed and here's what came up

Is this a fresh installation of windows 10 or an upgrade from windows 7, 8, or 8.1?

The blue screen errors you mention in your first post seem to be falling more side of corrupt windows files, or incompatible/damaged software. also seeing that system file check gave you a red flag (not sure what without the log file) I'm leaning closer to a problem with your operating system.

Do all of what @mike said,

and also check your temperatures like @turtlebird95 suggested. If your SSD got unplugged during the move, maybe some of your active cooling did too.

Hopefully after doing a system check everything is all right but I suspect you may have warped your mobo during your trip. I've been told that when traveling with a tower it's best to disconnect the CPU fan and your GPU to prevent them from warping your mobo.

@colourful_hippie said:

@korwin: Decided to do the scan before bed and here's what came up

OK so that means you have component store corruption and need to run through the DISM steps as well.

Got an update on the troubleshooting progress and I think I'm getting close to figuring out the issue. I went ahead with @korwin's suggestion. I ran into personal issues trying to get a proper source for the DISM to repair the corrupted files to the point of getting frustrated and doing a proper wipe of my SSD and reinstalled Windows through the media creation tool on my USB. Doing a sfc /scannow command still surfaced some corrupt files but when I did the /checkhealth it there weren't component store corruption....so in a way I'm back at square one on that front and need further help there.

More importantly though I went with @mike's suggestions and ended up removing my video card and have been using the integrated graphics. Currently I'm running MGSV (which somehow runs barely tolerable at 720p) and the game hasn't crashed in the 30 minutes and counting of gameplay. I would usually already be expecting some sort of crash by now with the video card installed so I think I may be getting close to the issue at hand. So now I have to find out if the mobo got warped in some way like @mikey87144 suggested or maybe something happened to the video card but honestly I've inspected the video card closely and don't see any kind of damage that stands out to me. I've included some pictures of it plus one of the mobo below. Fingers crossed that if there's a hardware issue I rather it be the mobo and not the $500 video card.

Gallery

If it's an factory overclocked card (all of those EVGA ACX unit's are) the I'd suggest installing MSI Afterburner or EVGA Precision and downclocking the card to the chipsets factory clocks. That BSOD is synonymous with unstable nvidia hardware causing the driver to crash out in a number of instances (though it is a very generic error).

@korwin:Trying that now. Is it just the core and boost clock that need to be dropped? Just find it weird that after almost a year it starts to give issues like that.

@colourful_hippie: You could possibly be looking at a PSU problem, too. That is probably more likely than a bad GPU.

@mike: No idea on how to test for that. I'm probably going to take my PC to a repair shop tomorrow and list off the leading candidates behind the issue. I don't have another PSU to swap out or another video card to isolate if it's the mobo or card

@korwin:I downclocked the core and boost clocks but I'm still getting crashes when I tested out MGSV and Witcher 3. Right now I'm running Walking Dead and that's doing fine for a while but the very low resource demand from that game is probably the reason behind it.

Pretty much, just do -140 on the core since that how much the SC is pumped up.

Mike's also probably on to something with the PSU, you could have some nasty ripple going on caused by a larger CAP that took a bad knock.

When you transported the PC, did you lay it flat or keep it upright? You should ALWAYS lay flat. The problem is that graphics cards are quite heavy now, and bumps on the road puts a ton of stress on the thin PCIe slot.

The end result can be something like this:

You'd think something like that would just render the PC unbootable, but actually, because of how PCIe works, the additional contacts are just used for additional data transfer when the video card is under load. You can actually plug most video card into open ended PCIe 1x slots and they will work - just with vastly reduced performance.

As a result, as a long as at least one PCIe lane's worth of contacts are still making, er, contact, a PC can actually run ok like this...until you do something graphically intensive and then when it tries to use the additional lanes where the contacts are busted is when you get a crash.

So basically, check your graphics card PCIe slot to make sure it's not deformed in any way. If it is, chances are your mobo has another PCIe 16x or 8x slot that you can move the video card to and you'll be ok.

---edit---

I missed that OP had posted pictures of his motherboard. I don't see any obvious damage to the main video card slot, but it may be worth trying the other PCIe x16 slot all the same.

@sweetz: Yeah it was transported while laying down but I still did your suggestion of trying out the other slot to no avail (game still crashed). Seriously hoping my video card isn't on the fritz

@colourful_hippie: I am very tired so I didn't really go through all the posts but have you tried running the computer without the graphics card. Do you have a spare, or have a close by buddy who can help you test your different components. if not then i'll suggest to do a complete system rebuild. Take all the components out and try to isolate the problem.

The only suggestion I have off the top of my head right now is to check out this little program here: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/blue_screen_view.html

I use it when i get BSOD it helps to provide a lot of detailed information into the application that faulted, or driver, with extra info on the error code that is puked out when the BSOD occurs. It will also list previous BSODs as well so you can compare the errors to see if it is the same error that is causing the BSOD.

Hope this helps!

On the plus side if it is EVGA warranties are generally considered the best in the business depending on where you are. If it helps I recently had a bad firmware update on my 980 ti and now one of the two BIOS' is fried, still yet to send it back to Gigabyte for repair...

An alternative crash dump reader program that i've been using is whocrashed and they support windows 10 and will actually tell you which driver file triggered the crash. I've had a few different driver crashes from my pc with the newest windows 10 build. link to program below. hope it helps.

http://www.resplendence.com/whocrashed

@colourful_hippie: Based on the thread so far, I'm strongly inclined to think it's your GPU or PSU, as others have theorized. Underclocking the factory-overclocked video card is a real thing, the factory overclocks of many, many cards these days are too high and not QA'd enough to fully test them in all scenarios over the lifetime of a GPU - and it can be a very frustrating issue (as you might be experiencing now!) because it often results in general instability of the system, and often not noticed immediately. If you have any ways to try out someone else's GPU or PSU, it'd be pretty easy to test for and then confirm or rule out the issue.

Since you tried downclocking the card to no avail, It's less likely to be your GPU but that's not completely ruled out yet. I'd check the PSU next!

@colourful_hippie Did you check temps like @quirkwood recommended? Run MGSV with the card and the case open. Do a basic feel test of both the GPU and your processor cooling, see if there's any residual heat AFTER the crash. If there is, download CPU-Z. Great program for scanning your hardware. If there is a heating issue, taking the card/CPU fan apart and replacing the thermal paste is a cake walk. If it's not a heat issue, install any OS on a basic drive with steam and nVidia drivers and run a game. You could be having a hard drive failure, because when HDD/SSDs fail, some weird shit happens. My PC wouldn't boot to my brand new SSD because I had a 2TB backup drive with a minor bad sector, and the drive still functions. Computers are weird like that. If that's not the issue, try your GPU on another PC like others recommended, and also check another GPU in your PC so as to make sure the mobo isn't having issues. I get the feeling it's neither though. A friend of mine shipped her PC (also with a 980) from Canada to Florida, and the shipping was SO bad that the plexiglass on the side panel of the case shattered, the locking clip on her PCI-e slot broke off, and the card was out of the slot just hanging there. Cleaned and reconnected everything and all was fine. I'm actually most inclined to say the issue at hand is either PSU or temperature related. Let us know what the end result is.

@theevanshead: I left it at a repair shop for several days. It's been taking the guy a while to find what's wrong but at least he won't charge me till he finds the issue. So far he's managed to eliminate the issue being a software related after putting a bunch of different OS's on it so he's moved onto swapping out hardware. As of right now he thinks it's the RAM since it's been stable after swapping them out but wants to test it out for longer to be sure.

I rather leave the machine at the store because I don't have the extra hardware to trial and error the issue myself.

@colourful_hippie: Sounds good. Give an update on what the final verdict is, I'm very curious. I'm upgrading to a 4790K and was contemplating the mobo that would be equivalent to yours, so if your issue ends up being mobo related, I'll be considering a brand other than ASUS. Same goes for the RAM, as I'm currently running 16GB mixed between my original 8GB PNY coupled with 8GB of G.SKILL (both PC3-12800), so if the RAM is the issue then I can definitely say I'll be avoiding G.SKILL when I make all my RAM uniform.

On the bright side, at least the GPU isn't fried. I'd much rather replace RAM or the mobo instead of the GPU.

I'll take a GPU failure over a motherboard failure any day of the week. It's an expensive component and annoying to do without during the repair window but it doesn't take the whole machine out of commission.

@theevanshead: Asus makes some of the most reliable motherboards on the market. Even their budget boards are good.

@mike: For the record, every PC I've ever owned has had an ASUS mobo, and I swear by ASUS. That's why I'd be surprised if it was a mobo failure, because I still have an old ASUS running an AMD Athlon 64 X2 and it's holding up GREAT. However, every company has their little stumbles so-to-speak. I was actually looking at buying the ASUS Z97-E or Z97 PRO GAMER mobo for my new build.

@zombievac:I'll give some cred to you for being relatively close to what the issue was.

@theevanshead: Turns out that the bios was set to overclock parts of my hardware like the RAM. I honestly have no idea when the hell that happened because I typically don't ever overclock. The guy put the settings back to normal and said that things have been stable for several hours. I told him to keep it another day just to be sure but like @zombievacsaid I'm going to keep the video card downclocked to factory settings when I get it back for longevity purposes. I'm going to talk to the guy tomorrow in-depth to figure out what else was OC'ed but like I said I have no idea why it was like that in the first place. At least that explains why all the recent crashes were stemming from games, specifically those that had more graphical fidelity, but at least I don't have to replace any hardware now and should have it back just in time to play Rise of The Tomb Raider.

Really appreciate the help that's been so far though so thanks guys! Troubleshooting this shit can become a serious nightmare.

@colourful_hippie: What. That's retarded. It could be a wide variety of things though. Ironically enough, my PC crashed last night from overclocking; got a BSoD for CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT. Basically when my CPU ramped up, it lost track of the threading and just KOed (hence the upgrade to the 4790K). Glad to hear that it was just a mere BIOS setting though (why none of us thought of resetting the BIOS is beyond me, that's a pretty basic step in troubleshooting). And yeah definitely clock down your GPU, there's no need for it to be OCed. Let me know how Rise of the Tomb Raider is. I've been playing through Fallout 4 and haven't been all that impressed with it.

@theevanshead: Fallout 4 is what my rose-tinted nostalgia of 3 would be but more boring. Witcher 3 topped all my open-world experiences for 2015 with better writing, characters, quests, settings, etc.

Sounds like the BCLK ratios were out of whack. Good that it's working again.

@colourful_hippie: Cool, glad you got it figured out. That's a tough situation to troubleshoot.

Got my PC home and it's been running flawlessly so far. Glad I don't have to replace parts. Thanks everyone!

@mike: You can go ahead and lock this.