SOLVED Is it ruined?!?

[t1nm4n]

Ok so I changed out my PSU to a larger one that will push my cards OC's and power my system far beyond it current capabilities. Everything went great was pretty easy and it was nice to have it all opened up to redo cable management again (never seems like they are out of the way enough for me).

So I go to do my first boot, I had already gone into Bios prior to all this and reset to optimized defaults cause I had an OC on my cpu, figured it would be a safe thing to do. For try it BSODs on me. This pic is from the last attempt today. Don't have any other pics of BSOD, they all dumped too fast, darn SSDs.



So it looks like a memory issues, well lets restart again to make sure, normal boot selected and it goes into windows, but it looks like there is radio interference on the monitor and it keeps locking up and restarting, then BSOD again, didn't have a camera ready for pic. So boot in safe mode, oops can't view event viewer in safe mode. So I decide to test the cards have two, figure it's most likely the primary card so I take it out and test bottom first, not a good sign at first (or maybe it is). I get driver issues with CCC so uninstall reinstall reboot bobs your uncle I now have clean viewing and no radio interference on the monitor (good first step I think). Time to test, throw several barrage of benchmarks at it and let it fold overnight all checks out, what to do with the bad card (no I won't give you a bad card, you just want to fix it and have a good card, I know how you all think).

This all happened on the 13th, spent the 14th benching and stressing the single card (what a way to spend your Bday). Today I put the primary card in to see if it was just a CCC corruption somehow (I think I borked the card, didn't have a plug seated properly and it messed up the card somehow). Surprise Surprise, you have snow on your monitor, it locks up restarts and locks up again only to give me BSOD ( I do like the color blue though). I use a program to check the dump file but have no clue how to read it, and it shows it's the ntoskernal, not sure what that is.



So, what to do, could I have somehow just done some damage to the BIOS ( I hope this is all it is and a simple flash will fix it), or is it something more serious? I'd rather not be out a card for a long period of time with RMAs and stuff, thought I would ask advice opinions in here.

Not sure what other information you need, but shoot, worst I can say is "I don't know"

 

[t1nm4n]

So after doing some digging in the wonderful world of information (google) I tried some different things. I couldn't find anything with my circumstances so I was left to my own devices, no hammers were used (would of made for some nice pics though).

I thought what would happen if I put the card that was acting up in the bottom slot, lets try it. Done, it boots, Windows comes up and it freezes no BSOD though, hard reboot and... Display drivers are corrupt. I forgot to check hardware so no screen here, I uninstall and reboot. Loads just fine into the stock Win7 resolution, take a screen of a couple of things.

So I install CCC again and go to check how it reports to the hardware and this is what I see.



Something isn't getting read right here. Top card then bottom card.





There is some funny business going on here.

But at least its not giving me BSODs, so it's looking up. I went and searched the net for how-to's on updating the bios, cause I has this feeling that might be part of the problem, lots of articles, but none of them seemed to work, the UEFI Bios is a pain. I get this idea, I used GPUTweak to update them once before I will give that a shot, but I forgot about something, first lets make sure both cards are on the same performance Bios setting on the card.

Holy (insert your favorite word here).. there is something definatly wrong here, this thing got some speed and AMD is just toyin with us.



You LN2 guys watch out, I got the highest Clock yet on.. You guessed it faulty bios, lol.

So Lo and behold the bios jumpers were in different positions (doubt this did anything honestly) so I make sure they are in the same position and boot the computer. Now I'm getting bored, nothing is happening and it's time for dinner, wait wait wait, can't leave yet, I might have solved this thing, GPUTweak ftw (not really). I get it loaded and changed some settings, sure enough it says there is a bios update for a card, which I'm not sure, it does see both cards, but lets update anyways. (insert Jeopardy music here) 10 minutes later I have updated bios, and check this out.



Not solved yet, I run a few short tests to see if it's stable like this and reboot. Wouldn't you know GPUTweak trips on something, probably too many 0's and I get system lockdown, hard reboot and when it reloads I act quickly with my l33t hacking ninja skills (always wanted to use that icon) and shut Tweak down, it actually worked (maybe, might of just been a glitch). I uninstall GPUTweak just to be safe. So I now see this on GPU-Z



But there is still an issue here. I ran some simulated benches and my scores were barely better than a single card and after reinstalling GPUTweak I have no Voltage control and it showing me this.



Yeah yeah it could of been smaller, but I had to get that awesome background Rezasam1 ahs been working so hard to make for us. If that voltage were true I'd have one heck of a nice arc welder in my PC I'm thinking. But I got good voltages from other programs sayin GPUTweak is wrong.

Any ideas of what to do next?

 

[Silver_Pharaoh]

I'd check all your power connectors again, and run chkdsk /f AND sfc /scannow on your OS.

Re-seat all cards 'n stuff too.
Funny how a PSU swap leads to all of this fun eh?

 

[t1nm4n]

I had totally forgotten about those cmd line entries. It was like a blast from the past when I read your post, I had to google those cmds to make sure I wasn't just fooling myself.

Question about chkdsk /f since I use SSDs I don't want to use the /r affix instead correct just /f. I had wondered where sfc scannow was now located, it used to only be from installation disk in 98SE irc.

I let the card fold overnight and the temps are so much better than they ever were, so this might of been a good thing to happen, but not sure it's all running correctly. More digging to come. heres a pointless picture to keep up the suspense.



So they seem to work well, well enough at least until I can figure out what this wonky feeling is, but dang they never ran this cool over night, normally about 8c higher, and they were always both separated by 10c.



ok ok, now I'm just giving too much information.

 

[Johan45]

Try a different version of GPUTweak, I have found some of them to be really buggy. I've been using this version and so far so good. Reports correct voltages and hasn't killed my OS like the last one did.

 

[t1nm4n]

I was using the latest 2.8.3.0, and it was buggy from the get go, I should of used the older one, it was ok, but it was glitchy applying settings. Aren't they supposed to fix things with newer versions ??? I had only ever used 2.7.?.? Will give that version a shot, just going through the paces that it is/was someone just a bad connection possibly corrupted Bios that seems to be fixed.

Edit: I had to add some pics otherwise I would feel remiss in my duties.

Top then Bottom.



These are running in non crossfire, so temps should be a bit closer, and of course you can see the bottom card isn't using any ram, so I'm almost gonna say this is solved. Wheres the fun in that? I'll do some more digging and I might break one on accident this time for everyone viewing pleasure, forget that. I still have this naggin suspicion theres something wrong.

 

[Johan45]

Almost every time I have troubles with AMD and their drivers I end up re doing my OS before everything is ironed out. I don't know if it's me or them but I never have those kind of problems with the green team. Lucky for me I'm benching so it's not a great loss.

 

[satrow]

2-3 of the recent BSODs look like Norton might have been running interference, I'd fully remove it, enable Windows' own firewall and install MSE during testing.

 

[t1nm4n]

Not sure what MSE is, but I have an update, it looks like I borked one side of the Bios on one of the cards. The original top card for some reason I had in quiet mode and the bottom card was in performance mode. When I took the top card out I didn't change anything (completely forgot they had switchable bios). When I put the bottom card to the upper position and left the questionable card out it stayed in performance setting, it wasn't until after I had put the bottom card in that I ran across something that reminded me of the dual bios. I switched it to performance mode and all has been working fine. All forms of software see the card and show me all the data on it. It worked fine folding with or without crossfire enabled, I think it was better with it disabled, but not sure how much of a difference it makes folding (I don't think it matters one way or another since it's not fullscreen application).

So we had a storm that was shooting some nice lightning and some of the most fierce thunder you have ever heard (teeth rattling thunder). I shut the system down and put both cards into quiet mode. Boots fine, sees two cards in there, but the bottom (questionable Bios) card is now showing up like this on GPU-z



I tired the older version of GPUTweak and it give correct readings of voltages, haven't checked to see if I can adjust them yet, cause it seems the Quiet Mode Bios of the bottom card is the one affected. I'm wondering if I can flash it and somehow regain full functionality of the card, as it is right now, performance Bios setting seems to work with everything, not sure what the difference really is to begin with. Anyways, thanks for the thoughts and I will be triing some of them out sooner or later I'm sure.


I'm sure there is a lot wrong with this system, I'm just a novice computer user. How did you determine Norton could be the culprit for the BSOD?

 

[t1nm4n]

So, I flashed the bottom card, went well, and now I have a you can see for yourself, but I'm on the road to a fixed problem. Hopefully. Maybe.

Top is top card bottom is bottom card (the one with issues).



So anyone have a good working Bios for an Asus directCUII OC card. I'm not sure which one to pick from techpowerup. I mean they all look the same to me.

 

[t1nm4n]

so, I should of thought of this first, but I just copied the known working Bios from the top card and put it on the bottom card, seems to work fine. The OS didn't even have to install any drivers, just booted up in crossfire like it's been working fine these past few days. But I am still getting an issue when benching the cards. I Ran Firestrike extreme and got invalid result for some sort of time thing. Not sure if I should go back and uninstall 3dMark and try again or uninstall CCC just to be safe. Firestrike seems to work fine when I disable crossfire. So It's not completely solved yet. Is the quiet and performance switch on the GPU two separate Bios? I might of loaded the performance from the good card to the quiet side of the questionable card, would that cause problems?

Sorry, no pics this time.

 

[Silver_Pharaoh]

Yeah, no /r on an SSD unless needed.

Sounds like a shetty card now..... Did you try it in another board? (I think you said you did)

 

[t1nm4n]

Didn't have another board, but it seems to all be fixed, might be something in the CCC that I screwed up by trying to run crossfire with a botched Bios. I took the good card out and ran the freshly Biosed card on quiet and performance mode settings to make sure it would boot and do a round of Firestrike Extreme. Passed both time valid results, not good ones albeit but good enough for how much this CPU holds these cards back.

Performance Bios setting HERE! and Quiet setting HERE!

I will have to work on figuring out why I was getting invalid time from errors when running them in CFX, but I got a fully functioning card again when no other PCIe slots are populated. So it's off to the races to see if I can get it all working like it used to, Better would be better or course.


Sneak Peak at a coming attraction to a Forum near you.

Spoiler

 

[satrow]

Not sure what MSE is, <SNIP>

I'm sure there is a lot wrong with this system, I'm just a novice computer user. How did you determine Norton could be the culprit for the BSOD?

MSE - Microsoft Security Essentials (Windows Defender in 8+), I've never seen it implicated in BSODs, unlike every other AV out there.

Look at the Caused by Address column in your image below, SYMEVENT64x86.sys - Norton driver. Also another 0x7E (Bug Check Code) below it. And fltmgr.sys (Caused by Address) can also point to security software drivers, the 0x1A BCC is usually a bad driver but can be memory or exceptionally, a kernel problem.

BlueScreenView is a poor tool, better to get a Windbg analysis for better accuracy if the problems continue and 3rd party drivers are suspected (http://www.sysnative.com/forums/bso...d-posting-instructions-windows-8-7-vista.html).

 

[t1nm4n]

So the bug check codes relate to particular drivers, whether "Caused by ***" states the drivers or not? I will submit I passed off Norton as the cause of my issues cause it was easily fixed. I had put too much stress on my storage disk, which is also where the OS stores my libraries. It was not accessible and it showed 0 data on partition in drive management, but power down and reseat cables sorted that. This is also the drive the Norton was originally set to store back-ups, I had forgotten to disable that feature and it gave a code, but was not my main issues so I didn't bring it up. I've been using Norton for 20 years not, maybe a bit more, so it's a name I've come accustomed to, I'm scared to get away from it cause I have virtually no experience with other AV software, and not even sure where to look (that's another story altogether). I did try and read up on how to decipher this event viewer but it seemed like a lot more useless information than helpful, is there a list of code and what they could refer to if these other parameters are met type documentation around. I don't mind in the least looking stuff up, I did get this far mostly on my own, just thought I'd share my sorrowful tales with the masses so that they may one day learn from my mistakes. (the crowd goes wild)

@Silver, got around to doing a SFC and it said it fixed some files did a restart but that didn't seem to fix anything that I'm aware of. Although my tasty new boot screen is gone, that might of been what it fixed

On a side note, I did get it to run with each card individually on each Bios setting and have run it with each card on top and bottom in each bios setting in crossfire and single. The timing issues I was having with futuremark is gone after a reinstall of 3dmark and CCC, not sure which was the culprit, figure better safe than sorry, reinstall both. When I ran a synth. bench I am still only getting the performance of one card, lots of fps jumps, I mean from 10-60 so there might still be something wrong with the card, but it seems to work fine by itself.

So that's where I'm at, two working cards that don't want to communicate with each other when in fullscreen crossfire mode, but work about right solo. It's like they are two brothers that got into a fight over a girl and now they are mad at each other, screwy cards.

This is the top card I was having issues with, that got taken out put in the bottom now back in the top slot and with flashed bios from the known working card, all seem good here (I think).



Bottom card, was it's original location at the beginning, crunching numbers like it should be, not sure what the problem with crossfire is, maybe I'll try some different Bios, now that I have a better understanding of how to flash them, should be easy enough to do.

 

[satrow]

Whilst many BCC types can be caused by drivers, most can also be caused by other factors as well. When a 3rd party driver is named as the 'cause' by BlueScreenView, it doesn't always get it right but it could be involved in some way. Sometimes a 3rd party driver is listed as the last non-Windows driver in the Stack Text of the dump but the trigger driver could have been involved a little earlier but isn't listed (that's where a good human analyst is useful - don't look at me, I'm an amateur when it comes to real debugging), the real culprit having already vacated the crime scene and the listed 3rd party driver is left holding the smoking gun.

 

[t1nm4n]

lol, nicely put, makes a lot of sense. I followed that link to that other forum got side tracked by perfmon /results. According to that software I have a lot of things stopped/disabled that it says should be turned on, I am wondering if I should turn them on.

 

[Johan45]

At least you're back in business with two working cards

 

[satrow]

Depends on what those 'things' are, many processes/Services start up during the boot process but a number of them run and close/exit once done, others will restart as and when needed. Disabled is more of an issue but if you're mainly referring to Services, I probably have more disabled than you do. You can zip and attach the html of the report, if you like, I can give you a rough breakdown of how i see it.

 

[t1nm4n]

Yeah, now it's figure out why I keep getting High definition Audio (which I suspect is the hdmi audio on the problem card) to not install correctly according to device manager. Not sure how that would affect crossfire but I still have that issue to work out. Hopefully it wasn't too hard to read my ramble and I gave enough info to understand what the issues were. I didn't really think anyone else had the same problem I did, but thought it would be fun to tell a story, one long boring picture infused story, I know how I like picture books.

Edit: @satrow, that be awesome.