Windows 7 Any idea why my Windows 7 keeps crashing, randomly, kernel-power?

[Invertalon]

Hello,

I have been scanning the internet for a while now trying to solve my W7 crashing issue... I have updated all my drivers, BIOS, and whatever else I possibly could. I don't know what to do from here.

It crashes at random times, with no rhyme or reason. It does it every few days, or every few hours depending on what I do... Which is usually have AIM, Itunes, Photoshop, and Firefox going. I get the Blue screen with a memory dump prior to it shutting down and rebooting.

For example, nothing was running but Itunes and Windows Defender right now, and it crashed. Here are the errors it shows...


Critical Error: Kernel Power - Event ID 41 - Task (63)

The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly.

- System

- Provider


[ Name] Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Power


[ Guid] {331C3B3A-2005-44C2-AC5E-77220C37D6B4}



EventID 41


Version 2


Level 1


Task 63


Opcode 0


Keywords 0x8000000000000002

- TimeCreated


[ SystemTime] 2010-01-22T02:39:55.108018600Z



EventRecordID 26893


Correlation

- Execution


[ ProcessID] 4


[ ThreadID] 8



Channel System


Computer Steven-PC

- Security


[ UserID] S-1-5-18

- EventData

BugcheckCode 26

BugcheckParameter1 0x41284

BugcheckParameter2 0x2558001

BugcheckParameter3 0x2add

BugcheckParameter4 0xfffff70001080000

SleepInProgress false

PowerButtonTimestamp 0



This is the same error and crash I get, routinely. I noticed many others have this same issue, and curious if Windows is working on getting this figured out? It is getting old. My computer was perfectly stable on XP, overclocked, etc... I am running completely stock, with no adjustments anywhere.

Running Windows 7 64x Professional - Nvidea 8800GT - Intel E6750 Core 2 Duo - Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L (R2) - 8GB Mushkin 1066 Ram

I have tried updating audio drivers, video drivers, monitor drivers, HD drivers, motherboard versions, printer drivers, everything and anything. Nothing seems to work.

So help me out here guys...

Thanks

 

[Trouble]

Thanks so much for posting back and letting us know how you resolved your issue, it will almost certainly help other members with similar problems. When swapping in and out ram, you need to be very methodical remembering which bank they came out of and which ones went back in and where.
Anyhow, nice troubleshooting

 

[Invertalon]

No problem! I am going to put the other two sticks back in the same ports and see if its stable as well. If so, maybe the other pair of ram ports went bad on the motherboard.

I will keep you updated, regardless. Thanks!

 

[kemical]

Edit:
Sorry didn't see the solution had been found...lol

 

[Invertalon]

As an update...

I ended up testing the "good" sticks in the other ports on the motherboard with no issue. Put the "bad" ram back on, and still no issue. I had them paired different before (somehow they got switched and were not paired with the ram they came partnered with). So now they are paired together, running stable (so far) all 8GB, and overclocked at that.

My E6750 loves 3.6Ghz from 2.66... So I am glad to get it back there!

Hope it stays stable and crash free. SO far, so good.

 

[Trouble]

Thanks for the update, I'm sure we'll all be watching for any future posts.

 

[pietpara]

I've been having a similar problem since I installed Win 7 Home Premium 32 bit back in October. For no apparent reason, the screen will go black and the computer reboots itself. This was happening completely randomly, and I was getting completely sick of it and ready to ditch Windows 7. However, after much trial and error and reading of these forums, I do seem to have improved on the situation and the last crash of this type I had was 7th January.

The first thing I did was to find some redundant sound drivers in Device Manager and get rid of them. This helped a little bit. I installed all the latest drivers for everything that I could find, but there was no improvement. I then bought new memory, which made no difference. Windows Event Viewer didn't give me much of a clue as I am not knowledgeable enough to understand what it was saying, but in the end I downloaded BlueScreenView which gave me a better idea of what was causing the crashes.

I also have this problem since a few days. Random black screen and reboot with Kernel-Power error (ID41, category 63) in Event Viewer. I had installed and played Mass Effect (the first version) a few days ago and the day after, upon bringing my PC out of hibernation and wanting to play Dirt2 the system froze with black screen and rebooted. It then just hangs at the bootlogo and I have to press the reset button, sometimes that doesn't even work and I have to switch off power completely. It restarts and tells me that oveclocking failed but I am not overclocking at all. I enter the bios, change something for the sake of it (like setting something to AUTO) and restart succesfully. It happens that I can then play a game like Crysis or Dirt 2 or even run Prime95 for hours without anymore hickups. But Prime95 crashed once within a minute with the same freeze but now with a loud beep coming out of the PC.

Also, sometimes it doesn't freeze with a black screen but with a greyish screen with vertical lines (recently reported as bug on Catalyst drivers v10.1, but I don't have v10.1).
The crashes appear to be random; that is it need not be in a game. I ran Windows Memory Check and it did not report any errors. The only thing that I can relate this to is the installation of Mass Effect, maybe it installed some old version of something (Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 redistributable or DirectX?). I'd have to check but don't know how/where to find what current versions should be.
However, these types of errors do smell like bad memory... Although, with previous experiences of bad memory, Prime95 would ALWAYS fail within a few minutes, even though memtest86+ or Windows Memtest would not find anything wrong.

I'm going to try:
- running memtest86+
- uninstall NOD32 antivirus
- disable Aero
- uninstall Mass Effect (I somehow doubt it's this)
- ???


My System:
ASUS M4A-79T Deluxe (BIOS v2304)
AMD Phenom II x4 965 BE
G.Skill 2x2GB Reapers
XFX HD Radeon 5850 BE (Catalyst v9.12)
ASUS Xonar D2/PM
Intel SSD X25-M Postville 80GB
Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit
ESET NOD32 Antivirus 64bit v4.2.22


I'd appreciate any tips.

PietPara

 

[Invertalon]

I also found what was causing part of my issue... Not the crashing, but, when I would attempt to do any overclock of ANY kind it would not allow booting. I found it was caused by my external hard drive... It would buzz at bootup and then computer would then reset all settings. Once I figured that out, I just make sure it is off before booting and it works perfectly fine...

I been running all 8GB's of ram, overclocked, with no issue at all. My crashing has gone away and no problems at all anymore.

Still not 100% sure what was causing all my kernal errors before though... It doesn't seem like the ram was doing it, to be honest. No clue.

 

[pietpara]

Phenom II x4 965 BE dissappearing core

Hi again,
I just found out that sometimes my PC "loses" one of its cores. The screenshot shows CPU-Z when this happens. The CPU is then a Heka model.



Although this sounds to be the problem, still need certainty of this correlating to the crashes. I've read other forums with similar disappearing core problems, but they don't mention any crashing when it happens. I will monitor this now.
If so, it could be a CPU seating problem in the AMD AM3 socket or a bad CPU. In the former case, I have removed the CPU and put it back in to see if it solves the problem. In the latter case that would mean, RMA.

cheers
PietPara

 

[kemical]

Is your bios upto date?

 

[pietpara]

Is your bios upto date?

Yes, I have latest (for support of this CPU), namely v2304 for ASUS M4A-79T Deluxe.

 

[kemical]

I'd either try re flashing the board or sending it back..

 

[pietpara]

At this moment I am still waiting for it to occur again. Hopefully I'll wait forever!
But, indeed, if it happens again then the question would be what to send back, the CPU or the mobo?
Needs more testing, I guess,

thanks
PietPara