Computer Lockup and Restarts- Bad Video Card (Again?)

This is a long story but you need the history and I need your great minds to collaborate with me here. Please bare with me. I'm posting in the bsod section because that it what seems to make the most sense... as far as the behavior/symptoms.

I have a custom built that runs excellent - when it runs. UserBenchmarks at 98% and 97%...

I'm seeking your help because I'm having some deja vu issues and I don't know if it's me- am I going crazy, do I have the worst luck in the world, did we replace the wrong parts? Or is it something else?

To top it off, I think I am up against a deadline, timewise (June 30th).

Here is my build:
Case- Phanteks Enthoo Pro M SE
PS- Thermaltake Smart Pro RGB 750W Zero Fan
MOBO- MSI X99 Gaming Pro Carbon LGA 2011-3 (refurb)
RAM- Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB (8x4GB) Quad-Channel DDR4 2400MHz C14
CPU- Intel Xeon E5-1620 v4 Broadwell-EP Quad Core CPU @ 3.5GHz
Cooler- Enermax Liqmax II 240 "Front/Pull" config
NMVe- MyDigitalSSD 240GB 80mm BPX Pro m.2 PCIE
GPU- MSI GeForce GTX 1070 Armor OC 8GB
SSDs- 1x240GB Patriot, 1x240GB HyperX Cloud 9, 1x120GB Kingston SSDNow! v300
Storage - WD Passport USB 3.0
OS- Windows 10 Pro x64 Version 1809 build 17763.503

So I set everything up, converted the internal drives to GPT. Clean installed Windows 10 and I believe everything is GPT/UEFI mode. I installed all of MSI's (somewhat old) drivers, configured BIOS settings, ran XMP profiles, got all my softwares running, and things were great.

Then things started going downhill.

It would, rarely, not POST.
Sometimes it would POST, but not boot (freeze during the "circling circles" loading screen).
Often times it would boot, but crash with a white or pink screen after a random amount of time - regardless of activity, could be gaming, youtube, microsoft word, etc..

Eventually, it became predictable, every morning I would boot it up, wait for it to get to the desktop, crash, and then hard power off (just tap the power button once) and boot it up again.

Oddly, it would run perfectly fine after that intial crash...but that's no way to live... not after $1100 of blood, sweat, and tears.

The Pagefile was enabled, size was large enough, but crash dumps weren't being written out.

Event viewer showed lots of critical events in the past hour, then kernel-power "the computer rebooted but was not shut down cleanly" or something to that effect. The only other events close to that were event id 14 nvlddmkm... I read a lot about this and tried some troubleshooting. I do use a steamlink hardware, to stream my PC from the bedroom to the living room. Crashes seem to happen regardless of whether I'm streaming, or using the computer "locally".

Desperate for answers I reverted back to some (age old) drivers. They definitely reduced performance in game and benchmark by about 20%... but they seemed to relieve at least temporarily the crashing and the nvlddmkm error. But then the issue started back up again. I tried updating drivers, it only made the issue more prevalent. I tried updating the card's video bios, same issue. I tried checking and tweaking all sorts of settings and issues - from power profiles to hardware encoding/decoding settings in browsers to modifying the TDR values....sfc, dism, etc. etc. I finally decided to RMA the card.

I sent it in to MSI and in its place popped in an old R7 370 4GB. While the card was much slower, (GTA V now playing at 15 fps hahaha), it worked with absolutely no issues. No reboots, no freezes, nothing.

So the GTX 1070 card was definitely bad, right? Or is it the software (drivers)?

I noticed though with the R7 in that my NVMe drive was idling at temps around 70c. It must be thermal throttling under load, I thought. So I tried to update the firmware, and it was unsuccessful. I contacted the company and they RMAd it for me. Sent me back the Pro version, and it had a firmware update so I went ahead and did that. Much better temperatures, so I would have peace of mind with that.

By the time I'm done with that, I got back from MSI a replacement GTX 1070 Armor OC 8GB (Grade B). It was a refurb.

Now I'm taking no chances, right? A new NVMe, up to date firmware... I did a clean install of the latest Windows 10 the media creation tool would give me. I used SDI to install only the latest, best matching drivers, with no overlap or redundancy. Although I did let Windows 10 auto-detect and install the video card drivers (by mistake, I forgot to unplug the network cable).

So... history repeats itself...

Get all my settings tweaked, programs installed, backups created... life is grand! Like I said, benchmarked at 98% and 97%... but now things are happening again. The same sorts of things as before.

I tried to update the video card drivers, but they wouldn't install. I did some research and figured out that Windows update installed the DCH version of drivers. No biggie, I will leave them on the DCH ones and I will set all my settings as before, maximum power, no power management for pci, fan curves, etc. etc.



Now problems are starting to arise.

It always posts, and maybe once or twice it has not booted to the desktop. But now once at the desktop... I noticed my mouse lags a little sometimes (4k @ 60hz resolution), and it looks like the video card is working harder than the previous one I had (shows 6 or 7% GPU use idling at desktop, RMAd card was 0-3%). Sometimes it looks like the cpu is in use, then it will clear up and not be an issue.

I can game in 4k, GTAV with a steady 45fps (up to 70plus depending on what's happening). But now, like before, I will get a random crash/reboot. Could be watching youtube, or streaming content to the steamlink (setup in my living room so we can watch TV shows, movies, etc.) and it just reboots. Crash dump wasn't being written out when I checked with WhoCrashed, and I saw a couple of event id 14s in the event log (not as frequently as it was before though).

I loaded BIOS optimized defaults, and fearing the video card again, I downloaded superposition UNIGINE Benchmarks to stress test it. I also downloaded MSI afterburner and GPU-Z. I let afterburner do its smart overclock and it created a nice curve, topping out around 2000MHz core clock. I then loaded up GPU-Z and ran superposition. It ran through successfully multiple passes. The sensors in GPU-Z all seemed perfectly normal, except for PerfCap Reason. From what I understand, this is the thing that's holding you back, what's capping your performance. Mine said something like PwrRel or VolRel... the tooltip said something to the effect of "reliable power". I'm not sure what that means or if it is even significant.

So here I am... confused as what to do next. That's why I'm asking you all. What do you think? I can do any troubleshooting you want and provide logs and screens and videos... any help or guidance would be appreciated. I went ahead and ran the collector tool. It is attached in the .zip.

I don't want a system that has to daily crash and reboot, in order to be "stable" especially after spending hard earned money on it. I don't want to keep RMAing random parts (having to pay to ship it is very annoying), and I don't know if there's something I could be missing... is my logic bad? The issues went away with an AMD card... they resumed on a clean install... is it NVIDIA's terrible drivers? This event ID 14 nvlddmkm issue has a long history... could MSI have given me two faulty cards in a row? Could it be my power supply isn't up to it? My motherboard is a refurb from MSI also, could that be it?

Please let me know what information you need and what steps to take, I just want to get to the bottom of this.

And most of all, if you took the time to read this, thank you!

- - - Updated - - -

nasch007 said:

snip

So maybe this isn't a video card issue, after all?

I tried to update the BIOS yesterday and although everything looked like it went well... some basic BIOS functions don't seem to work. Please see: MSI X99 Gaming Pro Carbon NEW BIOS 7A20v14??

In any case, I had another lockup and reboot today, and no mention of error 14 or nvlddmkm in the event viewer.

I've attached today's logs. Please have a look, if you can. I'm starting to suspect I have a bad motherboard...

Code:

Crash dump found at C:\MEMORY.DMP
Creation date: 05/26/2019 12:17:46
Size on disk: 2775 MB
C:\Windows\Memory.dmp was not found

Please insert full memory dump via hosting (e.g Google Drive, Dropbox)

See rule #4

https://www.tenforums.com/misc.php?do=showrules

Code:

No piracy or discussion of piracy allowed at all. Such as software, music, videos and other intellectual property violations (e.g. downloading youtube videos locally etc) - it is forum policy that no help shall be given to people who knowingly steal software or services.

Please remove any pirated software.
And remove tools / methods used to bypass the activation of licenses.

MrPepka said:

Code:

Crash dump found at C:\MEMORY.DMP
Creation date: 05/26/2019 12:17:46
Size on disk: 2775 MB
C:\Windows\Memory.dmp was not found

Please insert full memory dump via hosting (e.g Google Drive, Dropbox)

Since crash dumps are not being written out, I am pretty sure that is a test crash dump- I forced a crash using the program WhoCrashed to see if it was working. I will upload it as soon as I get back to my computer though just in case.

- - - Updated - - -

No discussion of piracy or activation bypasses going on here! You can view my logs I have a genuine license. To what are you referring?

The end user should know the pirated software and tools or methods used to bypass the activation of licenses.

Uninstall any pirated software and remove tools or methods that can be used to bypass license activation.

Upload new V2 and DM log collectors after making the above changes.

zbook said:

The end user should know the pirated software and tools or methods used to bypass the activation of licenses.

Uninstall any pirated software and remove tools or methods that can be used to bypass license activation.

Upload new V2 and DM log collectors after making the above changes.

It's a shared computer my brother does video editing on. I asked him what you could be referring to and he just smiled so I think I know what's up.

Both V2 and DM log coming up after a quick reboot.

- - - Updated - - -

MrPepka said:

Code:

Crash dump found at C:\MEMORY.DMP
Creation date: 05/26/2019 12:17:46
Size on disk: 2775 MB
C:\Windows\Memory.dmp was not found

Please insert full memory dump via hosting (e.g Google Drive, Dropbox)

Please see: Filemail.com - Download files

- - - Updated - - -

zbook said:

The end user should know the pirated software and tools or methods used to bypass the activation of licenses.

Uninstall any pirated software and remove tools or methods that can be used to bypass license activation.

Upload new V2 and DM log collectors after making the above changes.

I ran both tools after a reboot. Should be clean as a whistle.

Curious if you have any inkling as to what it might be? I've thought it to be nvidia/drivers because the symptoms I was seeing in the past. Plus when I RMAd that nvidia card, I used an AMD R7 370 in its place, and these symptoms (random crash, white screen/pink screen) went away... I have a power supply I can try swapping out, as well as that R7, but that's about it.

Thank you for your help.

1) Open administrative command prompt and type or copy and paste:
2) sfc /scannow
3) dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth
4) wmic recoveros set autoreboot = false
5) When these have completed > right click on the top bar or title bar of the administrative command prompt box > left click on edit then select all > right click on the top bar again > left click on edit then copy > paste into the thread

6) Make sure that there is no over clocking while troubleshooting.


7) In the left lower corner search type: system or system control > open system control panel > on the left pane click advanced system settings

a) > on the advanced tab under startup and recovery > click settings > post an image of the startup and recovery window into the thread

b) > on the advanced tab under performance > click on settings > on the performance options window > click on the advanced tab > under virtual memory > click on change > post an image of the virtual memory window into the thread

8) Open administrative command prompt and type or copy and paste:
chkdsk /r /v
This may take hours to run so plan to run overnight.
Run on all drives using the syntax: chkdsk /r /v C: or chkdsk /r /v D: changing the drive letter to the applicable drive.

C:\Windows\system32>chkdsk /r /v
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Cannot lock current drive.

Chkdsk cannot run because the volume is in use by another
process. Would you like to schedule this volume to be
checked the next time the system restarts? (Y/N)

Type: Y
reboot


9) Use the information in this link to find the chkdsk report in the event viewer. Copy and paste into notepad > save to desktop > post into the thread using one drive or drop box share link:
Read Chkdsk Log in Event Viewer in Windows 10 Windows 10 Performance Maintenance Tutorials
Read Chkdsk Log in Event Viewer in Windows 10


10) Run HD Tune (free version) (all drives)
HD Tune website
Post images into the thread for results on these tabs:
a) Health
b) Benchmark
c) Full error scan


11) Run Sea Tools for Windows
long generic test
Post an image of the test result into the thread
SeaTools for Windows |
Seagate
How to use SeaTools for Windows | Seagate Support US

12) For any BSOD:

a) run the V2 log collector to collect new log files

b) open file explorer> this PC > C: > in the right upper corner search for: C:\Windows\memory.dmp
> if the file size is < 1.5 GB then zip > post a separate share link into the thread using one drive, drop box, or google drive


13) Sometimes there are problems in the bios that produce bsod.

The BIOS: Version/Date American Megatrends Inc. 1.40, 06/15/18

14) Please check to see if this is the most up to date version.

15) Open the website for the computer or motherboard manufacturer to view the drivers and post a URL or hyperlink into the thread.

16) To ensure that there are no improper bios settings please reset the bios.

17) Sometimes there can be failure to boot after resetting the bios.

18) Backup the computer files to another drive or to the cloud.

19) Make a backup image using Macrium:
Macrium Software | Macrium Reflect Free:
Macrium Software | Macrium Reflect Free

20) Create a brand new restore point.
Create System Restore Point in Windows 10

How to Clear Your Computers CMOS to Reset BIOS Settings:
https://www.howtogeek.com/131623/how...bios-settings/
3 Ways to Reset Your BIOS - wikiHow:
3 Ways to Reset Your BIOS - wikiHow


21) For all tests / results please post images into the thread.
If there are any problems uploading images please use share links:
one drive, drop box,, or google drive

zbook said:

snip

I have done/run most of these in the past, all with negative results (i.e. nothing found, nothing changed). But perhaps something has changed. I am currently OCing the video card according to AfterBurner's Beta "Auto" feature. It creates a nice curve for voltage and MHz and even gives you a confidence level (95%). I'll revert to defaults. I just recently updated the BIOS so yes it is most up to date, but if you read the link to the MSI forum post I made, I'm not sure the BIOS update "took". If that makes sense. In any case, I will go ahead and clear my CMOS settings by removing the battery, load BIOS defaults, clear all logs/dumps, run the aforementioned programs in that order, and post back the results.

Results may take a bit to come in.

Thanks!

Some of the steps may have been performed.

Please perform all steps.

For each step follow in kind with numbers so that each step can be tracked

Update:
Motorola USB Drivers (check in Snappy Driver Download)
NVIDIA Graphics Driver (NVIDIA DRIVERS GeForce Game Ready Driver WHQL)