BSOD/freezing every few minutes, error 0x00000124 (+ some iTunes fun!)

Hello,

I am having pretty bad issues with my PC.

For a long time I was having issues booting it up. I'd try to turn it on and often it just wouldn't start (nothing displayed on the screen, monitor staying on sleep mode because not getting anything from the PC). After several tries it would eventually boot up, but things were getting worse and worse (as in some days I felt like it would never boot!) so I tried changing the PSU, because it seemed like it could be the culprit. Sure enough, that actually solved the problem. Note that I'm only mentioning it because it might be relevant to some people reading this.

So now it's booting very well (most of the times, see below), but it's crashing all the time ... in addition, and this is a continuing problem from when it was having issues booting up, and I don't know how related it is to the crashes but I feel like I should mention it, I'm having the worst time syncing my iPhone with iTunes. When I connect the phone iTunes recognizes it, starts syncing, but usually one of these things happen: the connection drops in the middle of syncing and the phone disappears from iTunes (and sometimes reconnects afterwards), or I can tell that some songs just take forever to sync and others don't and in the end I get a message that "the song could not be converted" and some songs don't get synced (others do but when I try to play them they don't work). Anyway...

So now I can turn it on just fine - but after 5-15 minutes it freezes, without fail; how long it takes varies slightly but it never stays on for longer than ~15 minutes. It usually just freezes (without rebooting), but sometimes I get the "something went wrong message" and it reboots itself, in which case sometimes it crashes on reboot (with a weird mostly blue screen with some crazy lines here and there, not sure how to describe it, sorry).

I've attached the files collected following the instructions in the forum sticky. Since this is my first post I don't know if my specs will show, so here they are as well (the computer is a little bit old): the motherboard is an ASUS M4A78T-E, the CPU an AMD Phenom II X4 955 (Deneb Black Edition if that matters), I have 4 sticks of memory, 2x4 GB (Corsair vengeance) + 2x2 GB I believe (can't remember exactly but I think OCZ?), DDR3, 1600 MHz I think. The GPU is an AMD Radeon HD 6800 (which replaced the previous GPU because it went bad). Drivers and BIOS are up to date. It doesn't seem like the CPU is overheating, I think the most I've seen tonight was 48C. For the GPU the hottest was 51C (and I wasn't playing any games). No overclocking whatsoever. I can provide more specs if needed of course.

BlueScreenView says that the error code is 0x00000124. So maybe hardware failure? I just wonder what's failing though (obviously :)). I suspect motherboard but I don't exactly have an informed opinion...

This is driving me absolutely nuts, I'd very much appreciate any help people can provide. I don't know if my issues with iTunes syncing with my iPhone are related, maybe it's just a matter of reinstalling iTunes, but I've already tried that and it didn't solve anything, so maybe there's just some overarching wonky thing going on creating general mayhem, I don't know. Heartfelt thanks in advance for any help you guys can provide!

The dump files are indicating a hardware failure (Bugcheck 124 - WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR).

I'd suggest we start with looking into memory issues. First of all, you are running two different brands of memory, this is generally not a supported configuration and may be causing the issues you've experienced. Try running the system with only one pair installed at a time, and see if your system still crashes. As for faults within the DIMMs themselves, run memtest86+ overnight and see if it finds any errors.

Things to do after sorting out the memory issues would be:

1. Make sure your motherboard is running the latest firmware.
2. Monitoring component temperatures, Open Hardware Monitor is a good option for that. Use compressed air to clear out dust/debris in fans and heat sinks if you suspect overheating is an issue.
3. Unplug all non-essential devices connected to your PC (usb, pci, audio etc.)

OK, thank you for looking into it. I've started taking out RAM sticks to test: I removed the G.skill sticks first, but it's still freezing. I'll try moving the remaining Corsair sticks to the other two slots to see if it makes a difference, then I'll swap them with the G.skill.

Funny enough it doesn't seem to be freezing when it stays on the Windows login screen... :-p could it possibly be a software issue like a drivers conflict? I don't mind reinstalling Windows if it could help...

I've tried RAM sticks one pair at a time and in various slots and it didn't help one bit. It eventually freezes at the Windows login screen as well BTW. It wasn't very dusty to start out with but I took a can of compressed air to the inside and that actually helped a little in that it took longer to freeze (the screensaver had time to kick in, so that's an improvement). Component temperatures were not hot though, but I wonder if the presence of dust creates electrostatic issues?

Unplugging all unnecessary components did not help.

Anyway, it seems like memory might not be the problem but I'm open to ordering a new set of ram sticks if you think it might help. Should I try that?

I'll look at the firmware of the motherboard next. I know the BIOS is up to date, but I'll check the drivers.