Strange crashing issues - help?

[simmsimaging]

Very off topic, but I know there is a ton of expertise around the forum and hoped to get some tips:

Started yesterday with Photoshop crashing Windows out (Vista 64). I got a totally garbled screen and was unable to access anything even though the OS was still up in the background somewhere (still alive on the network for disk access).

I thought it might be a video card problem, or a RAM hardware issue. I updated my video drivers, and still had the problem. I've run Furmark several times for a 1/2 hour or more, and run Windows Memory Diagnostics and found no problem. I swapped out all the RAM chips with another machine and it's still happening.

I thought it might be CPU heat or something, but I ran Prime95 for 45minutes with no issues. then I ran Prime95 *and* Furmark at the same time and still no problem (although I think I caused a brownout in my neighbourhood while that was running )

Any ideas of what else might cause this kind of thing? Everything I read points to RAM or GPU but they both seem to test ok.

Thanks in advance/b

[lukx]

did you run memtest86+ ? I recently had a lot of system crash problems and after running test got lot of RED - two sticks were faulty.
Got new ones and now all is good. I wouldn;t trust any windows test software all got to be tested before system boots this is why I'm advocate of memtest.

[simmsimaging]

Thanks - I did not try that test, but I did actually swap out all the RAM chips with those from another machine and that didn't help, so it's not the RAM I don't think. Maybe the mobo slot is a problem or something though.... Dunno

b

[rivoli]

maybe there's a problem with the video card which can't be detected by a gpu stress test.. have you tried swapping it with a working one and see how it goes?

[Morne]

I recently had this on my new ATI 6990. It was working fine, didnt install any new driver or anything else. Then it suddenly just started bluescreening for no reason. New ATI driver fixed whatever went corrupt so now happy again

[simmsimaging]

I didn't try swapping the vid card, thanks for the suggestion. I ended up restoring the system to a backup from a month ago just to see if it was somehow software. It's been running all morning without any problems. Weird - can't think of anything I updated aside from Max, but it must have been something.... If it happens again I'll try the GPU swap for sure though - thanks.

@Morne: I wasn't getting blue screens - but glad you got your thing sorted out too.

/b

[squeakybadger]

Do you have multiple gpu's?

[simmsimaging]

Do you have multiple gpu's?

No, just the one.

[pixela]

Maybe switching back to an old videocard driver can help. Latest driver of my videocard from Nvidia gave me problems and made even RT non-function. When switched back to an older driver, all was fine.