Loads of Blue Screens

The computer is an Asus G53JW running Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit. A laptop I bought recently off of ebay.

Anyway, whenever I play a game I get a bluescreen at a seemingly random interval. Not sure if playing is the cause or not. (The games played so far were Civ V: Gods and Kings and Of Orcs and Humans).

I looked at the error log through BlueScreenView, and it looks like something called hal.dll, bug check code 0x00000124.

According to BlueScreenView ntoskrnl.exe or pci.sys may be causing the problem as well.

Unfortunately I'm virtually computer illiterate. This isn't a custom machine to my knowledge.

Any idea of where to start trying to fix this? I'm planning on clean-installing windows in the near future, would that help? Please let me know if you folks need any more information.

Thanks.

 

Have you pluged in any kinda new hardware like usb items to the computer.

 

Yup, mouse, keyboard, and external hard drive. Though the crashes have happened when there was nothing plugged in at all except for the power cord.

 

http://www.carrona.org/bsodindx.html#0x00000124

Carefully follow these instructions, attach the zip(s) (you may need to split the files into 2 zips) in a follow-up Post here please, I'll see if I can work out what the problem is.

 

Merry Christmas my friend

What is your antivirus programme and what programmes do you have installed in your machine ? :wave

 

Ugh, lots of programs. I plan on doing a clean install of windows in the relatively near future, so haven't cleaned it of the bloatware it came with yet. As for the antivirus, I am running Avast.

 

System Model: Asus G53JW
Windows 7 64 bit
Version 6.1.7600 Build 7600
Original OS Windows 7 64 bit (as far as I am aware)
OEM (As far as I am aware)
Age of system: Unknown (Bought it secondhand)
Age of OS installation: Unknown, bought it secondhand, I did not reinstall, though it was reset to factory settings when it arrived.
CPU: Intel i7 Q740 @ 1.73GHz
Video Card: Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 M.

Motherboard: Not sure how to find this information.
Power Supply and Voltage: Not sure how to find this information.

Attached are the requested files.

 

All 4 BSOD's are essentially the same, 0x124's pointing to a hardware error on the PCI Express bus.

Code:

Probably caused by : hardware
BugCheck 124, {4, fffffa8006336038, 0, 0}
BugCheck Info: [url=http://www.carrona.org/bsodindx.html#0x00000124]WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR (124)[/url]
Bugcheck code 00000124
Arguments: 
Arg1: 0000000000000004, PCI Express Error
Arg2: fffffa8006336038, Address of the WHEA_ERROR_RECORD structure.
Arg3: 0000000000000000
Arg4: 0000000000000000
BUGCHECK_STR:  0x124_4
PROCESS_NAME:  System
FAILURE_BUCKET_ID:  X64_0x124_4_PCIEXPRESS
MaxSpeed:     1730
CurrentSpeed: 1845
BiosVersion = G53JW.209
BiosReleaseDate = 10/05/2010
SystemManufacturer = ASUSTeK Computer Inc.
SystemProductName = G53JW

It might not be hardware at fault, there's a chance it could be a 3rd party driver or BIOS/hardware settings - look at the speeds listed above:

This might indicate that the machine is set a little too high (overclocked) which may be enough to push the PCI-E timings 'over the edge'. Reset the BIOS to defaults and uninstall/disable any Turbo or boost software.

 

I'm not sure how to do any of those things, and it is a laptop. I don't believe it is overclocked. I'll look into it though.

 

How do I check if it is overclocked if I didn't overclock it myself? How do I reset the BIOS?

Sorry about the other comment, I opened up the Laniius account when I forgot about the Canzealander account, then rememebered the Canzealander account, and sometimes forget which one is which.

 

So I updated my drivers, and am still having problems. This time it wouldn't start at all. The fans would spin up, but I'd be getting nothing on the screen (not a black screen, just nothing on the screen).

Turned it off and on a couple times and it's working now.

Not going to play games for awhile.

Anyway, it also seems that my dump files are gone, unless I'm looking in the wrong place.

How do I check if it's overclocked? The speeds you noticed in my previous post, I don't know where they're coming from as I bought this laptop used and have had no response from the seller over eBay.

 

You could try CPUID PC Wizard for the O/C info. It's a great tool for seeing how your PC is set up. There are even some cool DirectX diagnostics and a super cool benchmarking utility.

I think it may be here at MGs, but if not, the official site is very safe (program has been around since 1996). The button to check O/Cs is like the second to last one on the row of buttons below the menu bar. You can export all the info in PCW to a text file, and it's alot better than the System Info program on XP in my opinion...

 

http://www.majorgeeks.com/HWMonitor_d5842.html

 

I'm wondering if a clean install of windows and a BIOS update would help. I have no idea of how to do the latter.

 

Canzealander. Your manufacturer's website will have your BIOS update just like any other driver. Just download and install same as usual. Google your make and model of PC and then "drivers". I'm pretty sure it will show up right there...

 

Through the windows environment? The file I got has the extension *.211, and came from this site: http://support.asus.com/download.aspx?SLanguage=en&m=G53JW&p=3&s=282&os=30&hashedid=eV4F8vu0VnKGp0nw

 

Canzealander...

Yes, just install through Windows. That is correct...

 

Not sure if your method would have worked, but I ended up using this method: http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?id=20070215223109668&board_id=1 and it worked fine.

Next step: Clean install of Windows. Hope this fixes things.

 

Well, did a clean install, updated the drivers, and still the same issue. Though this time I didn't get any minidump file - it froze and I had to manually shut it down and restart.

Could be a heat issue. Next step is getting some compressed air and having a go at it. I couldn't reproduce the thing satrow mentioned. I also noticed that my back-rear vent was quite warm after it shut down, I don't have any temperature monitoring programs installed.

If anyone has any experience with the Asus G53JW, that'd be wonderful. Otherwise I will keep you folks posted.

 

Use Speccy Here --->http://www.majorgeeks.com/Speccy_d6358.html


Will read your inside teamps

 

Is there one that records temps as well? So in the event of a system failure, I can look back and see what I was at?