Windows Vista BSODs in Ultimate Coming out of Sleep

Hi,

I have a desktop that runs Vista Ultimate. For the weeks since it was built I have gotten a pretty regular BSOD when I come out of sleep mode. I have the minidumps for about a months worth of these errors, and the most recent "full" memory dump.

The errors are all over the map... "IP_MISALIGNED," "MEMORY_CORRUPTION," "KERNEL_MODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED," "PAGE_NOT_ZERO_VISTA," "IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL," "VIDEO_TDR_FAILURE," ETC. The error is rarely in the same module -everyhting from video drivers to the LogonUI to WerFault.exe.

Here are the specs:

CPU - Intel Q6600 (2.4GHz Quad-core)
MOBO - ASUS P5NE-SLI - BIOS 801 (tried all that were available, though)
RAM - Patriot 4X1GB PC2-6400 DDR2 (800MHz)
Video - ASUS EN8600GT Silent - most recent ASUS drivers (169.25)
Power - Antec Neo430W
HDD - SATA x2 (WD 500GB AND 750GB)
HDD - IDE (MAXTOR 300GB)
DVD - SATA Samsung DVD-RW
CD - IDE LiteOn CD-RW
Audio - onboard Realtec HD

I've tried reseating the RAM, working with just two sticks of RAM, and changing out the SATA cables, but no luck. Ran MEMTEST for 24 hours without errors and ORTHOS on all four cores for 10 hours without errors.

I've never had a single BSOD except right when it comes out of sleep mode.

Any ideas, and any other information I can provide? I can submit all the DebugWiz reports if you think they'll help.

Thanks in advance.

 

Hi and welcome to the BBS,

First thing I would suggest is to look for an update for the motherboard/chipset drivers. The m/b specifications will tell you the chipset model. If Asus do not have Vista drivers, look for them at the chipset manufacturer's website (nVidia?). I looked for updates for all my major drivers and I suggest you check for, at least, graphics and audio drivers if Vista versions were not supplied on the drivers CD.

Could anything be interfering with the sleep mode, screensavers, background programs, etc? Does it only happen when it sleeps with many/large programs open?

Test some other sleep modes. Be careful you are not making it use laptop/mobile settings. If you can narrow down what is causing the problem there are individual settings in Control Panel -> Power Options -> Change plan settings -> Change advanced power settings (you can try setting them all to "disabled ", then re-enabling them one at a time).

My system will not go into sleep mode if there are too many programs open. I let my system enter sleep mode itself (if it wants to ). I only use the "Sleep" button in the start menu if I do not have many programs open. Check in Event Viewer if there may be errors related to the incidents, it may show an error/s leading up to the crash.

Matt

 

Thanks for your reply. It doesn't seem to matter what it open when it goes to sleep. It BSODs just as much when nothing's open at all.

All the drivers are the latest ones off Asus' website and are WHQL-signed for Vista, and I double-checked to make sure they were the Vista32 drivers. The board is an nForce 650 chipset.

I'll try the other sleep modes, but they don't really do what I want (virtual shutdown with near-immediate startup to the password screen). I do know that the machine is rock-solid if it never goes to sleep - I ran for a week straight just to test that.

The sleep mode it goes into is automatic from the Power Managment setting -I've never tried to make it go to sleep manually.

 

I always investigate turning off the password protection. Something I have come across is that a program wants to throw up an error message on the screen, but is blocked by the logon.

You will need to check for any patterns, it may well be one background program or a malfunctioning driver. MS would most likely suggest doing a "clean boot" to try to identify it.

The sleep and wake-up will be very reliant on RAM/memory and even though memory testing may show up clean, it does not mean that it it is not the reason. From my experience, Asus motherboards can be more fussy about RAM than others. Check on the Patriot website that your model of RAM is listed as compatible with your m/b. If you have access to another computer with suitable RAM, test that.

You are welcome to post debugging logs, but there are only one or two members that visit occasionally who can read them in depth.

If you had patterns in the BSODs it may just be a matter of identifying the common cause. All different errors may mean "fundamental" (hardware?)
problems.

Matt

 

Resolved issue with BSODs in Vista

I have finally resolved the issue I described in this old thread:

http://www.windowsbbs.com/showthread.php?t=71136


Originally, the problem was only coming out of sleep mode, and was manageable, so I just lived with it. In the last week, though, the problem got so bad that it took 4 or 5 tries to even boot into Vista. So I finally did something about it. I had already tried changing out hardware, so I started looking at software, despite the fact that the BSOD messages all referenced hardware-related issues (IRQL_NOT_LESS_THAN_OR_EQUAL, MEMORY_CORRUPTION, etc.).

It turns out that the culprit was Avast AV (free version). No idea why. Switched to AVG and I'm running rock solid. I sent a detailed message to Avast support to let them know.

Anyway, I hope this helps someone.