Possible Causes of PC shutdowns and BSOD's

Hey everyone, Today I am going to be looking at a few of the reasons that you can get BSOD's or random shutdowns on your computer. There are lot of things that can cause BSOD's and shutdowns but I am going to mention some of the more common reasons.

Memory or RAM

I am going to start with the RAM or Memory as it is sometimes known. The RAM in your computer acts as a buffer between the CPU and the Hard drive. It is used to store in use programs to help them perform better than if they were loading from the hard drive. Anyway, sometimes the RAM will become unstable and loose little bits of it's memory. If this happens when a program goes to the RAM to look for part of the program that is needed it isn't there. This isn't always too bad as sometimes it will just cause a program you are using to crash, If however the part of the RAM that fails is storing part of the Windows program it can cause BSOD's. You can test your RAM by downloading a program called Memtest86 from here This program can be burned to a disk or put on a pen drive so you can boot from it at start up. It then scans the RAM and tests it for damaged sectors.

RAM Can sometimes cause BSOD's due to damaged sectors

Hard Drive

The next piece of hardware that can cause a BSOD is the hard drive. The hard drive is the part of the computer that stores all of you programs and data. If a hard drive is damaged or starts to wear out it can sometimes damage the programs that are on the drive it self. Just like with the RAM this means that when the hard drive comes to load a piece of data that is needed by windows it can cause it to BSOD due to that part of the program not being there to be loaded. It can also be caused by a head crash which is where the hard drive head hits the disk platter and scratches away the data which renders that whole section unreadable and unusable. Finding out if you hard drive is on the way out is very much like finding out if the RAM is broken. All you need to do is download this program. HD Tune runs on the computer and checks the S.M.A.R.T of the hard drive and also scans the platter for errors.

Hard Drive Errors can cause BSOD's as well

Overheating

The next possible cause of a BSOD is if the hardware of the computer is overheating. There are many reasons that a piece of hard ware can overheat. The following list is some of the causes;

• Damaged Fans
• Blocked fans (Usually due to dust build up)
• Blocked vents (Mostly on laptops caused buy covering the vents with fabric such as trousers)
• Dried out thermal paste (often on older computers)
• A heatsink that is not securely attached (damaged in transit or from being knocked or not correctly installed)

When a PC or Laptop starts to overheat it will often shut it self down which can sometimes cause a BSOD. You can check the temperature of the CPU by using a program called CPUID Hardware Monitor downloadable from here once this program is running it will scan all the sensors on the computer and report back the temperatures and voltages. If you can't even boot into windows without the computer BSODing then you will most likely have to go into the BIOS and go into the hardware or PC health section of it to see what temperatures that it is reporting. In the BIOS anything over 45c could be causing an issue, In windows anything over 55c will most likely be a problem once you stress the PC.

Overheating can often cause BSOD problems

Voltages and Power Supply

This one is a less likely cause of a BSOD but it is still a problem. Sometimes the power supply of a PC can go dodgy. This can be caused from stressing it too much (not having a powerful enough one for your hardware) or due to just the age of the power supply (The capacitors often age over time and don't hold charge properly) Also bad quality PSU's (generally less than $10 per 100w) can also cause problems. It is easy to check the voltages by using the same program as the temperature one above. CPUID Hardware Monitor reports back the voltages as well as the temperatures so you can kill two birds with one stone using this program. If the voltages seem a long way off their targets (Shown at the side of CPUID hardware monitor) then this could quite possibly be the cause of the BSOD's.

A bad PSU can cause BSOD's due to bad voltage supply

Now that you have read through this simple list of possible BSOD causes you can have a go at diagnosing the problem for your self. This will save you a lot of money if you find the problem and don't have to use a very expensive PC repair company.

How to fully Uninstall / Remove Drivers

When changing a graphics card, sound card, or network card sometimes removing the drivers properly can be a bit of a pain. It can also be a problem when updating drivers to the newer versions as often the uninstall program will not fully delete all of the driver components and will often cause the new drivers to not install correctly which can cause crashes and sometimes even blue screens of death.

There are a couple of free programs out there though that will help you fully remove the drivers so that when installing the new ones you don't hit any problems along the way.

Firstly you will need to download Driver Sweeper once you have downloaded it simply install it and then leave it until you have started the task of removing the old drivers. (Remember to get the new ones ready on a CD or on your desktop before you remove the old ones)

Once you have decided on which drivers you are uninstalling you need to go to the uninstall panel on your computer. Find the drivers and then right click on them and click uninstall/change. Go through all of the setup program until the drivers are uninstalled.

Uninstall or Change a program window

Once you have removed the drivers that you wanted to get rid of it is time to fire up Driver Sweeper. This program will remove any remaining files/registry entries that were left by the driver uninstall program. Select the names of the drivers that you are trying to remove. In my case it was;

Nvidia - Display
Nvidia - PhysX

Driver Sweeper - Select driver window

Once you have selected the drivers that you are removing (Already removed using the uninstall or change a program window) you need to click analyze. This will scan your computer for any remaining files and registry entries that were connected to the driver. Once it has finished you will find a program panel like this come up.

Driver Sweeper Scan Results

Once you have seen all of the files and registry entries you simply click on the "Clean" button in the bottom right hand side of the screen. Once this task has been performed it is now time to install your new driver.

Thanks for reading, Jack-O-Bytes

AMD Release the HD 7970 3Gb Graphics Card

The graphics giant AMD have released the new AMD HD 7970 offering amazing performance on a 28nm GCN architecture. They are currently priced at around £450 which is a very high price to pay but the performance that you get is very very good. The 3Gb of GDDR5 running at 5500MHz allows a bandwidth of 264GB/s which is some serious performance. The core of the graphics card runs at a stock speed of It supports a maximum display resolution of 4096x3112. You can find the specifications of the card here

The HD7970 looks like most of the cards that AMD have made since the 5-series having an exhaust port on the back and a blower fan on the inside. These fans are usually very loud and can be a bit annoying. Often companys such as sapphire, sparkle, xfx, and gigabyte will take the cards and fit an after market uprated quiet cooler but so far there is no sign of this happening. The 28nm architecture of the new 7970 will however be cooler running and most likely quieter than the 5 and 6 series cards that were produced by AMD using a bigger architecture.

AMD Radeon HD 7970 Stock Card



AMD Radeon HD 7970 Quad Crossfire Setup

Overall the performance of these cards is a massive improvement over most of the ones currently available and being the 7970 there is always space for a 7990 to be released yet. Roumor has it that is will cost around $850 which is a very high price but it will have some very good performance.