Windows 7 with latest Avast! (5.0.594)

[Wolfman86]

Any update? Without Avast installed, I have been stable for almost a week now. I would like to be able to use Avast again if my problem can be fixed.

[pk]

Unfortunately, I'm quite sure, it's a HW problem..

I looked again on your dump and I saw that our driver tried to read definitely valid memory block from 0xfffff880`06a41330 address, instead CPU read it from fffff880`06a49330 address.

If you convert these addresses into binary form, you'll get:

0xfffff880`06a41330 (valid)  : 11111111 11111111 11111000 10000000 00000110 10100100 00010011 00110000
0xfffff880`06a49330 (invalid): 11111111 11111111 11111000 10000000 00000110 10100100 10010011 00110000

as you can see,  there is a one bit difference between these 2 addresses - I'd suggest you to decrease memory voltage in BIOS.

[Wolfman86]

Right now my memory, 2x2GB DDR3 1600 OCZ Black Edition, is running at 1.65 volts with 8-8-8-24 timings. I can lower the voltage as you suggest, but 1.65 volts is what OCZ recommends to use them at.

Could it possibly be my memory is not getting enough power due to bad power supply? I do question my power supply with my new build since it's about 3.5 years old and only 500 watts.

[Hard_ROCKER]

Quite possible you don't get enough "juice" from the psu. That psu is really weak for a newer system, what are your other system specs ? Especially interested in the gpu and cpu.

[Hard_ROCKER]

The make and model of the psu would also help.

[Wolfman86]

AMD Phenom II X4 955 BE, Gigabyte GA-870A-UD3 with F2 BIOS, GeForce 7600GS, WD 74GB 10000 RPM raptor, WD 320GB 7200 RPM, CoolMax CP-500T 500 watt power supply

If you need anything else, let me know.

[silviucc]

What you have there should not be that much of a stress for the PSU. I would run http://www.memtest.org/ though.

[scythe944]

AMD Phenom II X4 955 BE, Gigabyte GA-870A-UD3 with F2 BIOS, GeForce 7600GS, WD 74GB 10000 RPM raptor, WD 320GB 7200 RPM, CoolMax CP-500T 500 watt power supply

If you need anything else, let me know.

I don't see any CD / DVD / Blu-ray drives listed.  Is that all the hardware in your system?

If so, 500W PS should be ok (I guess), as you're only powering the vid card, MOBO and two disks as far as I can see.
Take a look here to see how much power some devices use: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/08/video-card-power-consumption.html
For your processor: http://techreport.com/articles.x/16796/12 (about 200 watts or so on average?)

Obviously there is either a memory problem or a lack of power, and it's looking like the memory.

I'd use either one of these:

Windows memory diagnostics: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2008.09.utilityspotlight.aspx

memtest86 (link given earlier).

[Wolfman86]

I'm also using a sata Lite-On CD/DVD burner and a Creative X-Fi XtremeGamer sound card.

I updated my BIOS yesterday and ran Memtest86+ v4.10 over night last night for about 10 hours and all 12 passes were successful with no errors. Even before the BIOS update, I had no errors.

It appears my memory is fine according to Memtest86+, which is highly recommended for memory diagnostics. I have ran Prime95 v25.11 for a full hour with no errors. I have also ran OCCT (overclock checking tool) on the linpack benchmark for the full hour with no errors or crashes. Windows 7 64-bit runs just fine in some of the games my video card can run along with browsing in Firefox 3.6.6 with minimal extensions. None of my hardware appears to be faulty or causing any problems as far as I can tell. I don't know what else I can do to try and find the faulty hardware, if there is any.

[silviucc]

Ok this might be a longshot, but I do remember some post by Vlk on the blog that mentioned speed improvements due to some "tricks" the avast tam learned from an Intel team. Now I was just wondering whether maybe, avast tried something "funky" on an AMD cpu and maybe it was not supposed to.

True, given this line of reasoning maybe more people using AMD cpus experience weird crashes, do they ? At least this guy http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=61584.0 seems to.

It is very weird that Avast is able to crash Win 7 64bit. Weren't all drivers in userland now ?

[pk]

@silviucc:

...that mentioned speed improvements due to some "tricks" the avast tam learned from an Intel team.

IIRC, these speed optimizations were just for hash counting with using new CPU instructions (like SSE instructions set, pipelines), etc. Other changes were in engine, but it had nothing to do with this crash. Wolfman86 sent me some dumps, some of them really points on invalid memory access (e.g. under high CPU load) - we could saw CPU really tried to read the invalid memory (this memory address was also stored in CR2, the internal CPU registry) although program wanted to read a memory block from the different memory location. This must be a HW failure, because you can't achieve this state programmatically (i.e. can't be a software bug).

[igor]

Weren't all drivers in userland now ?

No, certainly not.

[silviucc]

Wolfman, can you give us an idea about the temp. of the CPU idle / working?

[Wolfman86]

Wolfman, can you give us an idea about the temp. of the CPU idle / working?

Idle temps are 39-41c and full load is usually 65-66c, but that's on the stock fansink. My video card seems a bit hot sitting idle at 49-50c. Not sure what it gets up to on full load, but I can imagine it gets pretty hot.

I noticed in my BIOS, after updating it the other day, it shows 4 cores in the overclock/unlock cores section. Before, it only showed 2 cores. Would that make any difference?

Here are pics of my memory BIOS settings if it may help...



Note: OCZ said it was ok to use 1.66 volts because 1.65 isn't available in my BIOS.

[silviucc]

What does it do when you select "Auto"  for "DDR3 Timing Items" ?

Maybe some more relaxed timings could improve your system's stability ?

Also, looking at this http://memoryselector.cnetchannel.com/ocztech/result.asp?fk_class=6569&manufacturer_id=781&model_id=941714 I do not see any of the "Black Edition" codes listed