Crashes - hardware or software ?

Pittguy578

New Member
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System I7 3770 not oc'd
16 gig ram
Gigabyte Motherboard
GTX 660
Power Supply is a Corsair 700 Watt only about a year and a half old.

I am having trouble figuring out what may be causing Windows 8.1 to crash. It seems that it is fixed and then it isn't.

Here is what occurred:

1. Never had any issues with Windows 8. Updated to 8.1 around October 21st.
2. I didn't have any crashing with BF4 beta ( it was running on just standard Windows. 8)
3. Upgraded to 8.1 because it promised more performance.
4. Started to have hard crashes-system would just simply power off and restart mostly when a level was loading not during actual gameplay of Bf4.
5. Normally I would say that is a power supply issue. I purchased a new one over a week ago. I didn't install it yet because I wasn't sure if that was the issue

Here is the weird thing. When I did a system restore after that started happening I wasn't having any crashes at all. I would really be taxing the system on purpose I.e running two virus scans while playing bf4. I literally joined over 130 servers and could not recreate the crash. I also did the system torture test with no issues. I did the system ram test and it was fine. I am not sure if the crashes were related to Malware which I found on my system

Tonight it crashed twice. I tried to do a system restore and all of my system restore points were gone. But that will be fixed tomorrow. The big question is what could be causing the crashes? It seemed hardware related at first, but it seemingly was fixed by software.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    8.1
It could be your power supply because BF4 may force your CPU to use more power (also might do this to your GPU & RAM), with 700w you should be fine though but there is still that small chance it could be that. Does the new one have more power than the other one?
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Custom build
    CPU
    Intel Core i7-4770K
    Motherboard
    Asus z87-Pro
    Memory
    G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (Dual Channel) (1866)
    Graphics Card(s)
    Radeon R9 290x
    Sound Card
    Sound Blaster Audigy
    Monitor(s) Displays
    2x ASUS MX279H Black 27" IPS
    Screen Resolution
    3840x1080
    Hard Drives
    SAMSUNG 840 Series 256 GB SSD (old ssd failed), Seagate external 3tb, & Seagate barracuda 1tb
    PSU
    Corsair AX1200i ATX PSU
    Case
    Corsair Obsidian 750d
    Cooling
    Black Ice Gtx 240
    Keyboard
    Ducky Shine 3
    Mouse
    Corsair M95
    Internet Speed
    15 Mb/s
    Browser
    Chrome/Firefox
    Antivirus
    Norton 2014
    Other Info
    PC used mostly for home theater and gaming.
Here is the weird thing. When I did a system restore after that started happening I wasn't having any crashes at all. I would really be taxing the system on purpose I.e running two virus scans while playing bf4. I literally joined over 130 servers and could not recreate the crash. I also did the system torture test with no issues. I did the system ram test and it was fine. I am not sure if the crashes were related to Malware which I found on my system
That's a good indication that the problem is indeed not from your hardware. What have you installed and or done on your system since this restore point ? There lies your problem I think.
A good tool for you might be the reliability monitor in the action center, it should list all your crashes and when they started to happen along with system changes.

Note : about the 2 virus scans, it's not recommended to run 2 different AV (in real time protection) at the same time, this can cause system instability. If this was only to stress your pc then disregard what I said.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 (x64)
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
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