Tech Support Hotline

One thing that affected a friend of mine with a MSI B350 based board was that the BIOS chip was to small for the full bios including the Ryzen 3 microcode, so the BIOS interface was a trimmed down version due to the space limitation.

Might affect you as well.

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Anyone know where to get DisplayPort cables with ferrite beads? My one display goes off when I get SMS’s…

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Ok, so I have some weird issue maybe that someone else might have had before (here’s hoping). My sound stopped working through my normal speakers (analog connection). It works in my gaming OS, but not on my main OS. Further, if I completely remove the Realtek sound drivers, then the sound works, but I get a BSOD after about 10-15 minutes (and then I’m not even in a game). If I reinstall the Realtek drivers, I stop getting BSODs, but the sound is gone again.

I use 32" FHD TVs as computer screens, so at the moment I’m using one of them for sound via HDMI, but it sounds terrible.

Any ideas?
Unless the Windows update did something. The issue started last week but can’t remember when the Windows Updates installed.

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Do you’re TV’s have sound passthrough? I would hook up your speakers to the TV. Also, why do you say the sound is terrible? Is it because the TV’s built-in speakers are not as good as your standalone speakers?

You can also go to your event viewer, and look up the crash log, be it in system or application, and see the exact error, then google that.

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I have a bad feeling I am not gaming anymore - I need to try and roll back my gfx driver, the pc just flashes a white/black/blue/random colour of the rainbow at me, whilst I can hear music in the back ground.

Then it reboots and I can do stuff again.

Yesterday we replaced the thermal paste on the pc, and it was stable for a nice 9 hours. This morning I have rebooted this pc about 30 times already and it just keeps doing that.

I will take it apart and put it back together when I have time later. Please hold thumbs that it isn’t the GFX card again, cos if so I wont be gaming for the foreseeable future.

And now that @Viper mentioned it - I started getting these issues after the last MS update.

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Have you tried this?

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This is where I am clueless. . . .

Pc doesnt seem to be overheating .

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Check device manager, look for hardware that have a yellow exclamation on them.

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None - not even one

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@Wyvern

Have you tried running sfc /scannow from command prompt?

Will check for and repair system file corruption. Just “run as administrator” on command prompt first.

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Will do that again, and see.

So far its been running for 2 hours now without a crash and all I did was change my nvidia driver to the previous one

The speakers use analog connectors (old Logitech 5.1 system) and the tv doesn’t support that. Sound terrible due to TV’s built-in sound. It is a Samsung TV so not as bad as the Sinotecs, but still quite poor.

Event log shows the following event as the last event before the BSOD.
A corrected hardware error has occurred.

Reported by component: Processor Core
Error Source: Corrected Machine Check
Error Type: Cache Hierarchy Error
Processor APIC ID: 3

The details view of this entry contains further information.

After the restart, the event log shows this:
The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck. The bugcheck was: 0x00000124 (0x0000000000000000, 0xffffe20a7ec2b028, 0x00000000be000000, 0x0000000000800400). A dump was saved in: C:\WINDOWS\MEMORY.DMP. Report Id: 79ff8e5e-74b5-4eef-afa7-dba9704546a1.

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Any other parts/pc to swap parts out with, to narrow down what the problem is?

I usually have parts laying around, that i swap what whatever I suspect is the culprit, and test with benchmarks.

Here’s a list of things to check.

  1. Check temperatures of hardware: CPU, motherboard (for any bridging chips overheating), GPU, hard drives (NVME run AF). Modern CPU’s can run up to 85-ish. GPU’s can run up to 95-ish. These are still bad temps though. NVME/M.2 i’m not sure, but you should check if they’re overheating.
  2. No temp problems, but random restarts, then it could be RAM. Reseat, check. Still? Reset RAM timings or actually set RAM timings manually to stock speed. If you only have 2 of 4 slots in use, try moving them.
  3. RAM fine, let’s look at easy fixes, check every cable to a hard drive, that your OS would crash from. Normally this is only the C:drive. Try a spare cable, or just replug them in. If it’s HDD related, it could also be bad sectors. Do a scan.
  4. Unplug any extra add-on cards you have.
  5. Sound is actually a big crasher of OS’s, especially when it’s driver related. Only use WHQL drivers for which ever version of Windows 10. Most of the time, Windows 10 can enable sound without 3rd party drivers own software. If you’re not winning with sound, there are USB earphones, that come with built in sound, that can be used to skirt any problems with built-in motherboard sound. Did this a few years ago, while money was tight, and onboard sound blew.
  6. PSU. Lawd I hope not. Have you resleeved cables to make things look pretty? Modular cables, go replug every cable again, making triply sure it’s plugged in correctly. Is your PSU sufficient for your whole system? Have you unintentionally stressing your PSU, by the system draw that’s higher than the PSU can handle?
  7. What software do you run that might be causing a lockup? Anything in the system tray? Disable anything and everything, that isn’t absolutely needed.

I could go on, but this is at least a starting point. If it’s hardware related, check these might show up the bastard culprit. Obviously the permutations of what causes what here, are endless, but give these a shot.

One last thing i forgot to mention. Boot a live usb of Ubuntu, and try and use that for an hour or 2. You don’t need to install it. If it’s a hardware problem, it will still crash. Obviously, this is less of an option if you use Windows specific software. But if you’re mostly in a browser all day, it’s possible, this could help with some insight.

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If it’s not the graphics card then hopefully it’s something cheap to fix. I’ve had random behaviour like that with failing hard drives and broken RAM. Try and run a memory test, if you haven’t already.

Search for “Windows Memory” and click on Windows Memory Diagnostic to get started.

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Thank you guys - I am gonna do all that again today, running all the tests i can, and taking the pc apart cleaning the contacts and so on, reseat it all again, play with the cables and such.

Luckily my pc is just plain on the inside, no fancy lights or cabling. (cable ties ftw!)

I appreciate all the advice and tips
Also currently running:
https://www.hwinfo.com/download/ -
and
https://osdn.net/projects/crystaldiskmark/downloads/71859/CrystalDiskMark7_0_0h.zip/
One is a disk health check
the other is a Comprehensive Hardware Analysis, Monitoring and Reporting for Windows and DOS.

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Without any other data, looking at the screenshots you posted higher up, I would hazard a guess, it’s display related (Desktop Window Manager has Stopped working), and by extension it could be nvidia driver. So before you, start the hardware troubleshooting, try this since it should take 10 minutes: find a 6 month older driver. Do a clean install. Remember to click that checkbox to remove previous nvidia drivers and settings (i can’t remember the exact wording).

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I will try that again, I grabbed the driver that was about 3rd in line
last time and it made no difference

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At least its not my drives :

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Sensor data

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Normal temps, idle or minimal load. And you say, it’s only crashed when it’s idle?

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