Crashes after installing Radeon 7950

[Shmeal]

Hey guys, I've been dealing with some issues after i installed my Radeon 7950. After a couple minutes of use explorer freezes up but my mouse and gadgets are still active (clock, cpu usage, etc). After another couple of minutes I get the BSOD with the following message:

Stop: 0x000000f4 (0x0000000000000003, 0xfffffa8007ec5b30, 0xfffffa8007ec5e10, 0xfffff800043e2470)

I've updated to the latest catalyst drivers, ran windows update, updates the firmware on my SSD, but I'm running out of ideas. Safe mode suffers from the same problem, so I'm not really sure what's going on.

Help?

[clone]

I'm sure you know if it crashed in Safe Mode that it's not a driver issue, did you flash the bios on your motherboard, what power supply are you using, update every firmware on your computer from video card if need all the way to your optical drives.

my first guesses would be the first to questions I asked, mobo bios or possibly PSU.

[JohnC]

Could be lots of reasons... Your power supply might be too weak, or the card might be defective... Try re-seating the card (remove it then re-insert into slot), maybe try using different PCIe slot (if your motherboard has one)... If you have spare PC (or have a friend with compatible PC) - try using this card in it.

[Jigar]

If I were you, i would start with Mobo Bios update, second try to see if PSU is up for taking the load of HD 7950, third try to reseat the card, forth try the card in other computer and if nothing works, RMA the card.

[JustAnEngineer]

Check that your memory is seated properly, too. While you were installing the graphics card you may have jostled or loosened other items in the case.

If it were a PSU capacity problem, I'd expect it to be more apparent during gaming, when the system really pulls a lot of power.

[Shmeal]

I'm using a Corsair TX750, so power shouldn't be an issue. I haven't tried updating the motherboard bios yet, I'll try that next.

I've reseated the memory modules, and I even went back to an older Radeon 4870 and the problem persisted.

[clone]

sounds like a coincidental issue then, their was an adobe flash update recently that caused nothing but grief on my mother in laws system..... any other updates aside from the video card lately?

actually when you say explorer do you mean internet explorer?

because if yes then you are having the exact same problem my mother in laws system had, constant partial locks with the latest adobe update causing IE to stop responding, I switched to using Mozilla firefox and the problem vanished.

she's using WinXP and an Nvidia 6600GT.

[Shmeal]

Don't think I've run adobe updates, they seem to have a new one every other day.

Also, the explorer I mentioned was the process, not the web browser. Sorry for not being clear earlier.

I'm running windows 7.

Here's my current setup:
MSI X58 Platinum
Core i7 920
6GB Corsair Dominator DDR3
Radeon 7950
OCZ Vertex 2 (primary)
Various Hitachi 1TB drives

I find it interesting that I don't get an error message on the BSOD, but just the code I posted earlier.

[JohnC]

Well, since you get the same results with other card and your PSU is most likely good - I'd try to visually inspect the motherboard's surface, to see if there's any "accidental" physical damage to any of its components... I would also inspect how your motherboard is mounted inside the case (maybe remove it completely), see if it "touches" the case in an inappropriate ways

Also, try this: disconnect your SSD drive and use a spare HDD instead - install your OS on it, your apps/games and see how your system runs without SSD. This way you will at least know if the problem is caused by SSD or if it's fine...

[Shmeal]

Sounds good, I'll do some inspecting to make sure no suspect "contact" is happening under my nose.

[Shmeal]

Should I also try booting into linux from a USB drive and letting it chill out while I go.....eat a sandwich?

Any suspect contact would cause a failure in the case as well I think.

[Shmeal]

Doesn't appear to have any bad contact. Updating bios is next i guess.


EDIT: Maybe I'm just stupid, but the MSI instructions on how to update BIOS are not very good.....I have no idea what they want me to do haha

[Phaleron]

When you loaded the card new card did you completely remove the old drivers first? The 4870 and the 7950 run a different driver. You could be having a conflict between the two.

source:

http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/ ... loads.aspx

Driver split occurs between 4000 and 5000 series

edit: The bottom of the page also has an uninstall tool

[JohnC]

Doesn't appear to have any bad contact. Updating bios is next i guess.


EDIT: Maybe I'm just stupid, but the MSI instructions on how to update BIOS are not very good.....I have no idea what they want me to do haha

Well, if your motherboard has built-in BIOS flash function somewhere in its BIOS settings - use that (just unzip the downloaded BIOS files on USB flash drive, plug it in and use the flash utility in the BIOS to locate your flash drive and load BIOS update from it)... Otherwise make a bootable USB flash drive (if MSI doesn't provide instructions - find a generic guide on internet), unzip the BIOS file (and the flashing utility which should be in same zipped file) into this USB flash drive and boot from it (set your BIOS to "boot from removable drive" or whatever it's called), then after you boot from USB drive you have to type in specific command to initialize flashing process (see the MSI's site, it should tell you what you have to type)... Or download their Windows-based utility which should do everything automagically

[Firestarter]

Safest way is to reinstall your OS, to be sure you may make another windows from another partition to try its stability then its up to you to completely reformat your system.

Re-install the OS for a driver switch? That's wholly unnecessary, especially when OP has established that it crashes in safe mode too.

Shmeal, I'd definitely try to boot into Linux-on-a-stick and use that for a bit of browsing while you eat your proverbial sandwich. If that still crashes, you're 100% sure that it's a hardware problem.

[clone]

When you loaded the card new card did you completely remove the old drivers first? The 4870 and the 7950 run a different driver. You could be having a conflict between the two.

while a potential problem is possible, I've done more than 300 video cards changes in the past 15 years and not once had an issue, did 9 in the past year on my personal system..... nada nothing, I'm not saying it doesn't happen but it would be near the bottom of the list.

the drivers don't conflict, one will get ignored, their was a time wayyyyyyyy back during the less stable WIn98 days when issues of all kinds were plentiful but both Nvidia and AMD had done quite a bit of work to eliminate those gremlins, I thought their was an app right in the AMD driver that cleans out the old before install anyway?

Re-install the OS for a driver switch? That's wholly unnecessary, especially when OP has established that it crashes in safe mode too.

back in 1996 a friend told me with a mix of scorn and condescension that formats don't fix problems, he was right a format won't find the root cause of the original problem but what they are wonderful at doing is getting rid of the problem.

for 10 years I decided to learn what the issue was instead of formatting, by the end of those 10 years resolving a significant issue was taking anywhere from 4 to 10 hours vs 1 hour to format.

I format now if I think it's going to take more than a reasonable amount of time, bin doing it too long and just don't care anymore.

I'm a big fan of nuking from space and starting fresh with updated everything vs the slow and steady decline of updates written over updates and old files causing issues with new files.

I don't get the impression this is a driver issue which means it'll take all the more time to find and hopefully fix... just get medieval on it and be done with it..... after you've flashed the mobo's bios & if that hasn't rectified the issue of course.

[Shmeal]

Sounds good, time to get that sammich ready. If that fails, I'm going to get all medieval on this bitch!

[Shmeal]

Booting linux from a USB drive worked out fine.

I decided to do the "burn this motherf**ker to the ground" approach and tried to reinstall my OS. The installation fails on my SSD, and when the system restarts, the SSD no longer showed up on the boot menu until I the computer is actually turned off and then turned on again.

Looks like I might need a new SSD?

[clone]

I was kinda wondering about that, you did update the firmware didn't you?

if you have an old hard drive laying around that would certainly help but first it could be ram or it could be mobo, if you have 2 sticks of ram, or 4 pull all but one and try again.

if 1 stick doesn't work swap it for another, if that fails put in the platter HDD if you have it and if all that fails...... ugh, mobo may be the issue, regardless by that point you be brown boxing as in pull all the components lay the mobo on the table with 1 stick of ram, vid, power & optical and then try.

process of elimination and all that rot.

[Shmeal]

Used an old platter drive to install windows and it looks like it went just fine. I had to leave while chkdsk was going on because I was trying to get this all done before a business trip but it looks like I might just have to get a new SSD.

Might be a good time to migrate to Win8 I guess!

I will give you guys an update when I get back in a couple of days.

[jihadjoe]

Apparently, format is good at finding problems too!
In hindsight, you probably had some corrupted system files on the SSD that were causing things to not work properly.

[JohnC]

Used an old platter drive to install windows and it looks like it went just fine. I had to leave while chkdsk was going on because I was trying to get this all done before a business trip but it looks like I might just have to get a new SSD.

Might be a good time to migrate to Win8 I guess!

I will give you guys an update when I get back in a couple of days.

Yea... You can find plenty of posts from OCZ's own SSD forums if you just Google something like "OCZ stop f4 error"

[Shmeal]

Got everything to work! Had to swap out the SSD for a newer, prettier model.

Now I have no clue why my third monitor always reverts to super low resolution every time I come out of screensaver or when windows first starts up. Unplugging the displayport cable, turning off the monitor, and then reconnecting everything brings it back to 1080p. Nothing else seems to do the trick