Strange BSOD's pointing to "ATIKMDAG.sys"

Discussion in 'General Hardware' started by cdlink14, May 3, 2012.

  1. cdlink14

    cdlink14 Master Guru

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    Additional Information which may be helpful:
    Mon1 = LG Flatron W2043S 20" 1600x900
    Mon2 = Advent X19W 19" 1440x900

    About a week ago I left my PC running to itself whilst I went out doing some shopping. When I came back I moved my mouse to wake up my monitors, and noticed my secondary monitor was at an insanely low resolution. I spent a while trying to fix this and manged to do so by upgrading my video card drivers from the CCC 12.2 to the CCC 12.4. And then I had to go into the CCC and turn off EDID (Extended Display Identification Data) for the second monitor, and manually set it to a max of 1440x900 and max refresh rate of 75hz.

    After doing this though I noticed the second monitor was no longer showing as an X19W in the CCC, or the windows 7 display settings panel. Instead it's only showing as a "17" display" (keep in mind it's a 19" monitor!" and trying to manually choose the driver to set it as a X19W seems to show that no such driver exists (and I can't find it on the web).

    I didn't think much of this as the display was working fine, however since then I'd been getting BSOD's pointing to "ATIKMDAG.sys", I'd get them every 12 or so hours, and they'd only occur whilst the system is idle (I leave my system running all the time), with the exception of one which happened in front of me, but the system wasn't running anything intense .

    Now after about 3 days of getting them so frequent I decided to do a small bit of research and found that a "ATIKMDAG.sys" is related to the drivers, and some even saying it's related to the CCC. So I decided to downgrade my CCC back to 12.2 to see if that would cure the problem.

    Unfortunately it didn't, after running flawless for 3 days (with quite a bit of heavy gaming) I got a BSOD whilst the system was left idle to itself overnight.


    Now I'm not sure if this problem is still happening, A few hours ago I decided to do a complete fresh install of windows 7 and used the old 12.2 drivers which worked fine before the monitor screwed over. And things have been fine so far, but I'd still like to ask your guys opinions so if it happens again I have some possible solutions to put to practice instantly.

    Oh, and even after the format and reinstall the second monitor still refused to work until I forced it to 1440x900 @ 75hz in the CCC. And strangely it's not showing as "Generic Non-PnP Monitor" where as before the format it showed as "17" display"

    Things I've tried so far:
    - Swapping the monitors over on the video card connector, mon1 worked flawlessly in both ports, and mon2 showed as "17" display" in both ports so a fault connector is unlikely.

    - Playing some video games to see if I can force the problem to happen again, which didn't work so I'm doubting the problem could be the hardware

    - I've ran furmark for 20 mins without problem (planning to do a much longer test if the problem still happens).

    - Reinstalling windows (nothing's happened since I did this, but I only did it a few hours ago)
     
  2. must_kill_ati

    must_kill_ati Maha Guru

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    http://atikmdag.com/

    There seems to be alot of issues that can cause the problem. There's 10 fixes to try on this page.
     
  3. cdlink14

    cdlink14 Master Guru

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    Thanks, I'll check it out. ATM I'm running furmark on my second monitor, going to have it run for about 2-3 hours. Then afterwards gonna try running something to test the VRAM. If both those go fine, looks like it's a night of memtest.

    Also that page seems to point towards the ATIKMDAG crash that is recoverable (What happened to VPU recover anyway?)

    Mine is an actual BSOD... Though I'm getting the conclusion that they removed the VPU recover feature and that is why I get BSOD's instead.
     
  4. cdlink14

    cdlink14 Master Guru

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    GPU Test with Furmark for 2 hours shows nothing wrong.
    Running Video memory Stress Test now.


    Whoops, sorry for double post, I'm used to a forum which has Auto-merge.
     

  5. automaticman

    automaticman Master Guru

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    I had the same problem with an old build. I would usually get one or two of the recovereable crashes and then a BSOD.

    At the time i had a C2D setup with the X48 chipset and all 4 ram slots populated. I was able to fix the error by simply bumping up the northbridge voltage a notch or two.

    It seemed having 4 ram sticks was drawing just enough power to make the PCIe lanes unstable (since on X48 both the memory controller and PCIe bus were on the NorthBridge, on your Athlon the memory controller is in the CPU I think and the NB controls only the PCIe bus). This was all before I had overclocked anything.

    Seems like it may be a long shot given your AMD build, but it's something to keep in mind as it is one of the many things that can cause those symptoms.
     
  6. cdlink14

    cdlink14 Master Guru

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    Thanks I may check at the voltages... So far the GPU has proven stable on a 2 hour Furmark test, and the Vram has shown clean on 2 runs with "Video memory Stress Test"

    It's been just under 24 hours without a single problem if it happens again I'll do a memory test, and prime 95.

    If they show clear, then It's got to be something else... possibly voltages? Or maybe the motherboard decaying?
     
  7. cdlink14

    cdlink14 Master Guru

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    Ok, it's just happened again. Left my PC with facebook messenger up, and playing music on spotify whilst I cleaned my room. and randomly it just froze out to a BSOD, it's been just over 2 days since it last did it. And strangely this time I didn't get a "windows has recovered from a serious error" message upon windows start-up.

    Suggestions?
     
  8. automaticman

    automaticman Master Guru

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    was your browser open? I've gotten a few crashes from wierd flash adds that were HW accelerated
     
  9. cdlink14

    cdlink14 Master Guru

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    It is yes, is there anyway to disable HW acceleration on the browser?
     
  10. clawhamer

    clawhamer Ancient Guru

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    Yes there is. What browser are you using?

    Is your Flash Player up-to-date?
     

  11. cdlink14

    cdlink14 Master Guru

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    I usually use firefox as my main browser, and I used chrome for deviantart and google maps (It's a lot faster).

    And yes, it's the latest version.
     
  12. cdlink14

    cdlink14 Master Guru

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    Whilst it hasn't happened since the last time, I decided to reseat my video card and give it a good cleaning out incase that somehow contributed to it. I found a crapload of dust within my system, and even found that the front panel does actually come off, so I dedusted that. My temps seem a lot lower (by at least 10c) so hopefully this may of been it. I also updated my BIOS to the latest version incase that would aid the problem.
     
  13. cdlink14

    cdlink14 Master Guru

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    Apologies that I am posting so much here, but yet again this problem still plagues me.

    Solutions I've tried to date:
    - Updating Bios
    - Using several different drivers
    - Cleaning out PC and reseating everything
    - I've ram Prime 95 for 2 hours without a single problem showing, so I'd say that rules out the CPU
    - I've ran Furmark for 12 hours on extreme burn in which pretty much rules out the video card
    - I've ran a VRAM test twice both showing clean
    - Reinstalling windows

    None of the above seem to of worked. However I've noticed the BSOD's seem to be particularly well timed. They seem to happen every 2 days at around 7-10PM I can't think of anything that would trigger them though.

    Also will update shortly with any and all BSOD mini-dumps.
     
  14. automaticman

    automaticman Master Guru

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    were you able to disable HW acceleration in browsers and flash?

    In Firefox it's in Options -> Advanced -> General and uncheck "Use hardware acceleration when available" under browsing.

    For Flash, just find a flash add or video and right click it and select Settings. HW acceleration is the first page.

    Personally, I think it might be flash at fault. Is the browser always open when a crash happens? Is there usually a flash add or video up at the time?
     
  15. cdlink14

    cdlink14 Master Guru

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    I've overlooked it for now in favor of doing a decent memtest.

    I'm not sure how to read memtest, but do you think some of my ram is dead?
    [​IMG]
     

  16. cdlink14

    cdlink14 Master Guru

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    Ok just an update, I tried the 2 sticks separately both in the first slot of the motherboard, the first ran for 4 hours without a single hitch. The second ran for 7 minutes and gained 9 errors in that time.

    I've basically put the second stick as broke, whilst the first is working perfectly.

    Tonight I will run a test of the working stick in the second slot (overnight) to be sure it's working, then I'll test the broke stick in the second slot to be sure that is broken as well (and if it is, then it's obviously going to error a lot faster hence I'm saving time).

    I'll edit this post with the results tomorrow as I feel I may be annoying the admins/mods/users with my repetitive updates on this issue.
     
  17. automaticman

    automaticman Master Guru

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    Certainly looks like you're narrowing it down, are the RAM sticks RMAable? At least RAM has become on of the cheapest PC components lately.

    Personally, I'm not annoyed by posts that are genuine updates. I'm sure I'm not the only one who gets curious as to how these things turn out.
     
  18. cdlink14

    cdlink14 Master Guru

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    Ok so apparently the RAM wasn't the problem it's been running fine for a good 2 or so days, but then randomly BSOD whilst trying to load a game in steam... This problem is really pissing me off right now.

    How would I go about trying to increase the voltage to my RAM slots?

    Oh and for the record I didn't have a browser running, so flash/hardware acceleration doesn't seem to be the problem.
     
    Last edited: May 10, 2012
  19. automaticman

    automaticman Master Guru

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    The fix for my X48 board was increasing the voltage to my northbridge (PCH) where the PCIe controller was by just a small amount. I think I increased it by 2 steps on my gigabyte board. All of my crashes were under load/game type situations though.

    I really don't know much about that AMD chipset so I would read up a bit on that before poking anything.

    Either way, all of those voltage controls should be in your BIOS.
     
  20. cdlink14

    cdlink14 Master Guru

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    Ok, I left my system running a video ram test over night (12 hours) and after 35 passes it's showing fine. That + the 12 hour furmark test really seems to take the GPU out of the question for me.

    I did notice that my motherboard wants to set my RAM timings to higher values than the box states. So for now I've decided to let it use the auto-values, and clocked up the memory voltage from 1.65V to 1.7V.

    If the crash persists I'm going to try upping the voltage of the CPU an increment or two.

    Like said though this problem only seems to happen after a certain time, and mostly when Idle.

    The problem yesterday wasn't actually booting a game, it was trying to add a non-steam game to the steam list.

    When it does crash I can pretty much guarantee myself at least 24 hours where the PC won't crash, then anytime after that it'll seemingly happen at random.
     

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