Question What's wrong with my computer?

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mikusingularity
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Let's say I'm playing something.

Then suddenly, and without warning, the screen becomes completely frozen. If the speakers are turned on, there may be an irritating buzzing sound (edit: only if I am playing music, such as a YouTube video, in the background. The sound will seem to stutter). The entire screen glitches up (the appearance is like multiple horizontal bands of noise or static). Then, there is a blue screen of death.

Has this happened to anyone else? Why is this happening?

There have been several instances of this happening a few months ago whenever I played KSP 0.90 (sometimes, it has happened with Orbiter d3d9 client). I tried installing new drivers for my integrated graphics card, which seemed to stop the problem. But recently, it's been happening again with KSP 1.0.
 
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Mojave

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I know this may be a completely different instance, but I have had this problem before I upgraded my RAM. I'd play Orbiter and KSP and would run programs in the background eventually running out of memory.

At that point, the computer did what you said. Bright white screen, choppy audio, and a glitchy appearance. This all lead to a BSOD.

So how much RAM do you have? Do you run programs alongside Orbiter/KSP? How much is being used while you are playing?
 

IronRain

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Let's say I'm playing something.

Then suddenly, and without warning, the screen becomes completely frozen. If the speakers are turned on, there may be an irritating buzzing sound. Then, the entire screen glitches up (the appearance is like multiple horizontal bands of noise or static). Then, there is a blue screen of death.

Has this happened to anyone else? Why is this happening?

There have been several instances of this happening a few months ago whenever I played KSP 0.90 (sometimes, it has happened with Orbiter d3d9 client). I tried installing new drivers for my integrated graphics card, which seemed to stop the problem. But recently, it's been happening again with KSP 1.0.

What information does the BSOD gives you? Is it possible to make a photo of with your phone for example?

Could be quite some things.
 

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So how much RAM do you have? Do you run programs alongside Orbiter/KSP? How much is being used while you are playing?
I have 8 GB of RAM. I only run Firefox at the same time. Looking at Task Manager, running Firefox and KSP at the same time does not completely use it up (I think it was about 3-4 GB or something).

What information does the BSOD gives you? Is it possible to make a photo of with your phone for example?

Could be quite some things.
Sometimes, I just turn off the surge protector before the blue screen happens (because it is just frozen for who knows how long). But I took one picture in February with my tablet:

hrQdUjo.jpg
 
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Artlav

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PC or laptop?

GPU is about to die, something is overheating, or a bad power supply (capacitors vented).
These are the things i tracked similar problems down to.

---------- Post added at 18:55 ---------- Previous post was at 18:53 ----------

But I took one picture in February with my tablet:
Ah.
Google "stop 0x00000101", it might give you some ideas.
What i could find is that there is a bug in DirectX that can cause it.
 

Hielor

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Overheating GPU (CPU in this case, if it's integrated) or bad/failing PSU.

Also, there's no reason to use an integrated GPU in a PC...get a real card!
 

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Yeah, but I don't want to accidentally break my computer when messing around with its innards. Also, what if the ports are incompatible?

And there's a lot of dust in there, too.
 

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Overheating GPU (CPU in this case, if it's integrated)

CPU overheating usually just leads to a shutdown, not to a bluescreen. Not saying it's impossible, but from the symptoms I would wager on something else first.

a stop 0x00000101 is very general and can have a multitude of causes. Posting the dump might help to pinpoint the source.

In general, bluescreens are most common for driver or hardware issues, most commonly RAM or HD, but other causes are possible. What is very suspicious is that it only occurs when you're playing a game, which would definitely make a GPU issue most likely.

And there's a lot of dust in there, too.

Cleaning up and seeing if the airflow of the GPU fan is still ok would seem like a reasonable first step.
Also, since installing new drivers worked temporarily, that's where I would check first. Have any newer drivers come out in the meantime? If yes, try them.
 

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Where can I find the dump log for a bluescreen?

There's a checking program for the AMD drivers, it said that all the drivers were already up-to-date.
 

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jedidia

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Check your driver version and in control panel->system->device manager->display adadapters->AMD Radeon HD 6410D->rightclick->properties->driver.

Then google for drivers for that card and see if there's something newer out. Probably not, but those tools can give false positives for various reasons.
 

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I suffered a similar set of symptoms when I first installed my desktop (I had previously been using only my laptop). After some diagnosis and component swapping it was found to be a faulty graphics card. Problem solved on replacement.

Cheers

Oh. Vacuum out your unit.
 

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It turns out that it was an overheating problem. A clean-up of the dust inside the computer (especially the fans) seems to have solved it.
 
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Dantassii

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I had a similar problem with my computer 2 computer's ago. The video card died on it. Replaced that, and all was well.. for about 2 months.. then the motherboard lost a few capacitors (sounded like popcorn) and that was all she wrote.

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