Hi folks,
Lately I've been getting crashes and weird hang-ups. It all started with BSOD's referencing dxgmms1.sys, SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION and SYSTEM_THREAD something, 0x3B, 0x1E, 0x7E.. all graphics related. Once it even BSOD'd right as I was uninstalling the graphics drivers.
I removed the GPU's (stable and well-cooled) overclock, and lo and behold, the system started to freeze seconds to minutes after I logged onto Windows. Just a hard lock-up with looping sound. The same thing happened on a brand-new install of Win 7 moments after logging on by the way, so it's definitely hardware related. Leaving the graphics card disabled and using software mode seemed to have fixed that for now.
And once, last night, I got a DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL tcpip.sys 0xD1 BSOD. Just letting me know it ain't over yet.
At first I was going to replace the graphics card, but after the last one I'm thinking this is a mainboard failure. Just days prior to all this I've been running demanding games for hours without crashing. It usually happened when I was watching youtube videos. Memtest ran fine, and the fact that it's not breaking down during peak times leads me to believe the PSU is fine as well.
CAN a failing graphics card, if it's still being used, create a tcpip.sys error? I doubt it, but I had to ask.