BSODs on Win8

[Rakk]

Hi guys,

Occassionally I seem to be getting BSODs on Win8.

<Now imagine the 2001 Space Odyssey theme music at this point - I realise some people will be too young to really know this film>
It's all Hals fault!

Anyways, BlueScreenView (a small application for looking at blue screen dumps) tells me that each time its cause by hal.dll (the Hardware Abstraction Layer DLL)
Over the last 1 and a half months this has happened twice (so its not that often, but still) - it also happened about a year ago.
The stop code is always 0x00000124 which as far as I can tell just means 'WHEA Uncorrectable Error' which doesn't really help.

So should I be worried, the one at the end of June this year I kinda ignored cos it was the first in just under a year, but another one now makes me a bit more paranoid.
And any clues what I can do about this, or even find out what it is - or whether to ignore it unless it does happen more

Noting that as far as I can remember I had Chrome, Skype, Steam, Everquest2 running at the time (and possibly a few other bits and pieces) - when it BSOd'd this morning I was actually in the kitchen at the time so wasn't particularly stressing anything. Also my graphics drivers are upto date (Geforce Experience bugs me every time there are new drivers available)

 

[SpyderTracks]

Hi guys,

Occassionally I seem to be getting BSODs on Win8.

<Now imagine the 2001 Space Odyssey theme music at this point - I realise some people will be too young to really know this film>
It's all Hals fault!

Anyways, BlueScreenView (a small application for looking at blue screen dumps) tells me that each time its cause by hal.dll (the Hardware Abstraction Layer DLL)
Over the last 1 and a half months this has happened twice (so its not that often, but still) - it also happened about a year ago.
The stop code is always 0x00000124 which as far as I can tell just means 'WHEA Uncorrectable Error' which doesn't really help.

So should I be worried, the one at the end of June this year I kinda ignored cos it was the first in just under a year, but another one now makes me a bit more paranoid.
And any clues what I can do about this, or even find out what it is - or whether to ignore it unless it does happen more

Noting that as far as I can remember I had Chrome, Skype, Steam, Everquest2 running at the time (and possibly a few other bits and pieces) - when it BSOd'd this morning I was actually in the kitchen at the time so wasn't particularly stressing anything. Also my graphics drivers are upto date (Geforce Experience bugs me every time there are new drivers available)

Found this guide here, may be worth trying if you're worried, but if it's only happening the odd time it's going to be difficult to diagnose yet...

A "stop 0x124" is fundamentally different to many other types of bluescreens because it stems from a hardware complaint. Stop 0x124 minidumps contain very little practical information, and it is therefore necessary to approach the problem as a case of hardware in an unknown state of distress.


Generic "Stop 0x124" Troubleshooting Strategy:
1) Ensure that none of the hardware components are overclocked. Hardware that is driven beyond its design specifications - by overclocking - can malfunction in unpredictable ways.

2) Ensure that the machine is adequately cooled. If there is any doubt, open up the side of the PC case (be mindful of any relevant warranty conditions!) and point a mains fan squarely at the motherboard. That will rule out most (lack of) cooling issues.

3) Update all hardware-related drivers: video, sound, RAID (if any), NIC... anything that interacts with a piece of hardware. It is good practice to run the latest drivers anyway.

4) Update the motherboard BIOS according to the manufacturer's instructions. Their website should provide detailed instructions as to the brand and model-specific procedure.

5) Rarely, bugs in the OS may cause "false positive" 0x124 events where the hardware wasn't complaining but Windows thought otherwise (because of the bug). At the time of writing, Windows 7 is not known to suffer from any such defects, but it is nevertheless important to always keep Windows itself updated.

6) Attempt to (stress) test those hardware components which can be put through their paces artificially. The most obvious examples are the RAM and HDD(s). For the RAM, use the in-built memory diagnostics (run MDSCHED) or the 3rd-party memtest86 utility to run many hours worth of testing. For hard drives, check whether CHKDSK /R finds any problems on the drive(s), notably "bad sectors". Unreliable RAM, in particular, is deadly as far as software is concerned, and anything other than a 100% clear memory test result is cause for concern. Unfortunately, even a 100% clear result from the diagnostics utilities does not guarantee that the RAM is free from defects - only that none were encountered during the test passes.

7) As the last of the non-invasive troubleshooting steps, perform a "vanilla" reinstallation of Windows: just the OS itself without any additional applications, games, utilities, updates, or new drivers - NOTHING AT ALL that is not sourced from the Windows 7 disc. Should that fail to mitigate the 0x124 problem, jump to the next steps. Otherwise, if you run the "vanilla" installation long enough to convince yourself that not a single 0x124 crash has occurred, start installing updates and applications slowly, always pausing between successive additions long enough to get a feel for whether the machine is still free from 0x124 crashes. Should the crashing resume, obviously the very last software addition(s) may be somehow linked to the root cause.
If stop 0x124 errors persist despite the steps above, and the harware is under warranty, consider returning it and requesting a replacement which does not suffer periodic MCE events. Be aware that attempting the subsequent harware troubleshooting steps may, in some cases, void your warranty:
8) Clean and carefully remove any dust from the inside of the machine. Reseat all connectors and memory modules. Use a can of compressed air to clean out the RAM DIMM sockets as much as possible.

9) If all else fails, start removing items of hardware one-by-one in the hope that the culprit is something non-essential which can be removed. Obviously, this type of testing is a lot easier if you've got access to equivalent components in order to perform swaps.

Should you find yourself in the situation of having performed all of the steps above without a resolution of the symptom, unfortunately the most likely reason is because the error message is literally correct - something is fundamentally wrong with the machine's hardware.

 

[Rakk]

Thanks Spyder.
And in response
1: the only overclocking is the CPU's turbo boost which it sorts out, I have not overclocked anything myself
2: cooling appears to be fine
3: video drivers always upto date, sound is on the motherboard, dont have RAID
4: generally motherboard BIOS shouldn't need updating, I'm not touching mine - I'm sure I'd break it if i did
5: I let Windows do its updates
6,7,8 and 9: unfortunately this only happens very intermittently so doing most of these would'nt rule out the problem anyways since I've no idea when it's going to happen , might run a memory test though just to rule stuff out.

Guess I'll just have to keep an eye out and hope it doesn't happen again (or at least for a long time)

 

[mishra]

I would say in most cases in order to investigate BSODs, you need to check Event Viewer (both Application and System log) first. It takes like 2 mins and very often will tell you what and why crashed. Then you can research further based on that. If Event Viewer not showing anything then BSOD dump viewer is a good tool, but I struggle reading what M$ is telling me... so I always start with Event Viewer first...

 

[Rakk]

Event viewer hasn't been very useful, only thing it says is 'The previous system shutdown at 10:20:51 on ‎10/‎08/‎2014 was unexpected.', well gee thanks Event Viewer, you were really helpful , nothing actually recorded at 10:20:50ish

 

[mishra]

No logs at all mean nothing there was to report (as all is working fine), bit odd. Usually there is something there if you get BSODs
If your PC would just cut out on power I would suspect faulty PSU.. but it's a blue screen stop which stays on..

... maybe try Prime95 for a while, it's a good way to check stability of the system.

Also, you suggested checking RAM, did you do that? All fine there?

 

[Rakk]

Also, you suggested checking RAM, did you do that? All fine there?

Oops, I knew I was supposed to be doing something <shows how good my memory is >
I'll go find a memory testing thing

 

[Rakk]

And as a belated update

... maybe try Prime95 for a while, it's a good way to check stability of the system.

Tried it for about an hour - then I wanted to use my PC for gaming at that point so I stopped it - no warnings, no errors.

Also, you suggested checking RAM, did you do that? All fine there?

Tried MDSCHED (the Windows memory checker) - and it showed no problems.

 

[mishra]

It's a difficult one... intermittent issues are the worst to diagnose especially since there are no logs in your case. I've looked into that stop number and it's just usual mambo jumbo about various things but no clear solution. It all depends how often it happen? If it happen rarely, maybe leave it as is. You can always reinstall Windows in attempt to rectify this. Meanwhile you can run CCcleaner and check your registry for issues?

It could still be a faulty PSU... as these usually not leave any logs at all! But I wouldn't just go out and splash some cash on a new one as it's a long shot really.
Now, if you find a way to replicate the issue, then it should be easy to find out what's causing it.

Also when you ran Prime95 did you go with "Small FFT's", "In-place large FFTs" or "Blend" ?

A great way to stress test PSU would be to run Prime95 (In-place large FFTs) + Heaven (or Furmark) benchmark running at same time. Just make sure you monitor your temps during that. That should draw as much power from your PSU as possible.