BSOD BugCheckCode 278 - on third video card

Question

My entire pc has been crashing often. It started off quite slow (every few days) and increased to 7+ times per day. It originally only happened while playing World of Warcraft and increased to happening during other games.

I used to run 2 video cards with SLI - GTX 570s. I have RMA'd both cards. Currently only have 1 card in (haven't received second new one yet). Whenever I remove 1 card, I switch my nvidia control panel to turn SLI off. Basically, I'm on my THIRD video card. I installed this current one yesterday and within 4 hours of install, crashed again.

When it crashes, sometimes the screen is a bright green, sometimes a salmon colour, sometimes it's been grey, bright pink, sometimes that rainbow/snow look.

I have memory dumps turned on but they don't save. My main drive that holds windows is a Solid State Drive. I have all my video games on a second drive which is not an SSD and at some point I tried having memory dump save to the second drive and despite being set to my second drive, it wouldn't save. Since then, it won't save even to it's default location.

Since it won't save memory dumps, I can't use the WhoCrashed program, however, in the past before memory dumps stopped saving, it always came up as Nvidia drivers that crashed.

All drivers are up to date. I even tried letting things update beta drivers, that didn't make any difference. As far as I know, power supply is strong enough to handle 2 cards, never mind just 1.

Specs:

OS: Windows 7, 64-Bit

Ram: 16 GB Corsair Vengeance

PSU: Corsair AX 1200 - ATX Power Supply

Mother Board: P8Z68-V Pro Gen 3

CPU: i5-2500k Sandy Bridge

Error:

EventData

---

BugcheckCode 278

BugcheckParameter1 0xfffffa80118641a0

BugcheckParameter2 0xfffff88005f83f50

BugcheckParameter3 0xffffffffc000009a

BugcheckParameter4 0x4

SleepInProgress false

PowerButtonTimestamp 0

At this point I'm wondering what else can cause this issue. It's always the 278 code. Any research I did told me that it was a video card which was the reason I RMA'd both cards. EVGA seemed to agree. Could it be my motherboard? Could it be cables?

Really at a loss here.  I originally posted this a day or 2 ago on other tech support forums and haven't even seen a single response yet, so I'm trying here.  At this point, it's crashing often again.

Thanks, hoping someone can help!

Note:  DxDiag is too big even for it's own post :/

Answer 1

Hi Sidney,

Very glad to hear, good work! If and when you are comfortable and feel your issue has been solved, I'd recommend marking the post of mine that answered your question so this thread no longer shows up as requiring an answer.

Regards,

Patrick

Answer 2

WERS was set to manual!

Thanks, this should help a ton.  I feel like we're getting to the bottom of this ^_^

Will update with more once next crash happens.

Answer 3

If your computer is not generating DMP files, please do the following:

1. Start > type %systemroot% which should show the Windows folder, click on it. Once inside that folder, ensure there is a Minidump folder created. If not, CTRL-SHIFT-N to make a New Folder and name it Minidump.
2. Windows key + Pause key. This should bring up System. Click Advanced System Settings on the left > Advanced > Performance > Settings > Advanced > Ensure there's a check-mark for 'Automatically manage paging file size for all drives'.
3. Windows key + Pause key. This should bring up System. Click Advanced System Settings on the left > Advanced > Startup and Recovery > Settings > System Failure > ensure there is a check mark next to 'Write an event to the system log'.

Ensure Small Memory Dump is selected and ensure the path is %systemroot%\Minidump.

4. Double check that the WERS is ENABLED:

Start > Search > type services.msc > Under the name tab, find Windows Error Reporting Service > If the status of the service is not Started then right click it and select Start. Also ensure that under Startup Type it is set to Automatic rather than Manual. You can do this by right clicking it, selecting properties, and under General selecting startup type to 'Automatic', and then click Apply.

Regards,

Patrick

Answer 4

My memory dumps do not save, if that's where I'd be looking for them.  There's no memory dump and no mini dump, despite being enabled.

They used to work.  Then one day I moved the save location to my second drive instead of default location.  After that, they wouldn't save.  I put them back to default locations, still won't save.  Turned them off, put them back on, lots of reboots all around. still won't save.  I definitely have the space for so I don't know what else to look for.  I used http://support.microsoft.com/kb/130536/en-us to troubleshoot the issue and everything checks out fine, so I'm at a loss again.

Answer 5

My apologies, by 'generic drivers', I was implying not generic VGA, etc, drivers, but rather the latest Windows Update nVidia based drivers (which for the record are more than likely terribly out of date).

Update the latest drivers as I have said. Also, if you had verifier enabled, attach the dumps that were verifier enabled.

Regards,

Patrick