BSOD on startup/reboot atikmdag

OK, I'll try to keep this short but informative. I had not have any problems lockups BSODs or otherwise until last night when I disabled crossfire to run WoW (runs much better with it disabled). When I re-enabled it from CCC I got my very fist BSOD. Now on reboot I get BSOD every time. It gives the atikmdag(.sys?) as the offending driver and once I get into windows safe mode it says the problem was BSOD Bccode 50.

I occasionally could get into windows fine, and when I do everything worth awesome, no problems at all. Games, benchmarks all work perfectly. When I try to reboot I get a BSOD at startup right before the loging screen shows. First boot this morning was perfect, and was the last time it booted on it's own. Now I get the error every time.

I suspected my video drivers got messed up somehow (been running 10.10 and have never changed them). I can't uninstall from safe mode as it says it can't accces uninstall. I can't get to normal mode anymore so I can't uninstall from there either.

I can think of 2 more possibilities. 1)I had just installed the intel turbo gadget (highly unlikely to be the culprit I think). 2)I already had deamon tools installed, but had never used it yet. I installed diablo 2 from my iso's last night and played all night long. I think I did that after the first BSOD though so I doubt this as a problem as well.

Anyone have any suggestions on how to fix? Googling these errors comes back with soo many hits over many years that I don't even know when to start. I tried system restore multiple times. Tried disabling everything from startup in msconfig. It always BSOD's at same spot. Just seems funny it did it right when I re-enabled crossfire. My next option is to reinstall, but I really don't want to since the system has been running so great and I had it exactly how I wanted it.

 

Well just an update. Various driver uninstalls, cleaning, reinstalls, and finally a full restore wiping the partition - nothing still BSOD's at same spot. I am convinced it is not a simple driver issue anymore and must be hardware related. The system runs and boots great without the ATI drivers, only exhibits problems once drivers are installed. I used both the ones I downloaded a week ago when I made my driver disk (10.10's) and also tried redownloading the same ones 10.10's. Never had any issues with gaming or otherwise so I see no reason to try another.

I may still try my original hard drive that shipped with the unit, and still has factory install. Then I will try replacing the RAM with the original. Maybe I'll check the GPU's to make sure they are seated good too, but I hadn't moved it for hours before the incident. I'm running the dell diagnostics now so I'll see if that leads me anywhere.

If it is indeed a hardware issue it is odd that hit happened right when I went to re-enable my crossfire. Prior to it I had no temp issues (been monitoring for days). I had respasted my CPU and GPUs a couple times to get the temps where I wanted them.

Any additional ideas are welcome. I keep hoping I'm overlooking something obvious.

*** Also I removed bios overclocking amd reflashed vbios to stock. Made no change to symptom.

 

I am sure you've got the new Dell VBIOS flashed to your 5870s. Not having that is all I can think of that causes this behavior.

 

Yeah I updated them when I first got the machine. I will double check it once the diagnostics finishes. I found in another thread where someone had to "manually" upgrade the drivers from devise manage vs using the install program. I guess I can try that too.

The short diagnostics found nothing, not sure if that is good or bad yet.

 

I double checked with GPUZ and I do have the 12.020 vbios on both cards. Only way I could get into windows normal mode after a driver install was to disable one of the cards in bios. Also I noticed the clocks are not 150/100 or whatever but the "stealth" 300/400. But I can't get it out of stealth mode, button does not work.

I ran the extended dell diagnostics overnight and it didn't find anything wrong (no surprise there).

I still wonder if it's a driver issue. I tried to update manually several times but between not being sure which card to update in device manage (tried top and bottom) and not sure which inf to pick (tried both ones that came with the newest catalyst drivers) plus in the driver window there are multiple ones (all labeled 5800 series) to pick from I just couldn't find a working mix after trying it a bunch of different ways.

I can either boot into safe mode (like now) or I have to delete the video drivers from device manager to get into windows (but with only VGA drivers at that point. Everything I try ends with a clean reboot and then BSOD the next time I try to go into windows.

It looks like I will have to call Dell and have a tech sent out. Guess that means I should replace my stock cpu, and all the thermal pads on my gpus, what a pain in the butt. If I ever get a working machine again I swear I will live with it how it comes. I have to wonder if all my messing with it messed something up somehow. It ran so great tweaked, right up until this issue, but if I'm going to have to undo everything just to call for support I may just live with higher temps and slightly less performance.

Sorry I just had to vent. This thing has really gotten to me.

 

Have you tried pulling out the secondary GPU card to see if the machine stabilizes?

 

Yes that is exaclty what I ended up doing. It worked great when I did that, played games great and benchmarked great. I stuck it back in in hopes the card just wasn't seated right and my problems came back. Actually got worse. Occasionally on boot up I got the dual blinking LED's (for bad graphics card) and also an AC adapter not Dell's (it is the one I got from them).

****
I just got off the phone with customer service and they have 2 cards being overnighted to the repair people and I should have both video cards relaced on wednesday. The call was quick and they didn't give me any run around. I was very impressed with the service, I was a bit worried with the heavy accent that I could not understand very well, but he did a good job.

Now I just hope that is all that is wrong. I really hope that the motherboard is not bad too....

Unless my temps are too high, and maybe even then, I will NOT be replacing the paste or pads this time! I really hope I didn't cause this issue. It was running so darn great (cool, and no issues what so ever) that I find it hard to believe I did, but who knows.

 

Ok, since I should have my system fully running tomorrow, I have a dumb question.

Does everyone else disable crossfire by either right clicking on the taskbar icon or using the CCC menu? Or is there some other/better way?

I am going to be so paranoid to do it now since that is when my problem started. But some games just runs better with it disabled.

 

You can use the tray icon, in CCC itself CrossFireX off, set Catalyst AI to Off, or handle things with RadeonPro for each game individually with some profiles that include the CCC settings and other tweaks you might find useful to turn on and adjust/play with the given settings.

And well some games are just not meant to work nicely on this Brand (ATI vs Nvidia) nor are they MultiGPU optimized, most of the times badly coded at all. Cheers

 

Just an update to my issue. The new video cards fixed my problem. I will never know if both cards were bad or not but I'm just glad they got me back in business. The tech that replaced them was knowledgable but had never worked on an m17x before. He also wondered if there was really any hardware issue or if it was all software. I was sure at least of one them was bad because of the issues I was having.

I did update the vbios so that they would be the same. One had a January vbios and the other was the updated. I did not need to do it since eveything was running fine but I just wanted to to avoid any weird issues that could cause in the future.

I noticed that my 3dmark2006 and vantage scores went up quite a bit. Almost as high as my fully overclocked scores with NO GPU overclock at all!

I have no plans to repaste as of now because these things are running cooler than my repasted ones were! I do want to overclock but I will try to wait a while and enjoy my system before I break it again