Getting Bluescreens of Death

Hi,

I have a Thinkpad X220 and I've been using it for the last 3 years. I occasionally have been getting BSOD (once a week). I would originally get it daily, but now that I turn off my computer everyday instead of just sleeping it, I only get a BSOD once a week.

I can't have a BSOD. I'm taking the bar exam in July and getting a BSOD during the bar will likely lead to failure.

Does anyone know what the problem might be? I reformatted the computer and it still has this problem? What are the causes? I'm sure I don't have any malware. I use malware bytes pro and MSE and all seems well.

Would getting a SSD (I currently have a 7200 rpm 320gb HD) address the issue probably?

 

If you have done a reinstall, it could possibly be the RAM.. Run a memory testing program like Memtest86 I think and tell me what the results are..

 

Or if there are multiple sticks (and they're easy to get to), pull one. If you continue to get BSODs, try the other/next stock.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

What does the error message on the BSOD say?

 

Hi Jarhead,

Thank you for all your help on this forum post and my other one. I appreciate it. I ran Memtest86 for 1.5 hours and it come up with lots of errors. 561 to be precise. I didn't realize how long it was going to take to run this test. Let me know if I should run it longer and I'll run it overnight. Here is the HTML report.



Summary

Report Date 2014-06-09 10:13:20
Generated by MemTest86 V5.1.0 Free (64-bit)
Result FAIL
System Information

EFI Specifications 2.00
CPU type Intel Core i5-2410M @ 2.30GHz
Measured CPU Speed 2293 MHz [Turbo: 2372.3 MHz]
# Logical Processors 4 (1 enabled for testing)
L1 Cache 64K (17479 MB/s)
L2 Cache 256K (14138 MB/s)
L3 Cache 3072K (11420 MB/s)
RAM 8085M (9635 MB/s)
DIMM #0 4GB DDR3 PC3-10600
Samsung / M471B5273DH0-CH9
9-9-9-24 / 666 MHz / 1.5V
DIMM #1 4GB DDR3 PC3-10600
Corsair / CMSO4GX3M1A1333C9
9-9-9-24 / 666 MHz / 1.5V
Result summary

Test Start time 2014-06-09 08:38:32
Elapsed Time 1:34:10
Memory Range Tested 0x0 - 21E600000 (8678MB)
CPU Selection Mode Single (CPU #0)
# Tests Passed 2/20 (10%)
Lowest Error Address 0x20103BEE8 (8208MB)
Highest Error Address 0x20303C888 (8240MB)
Bits in Error Mask 0400000004000000
Bits in Error 2
Max Contiguous Errors 2
Test # Tests Passed Errors
Test 0 [Address test, walking ones, 1 CPU] 2/2 (100%) 0
Test 1 [Address test, own address, 1 CPU] 0/2 (0%) 2
Test 2 [Address test, own address] 0/2 (0%) 2
Test 3 [Moving inversions, ones & zeroes] 0/2 (0%) 16
Test 4 [Moving inversions, 8-bit pattern] 0/2 (0%) 64
Test 5 [Moving inversions, random pattern] 0/2 (0%) 80
Test 6 [Block move, 64-byte blocks] 0/2 (0%) 106
Test 7 [Moving inversions, 32-bit pattern] 0/2 (0%) 256
Test 8 [Random number sequence] 0/2 (0%) 32
Test 9 [Modulo 20, ones & zeros] 0/1 (0%) 2
Test 10 [Bit fade test, 2 patterns, 1 CPU] 0/1 (0%) 1
Last 10 Errors
[Data Error] Test: 7, CPU: 0, Address: 20303BEAC, Expected: 00000800, Actual: 04000800
[Data Error] Test: 6, CPU: 0, Address: 20303C888, Expected: 84000000, Actual: 80000000
[Data Error] Test: 6, CPU: 0, Address: 20303C848, Expected: 44000000, Actual: 40000000
[Data Error] Test: 6, CPU: 0, Address: 20303C808, Expected: 24000000, Actual: 20000000
[Data Error] Test: 6, CPU: 0, Address: 20303C7C8, Expected: 14000000, Actual: 10000000
[Data Error] Test: 6, CPU: 0, Address: 20303C788, Expected: 0C000000, Actual: 08000000
[Data Error] Test: 6, CPU: 0, Address: 20303C768, Expected: FFFFFFFF, Actual: FBFFFFFF
[Data Error] Test: 6, CPU: 0, Address: 20303C708, Expected: 06000000, Actual: 02000000
[Data Error] Test: 6, CPU: 0, Address: 20303C6C8, Expected: 05000000, Actual: 01000000
[Data Error] Test: 6, CPU: 0, Address: 20303C688, Expected: 04800000, Actual: 00800000
Certification

This document certifies that the Tests described above have been carried out by a suitably qualified technician on the System described above.
Signed

___________________________
Put your company name here:
Suite 202, Level 2, 35 Buckingham Street, Surry Hills, 2010, Sydney, Australia
Phone + 61 2 9690 0444 Fax + 61 2 9690 0445
E-Mail: [email protected]






From this report, can you tell what problem I have and how I can fix it?

 

You don't need to run it longer. Any errors = bad ram.
Just like alexhawker said, remove 1 stick of ram and run memtest again, then test the other stick by itself too.

Most likely one of the sticks went bad. You do have 8Gb of ram though. You could just pull the bad one out and run with 4Gb until you get through your exams.

 

I'm spoiled. It'll be hard for me to move back to 4gigs of RAM after using 8 gigs for 3 years. What is the shelf life of RAM? Do you suggest I get a new set (new set = 2 sticks of 4 gigs)?

 

next time you get a blue screen run who crashed and post the results as its the best dump report out there Resplendence Software - WhoCrashed, automatic crash dump analyzer

 

And of course it's the Samsung RAM that goes bad. In my experience, their products always go bad for me.

And when the hell did the price of RAM spike? In 2012, I bought a stick of 4 gigs of RAM for 20 bucks. Now it's 40 bucks.

 

You might not want to just throw the "bad" RAM stick away. My Lenovo also has BSOD problems with certain memory modules. However, there is something funky with the laptop, because the RAM works perfectly fine in other computers, but gets memory errors only in my Lenovo laptop.

Prices of RAM didn't "spike," they bottomed out a couple of years ago. Before that they were way more expensive. At the end of 2010 I was buying 4GB sticks for about $90. Now the cheapest I can get 4GB RAM sticks is for $30.

 

I just installed the Samsung RAM into a different computer. Same errors come up. I think it's a bad stick no?

 

In that case, yes.

 

Yup definetly.. Get a new stick...

 

There's only reason you spend time reading a Blue Screen of Death ... Hopefully you'll get a chuckle out of it, or at the very least come to realize ...