Games stop responding and random BSODs. Have tried just about everything

Hello all,
So I've had a list of current problems that have been driving me up the wall lately. I have a sager np9150 with the following specs

gtx 680m
core i7 3630qm
16gb ram @ 1600mhz
windows 7 64-bit home edition
750gb mechanical drive
bigfoot wireless N


So as some of you may be aware, i've cycled through various problems over the past year, which most are short lived. Most have consisted of BSOD errors and driver issues.
After having WoW crash on me countless times I decided that the newer drivers from nvidia were complete garbage and went back to 306.02 . I havent had any problems whatsoever in WoW with that driver, however I've been trying to play battlefield 3 for the past couple days and the game will stay up for anywhere from 1 minute to 20 mins before the game stops responding. This also just happened in a clean install of Crysis 2. The game stopped responding during the opening cinematic. The other issue is if i leave my computer alone for a little while ( lets say 20 mins ) i've come back to BSODs that failed to make minidump files. I've tried running disk defrag but it has resulted in 2 BSODs before finishing. I've cleaned out my vents almost weekly, tried all sorts of different drivers, ran CHKDSK in command prompt. and now im at a loss. I would love some insight. And to anyone who can just help me play games again, i would gladly buy you a virtual drink.

 

long shot but if it is a hard drive problem the hard disc sentinel will find it where hd tune might miss it.

Download Hard Disk Sentinel

strange you are gettin bsod with no dump report though.the only time thids happened to me was when
my 9800gt gpu died as i was loading the nbr server for crysis 2

also which hard drive have you got?

 

I was leaning towards hard drive myself.. Especially since defrag wont work without the bsod. It froze when saying " initializing for minidump" or something of that nature...I waited a good 10 minutes. I took pictures of the BSODs though if you're interested. Also, i have the 750gb seagate that xoticPC provided with the special edition 9150. Not sure which exact model.

edit: Summary of hd sentinel told me this :

"The drive found 8 bad sectors during its self test.
There are 8 weak sectors found on the disk surface. They may be remapped any time in the later use of the disk.
At this point, warranty replacement of the disk is not yet possible, only if the health drops further.
It is recommended to examine the log of the disk regularly. All new problems found will be logged there.
"

 

8 bad sectors and its still running, wow lucky you.
i had 2 bad sectors which caused all hell of problems including bsod,black screens,software crashes,os crashes.
me western digital was covered by manufacturer warranty of 5 years.
ive never seen the warranty replacement is not yet possible though but i think its worth contacting xotic for advice especially if you have important docs on your hard drive as all it will take is 1 sector to totally go bad and it will screw up your whole hard drive.

im not sure if re mapping will wipe things of your drive so before trying this watch out for warning boxes. also it might need the pro/paid for version to do this.

 

I'm pondering on just buying a new hard drive. As frustrating as it would be to setup everything all over, I like the feeling of a fresh start. I just played battlefield 3 single player for about 10 minutes before i get the same issue. after doing some research on "apphang b1" i realized not a lot of people have a straight answer. But just in case, theres this:

Description:
A problem caused this program to stop interacting with Windows.

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: AppHangB1
Application Name: bf3.exe
Application Version: 1.6.0.0
Application Timestamp: 511c9356
Hang Signature: 82aa
Hang Type: 6144
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.768.3
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Hang Signature 1: 82aaca5e59a4ef6f978715c630615f9d
Additional Hang Signature 2: d063
Additional Hang Signature 3: d06371f2372496318cad446d47cfc9a3
Additional Hang Signature 4: 82aa
Additional Hang Signature 5: 82aaca5e59a4ef6f978715c630615f9d
Additional Hang Signature 6: d063
Additional Hang Signature 7: d06371f2372496318cad446d47cfc9a3

Read our privacy statement online:
Windows 7 Privacy Statement - Microsoft Windows

If the online privacy statement is not available, please read our privacy statement offline:
C:\Windows\system32\en-US\erofflps.txt

 

*bump*

Just a bit of an update on whats going on: I've been having random BSOD's still. The other night i was building a desktop for a buddy and my laptop was just sitting on his table with nothing open rather than google chrome ( just so i could use it for drivers for his new system). Well before I could even use it for anything, my laptop BSOD'd just sitting there idle with a "KERNEL_INLINE_DATA_ERROR" and stop code 0x07a.
No mini dump could be created; It just said that it failed to create one. So I'm very convinced that my hard drive is getting worse. It seems to blue screen when I leave it idle for a good while ( 20 mins or so ). I suspect that its having errors when trying to go into power saver mode, or hibernation but I'm not entirely sure. I'm getting a new drive this weekend when my friend pays me for the build so I'm praying that will create some kind of solution. I have memtest running right now at home, and will check it later when I get outta class. Would changing the system page file to max ( and by max, i mean 16gb , which is how much RAM I have. ) create issues? Windows told me it was recommended but i'm skeptical. I don't know too much about the paging file honestly, just been searching the web for possible solutions. One last weird thing, I installed Crysis 2 to test my system out with a different high end game, and it crashed in the opening cinematic. Not a blue screen, just a .exe not responding error. The weirder part is that After restarting my computer the following day, crysis 2 was uninstalled. In fact a lot of things have been randomly deleted or uninstalled such as Adblock plus for chrome. It just kind of goes away and I cant find it in my extentions for chome. Same for the fingerprint reader for logging into websites. Anybody have any comments on these odd phenomenons?

 

Do you have an optical drive? Try booting from a Linux CD/DVD. Then to be sure, run without the HDD. I think your ram maybe suspect. RAM issues can cause problems with all the things that pass through them. So try swapping ram around, one stick at a time. Linux can also be used to test ram and the hard drive, and defrag it, etc. I usually keep a dual boot with Linux just for cases like this.

 

Yes I have an optical drive. I know nothing about Linux. I know there are many different versions of it, but I dont know anything about booting from it. Also, I would LOVE to take the RAM but 2 of the screws that hold the keyboard down are stripped at the head. They are really jacked up at this point, so getting the RAM out has to wait until I can figure out how to get them out...I know, silly, but that's my current situation with taking out RAM. First things first though, could you explain what you mean about booting from linux, and WITHOUT the HDD? I'm a noob in that category.

 

Responded to PM with links on how to use Ubuntu and how to use it to troubleshoot ram and HDD.

As for your memory, try putting a wide rubber band over the screw, then put the screw driver through the rubberband to the screw. Press down while turning. You can also try getting the screws started with needlenose plyers.