Getting BSOD's on a new laptop

Hi there, hope someone can help.

I bought a new laptop (MSI GS70), and made the following changes...

Upgraded win 8 regular to win 8.1 pro
replaced 8gb RAM with 16GB DDR3 Crucial Ram 1.35v (2x8, transferred from previous laptop, approx 1 yr old)
replaced the secondary 1tb hdd with a 480gb sata drive
added an additional 256gb msata from my previous laptop
(the 128g4b msata with the OS remains unchanged)
Laptop runs with intel i7 4700hq & gtx 765m


I'm getting BSOD's - on the occasions I've been sat at the laptop at the time, it's said to search 'MEMORY_MANAGEMENT' - often happens when I'm away from the laptop.

I've uninstalled & reinstalled the killer drivers after someone mentioned this being a possible cause, which didn't help.

It 'only' happens when I'm browsing with chrome (which is 90%+ of the time, so won't give it too much weight) - but chrome itself often gets multiple crashed tabs ahead of a full system crash, so I may try uninstalling chrome for a few days (I've already tried a chrome re-install), but there has to be an underlying cause

I ran memtest86, which ran the 10 point 4 pass check (took about 4 hours). New to this piece of software, but read it should pass the first 4 tests 100%.

However, I only passed the first test (test 0) - all others failed with between 160 errors (test 1+2) and 53,000 errors (test 7)

It says the errors were all in the range 11725MB-11757MB which would suggest perhaps a faulty stick/channel.

Would this fairly small window or problematic ram be enough to be causing the crashes, or is it a bit of a red herring? (was such a git to change the ram - really wan't to avoid doing it!)

I've read that ram issues can sometimes be down to the bios mis-reading the ram and applying the wrong settings, eg voltage (esp notable as mine is quite low voltage ram), but couldn't see anywhere in the bios to amend the ram voltage settings, and I've checked CPU-Z which looks to show that the correct voltage of 1.35 is being applied to both modules.

The dumps & event logs don't appear to offer much. The driver failing is reported as ntoskrnl, which I've read could mean anything is causing it. In the logs, there is nothing for an hour+ before the crash, but the errors such as
The previous system shutdown at 8:17:11 PM on ‎5/‎3/‎2014 was unexpected.
The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly.

Any suggestions? thank you

 

This does actually sound like a hardware issue with the ram. The best bet for now is to put the original ram back in and see if issues persist.

 

download who crashed from my signature below and run it and post the results here.
as mentioned does sound like a faulty ram stick but who crashed will confirm this.

 

thanks both, here is the results from Who Crashed - in most cases MEMORY_MANAGEMENT was mentioned...

Annoying if it is the ram, a) because it's only 1 year old and was working fine, b) because it's a 1hr+ job on this laptop to replace! gah!

but, should still be under warranty at least!

 

No idea why you're even asking. Clearly your RAM is faulty, and needs to be replaced. End of story.

 

You're right - I shouldn't have asked for help when faced with a set of symptoms I've not before encountered.

 

yup, certainly looks like a faulty ram chip.
were they 4gb or 8gb chips. only way to find out which is faulty is take them all out and run each one at a time.

 

They're 2x8gb sticks.

They should be under warranty, so I'll swap them out the for one which came with the laptop for now whilst I return them.

On a slightly separate note, what's happened to ram prices in the last year? Only paid £50 for the 16GB just over a year ago - same kit looks to cost >£100! (guessing down to that fire last year, bot still - I'm shocked!)

Fingers crossed crucial will replace rather than credit note/refund!

 

yup the fire had a major part in the rise of prices. before the prices were dropping but once the main factory got destroyed they shot up again.

 

They were also directing manufacturing from ram to flash memory that has better profits. Again, less production leads to less competition and higher prices.

 

You didn't ask for help. You had already performed a diagnosis, and from that you knew exactly what the problem was. You asked for a suggestion, I gave you the only one that makes sense. Anything else is a waste of time.