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I saw another user with a post similar, but no clarification, so I will lay out my situation.

Problem: BSODs and/or Graphics distortion upon resuming the display from shutting off. NOT sleep mode. NOT Hibernation. Just display turning off. there is no screen saver on the system.

To elaborate on the distortion, a prior user had a post that described it as: "a checkerboard pattern of small, colored, somewhat transparent pixelated regions on my screen, usually blue or yellow (but always the same color at once)"

Short story: Replaced ALL hardware except for chassis and PSU (Antec High Current Gamer 900W approx 5yrs old) and still receiving BSOD/lockups randomly with atikmdag.sys.

Details:

NEW System Specs:

  • ASUS P9X79 mainboard
  • Intel i7 3820 w/ zalman cooler
  • 16Gb Kingston HyperX Limited Edition
  • 2 - ASUS Radeon HD 7850 2gb
  • 3ware LSI 9750 RAID controller
  • 3ware runs: 2 - Corsair Force GT 240Gb SSD in RAID0
  • Intel RAID: 4 - 500Gb seagate 7200RPM HDDs in RAID0
  • PSU: Antec Gamer 900w High current PSU (5yrs, only remaining part with age on system)
  • Chassis: antec 900 with all fans (cooling is definitely not the problem, as the system stays cool and is not overclocked at all)

It is a quad display, 2 GPU setup, with a hardware raid card. I have replaced BOTH graphics cards with new cards, and have taken the raid card out of the setup and still experience this problem.

Diagnostic

So far, after each part I replaced, I would format/reinstall windows 8 with fresh drivers. I would install CCC first, and let it go. After I would get failures, I would uninstall CCC and run driver only. That would also eventually produce errors. I would then uninstall ATI driver completely, and run the MS driver. While I never saw the 'checkerboard' issue with the MS driver, other issues such as not resuming the display at all, would still persist.

I really want to point the finger at drivers for this, but at the same time, I can use the exact same hardware(except PSU) and drivers in a different chassis, and it works flawlessly for weeks on end with no problems at all.

Also, you would think failing GPU is the problem, but I have ran single card, and dual card, with new and existing cards, with the same problem. I have 5 cards to test with, and any combo of all 5 cards produces this failure.

I have replaced all ram sticks with 2 different sets of 16Gb modules, and ran memtest on them with no failures. Same results.

I even went as far as replacing my SSD array with 2 new 120Gb SSDs just to test, on the INTEL controller with my 3ware card pulled out completely....

Same. results.

Edit - dump files:

On Sat 3/1/2014 7:19:29 AM GMT your computer crashed crash dump file:

C:\Windows\Minidump\030114-42078-01.dmp

This was probably caused by the following module: atikmdag.sys (atikmdag+0x277CE)
Bugcheck code:0xA0000001(0x5,0x0,0x0, 0x0)
Error: CUSTOM_ERROR
file path:C:\Windows\system32\drivers\atikmdag.sys
product: ATI Radeon Family
company: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. description: ATI Radeon Kernel Mode Driver
A third party driver was identified as the probable root cause of this system error. It is suggested you look for an update for the following driver: atikmdag.sys (ATI Radeon Kernel Mode Driver,Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.).
Google query: Advanced Micro Devices,Inc. CUSTOM_ERROR

The other dump that I have seen is:

This was probably caused by the following module: atikmpag.sys (atikmpag+0xBD88)
Bugcheck code: 0x116 (0xFFFFFA80113ED4D0, 0xFFFFF880042F4D88, 0x0, 0xD)
Error: VIDEO_TDR_ERROR
file path: C:\Windows\system32\drivers\atikmpag.sys
product: AMD driver
company: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
description: AMD multi-vendor Miniport Driver
Bug check description: This indicates that an attempt to reset the display driver and recover from a timeout failed.
A third party driver was identified as the probable root cause of this system error. It is suggested you look for an update for the following driver: atikmpag.sys (AMD multi-vendor Miniport Driver, Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.).
Google query: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. VIDEO_TDR_ERROR

Conclusion:

Is it possible, that my PSU is tired from being hit hard for years, and is causing this? It has had at least 2GPUs and 4 HDDs since day 1.

I tried posting a picture to help, but there are lots of limits on what can be posted on a new acct, so I am also limited as to what I can provide for now...

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  • Please format your information so its easier to read
    – Ramhound
    Commented Mar 1, 2014 at 17:05
  • It didn't bullet it how I wanted, specs should be better now..
    – the_ds
    Commented Mar 1, 2014 at 17:08
  • Have you got any dump files in the C:\Windows\Minidump folder or a C:\Windows\MEMORY.DMP file which could be analyzed? I guess the PSU isn't always able to provide enough power to the graphic cards.
    – and31415
    Commented Mar 1, 2014 at 17:50
  • I edited the post to include the dump at the end of diagnostic.
    – the_ds
    Commented Mar 1, 2014 at 18:22
  • What you have done so far seems to indicate this 5 year old PSU might be having problems. Sadly unless you are willing to try a entirely PSU in the same case we can't rule it out.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Mar 1, 2014 at 18:26

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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I've also encountered similar problems. On my desktop PC my ATI video drivers where set to have the "Morphological Filtering" option enabled. Setting it to off resolved the BSOD's. You can find this option in CCC. Also, on my laptop, the problem was flash. Whenever I played something on Youtube while playing games (at the same time), after a while my computer would freeze and stop.

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3
  • In my CCC, it appears to be turned off by default. Also I use chrome, so flash is built in and it hasn't ever caused a problem in any log yet. Thanks for the response though, I appreciate the possible solution.
    – the_ds
    Commented Mar 2, 2014 at 13:34
  • Did you try to update your motherboard and video card BIOS?
    – celalalt
    Commented Mar 8, 2014 at 5:06
  • Yes, that is standard procedure when experiencing driver related BSODs. thank you for the answer though. Since installing the beta driver, surprisingly, there haven't been any issues. I'm not sure why this would be the case considering the exact hardware I had in this system is running in another system without beta drivers.. problem free... but I'm not arguing. So far so good. I haven't crashed since 3/1/2014 when I installed them.
    – the_ds
    Commented Mar 10, 2014 at 12:22
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Unfortunately, the only real "solution" to my particular problem was to completely turn off the setting that shuts off my displays. I now manually power them off with their respective power buttons. I haven't had a single bluescreen since I have set this option. I had experienced a lockup and BSOD after I thought the beta drivers had fixed my issue.

It is far from ideal, but is the only way that my particular setup has been able to achieve an error free boot for more than a few weeks at a time. This is most definitely driver related, but I doubt I'll see a fix before I upgrade GPUs to a new chipset just to get away from this dreaded issue.

Also, as a side 'issue' I also experienced. I had a monitor that was causing my displays to flicker completely black and hang up from time to time when clicking the w8 start button(most noticable time it happens). Sometimes switching between applications would generate a similar error, but I could usually get reproduce it by clicking start and at a completely random time. It would flicker black all of the displays, and then resume. Very similar to the TDR timeout people see.

THIS was caused by a 20" HP monitor.... The monitor isn't failing, as it is now hooked up to a different system and isn't causing any problems at all. it simply did not like being placed in the setup that it was in. I have replaced it with another HP monitor from an older generation and have had no problems since.

I wish that after 8 years (vista x64 kernel and on) that we could get a decent graphics driver... :(

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