Dell Studio 540 Full Tower Crashes with 0x124 Blue Screen - Possible Overheating

With the Video card errors, all of your problems may be video card related (and it could be overheating).   Other than cleaning out the "dust bunnies" inside the PC I wouldn't do anything until you get the new Video Card (and make sure your power supply is adequate for the new video card).

The CPU cooling fan is a Dell proprietary, if a non-Dell is used you will always get a fan failure notice at power on.  The fan in OEM power supplies are "adequate" for most uses but if the PC is in a relatively warm area it may not be enough at times.  The best cure for the power supply is to replace it with a new Standard ATX style that is rated with higher power and a bigger fan.  And, if you eventually opt for a new power supply, the best option is one of the "modular" type power supplies as there will be many unused power leads and connectors on a standard ATX power supply that you must "cram" inside the case and they can also potentially restrict air flow.  With a modular type power supply you only connect the needed power cables thus eliminating most of the extra cable clutter.

I replaced the stock Dell power supply in my Dimension E510 and the new power supply ran cooler and the fan was much quieter than the stock power supply fan.  The stock Dell was a 305 watt power supply and I replaced it with a 550 watt as I was upgrading and adding components.

Thanks Fireberd. Yes, I think I saw your post while researching. If you don't mind me asking, which power supply did you get and how much did it cost you? I'm sort of thinking of doing that anyway even though I didn't get a demanding video card. The only thing "demanding" I'm doing is using Adobe products sometimes, but the card I got is better than the stock one anyway, I think...which worked fine...and so it should work fine too.

You may have a point with the graphics card and overheating. I cleaned out the dust bunnies a little while ago while re-seating the old graphics card and seeing if that helped (it didn't). So that part should be OK at the moment.

I will see how things go with the new card, which I receive tomorrow, and post back in a while.

Again, thanks for taking the time to reply.

Video card came today...but I had bought one with the wrong connector! What a fail! But I've ordered one with the right one now...for what it's worth, it was my first time buying a video card (which is weird given how long I've been using computers...). So anyway, will take a little longer for me to reply...

Take 2...installed my Radeon HD 5450 today. It's obviously much too soon to know if this will resolve my problems. If I run into any, I'll let you guys know. So far, everything was pretty smooth...no driver issues...etc. My CPU seems to be running a bit cooler, but we'll see how that goes...it's not like the heat-related crashes were really happening much anyway except in rather hot weather, so maybe it'll be fine now.

I get the feeling that I'm at least free of the random freeze-and-resets of the graphics card (it did it nearly immediately out of the box when I first got the computer, so I figure it'd do it soon here too). That's a start.

Seems like my Windows Index scores haven't changed much. I wonder why I only get a 3.5 for desktop graphics but a 5.7 for "game graphics" (which apparently also applies to programs like Photoshop)...I think my laptop gets better "desktop graphics" scores. Ah well...who knows.

Anyway, will see how things develop and in any case will aim to report back in a week if all is well.

OK, I upgraded the power supply as well to a Cooler Master Silent Pro 600W. Too early to say if this will fix my crashes or not, but my gut feeling is that it will. The video card I got recommended 400W and the stock one was less than that. Chances are that it would reset in the occasional instance that video card power usage spiked or something. It definitely seemed heat and not power related because my temps have been significantly better since changing the video card.

It also started happening more often after changing the card, which only supports the cause having been the power supply.

I think it's fixed, but I'll see how it goes over the next week or so and then post back either way.

So I got a couple crashes today and was like whaaaaat. Even with the new power supply? Of course, I wasn't clueless as to the cause; the temps were still pretty high. I figured there had to be a reason for that. Maybe a fan wasn't working? After all, SpeedFan is reporting 3 fans but only 2 of them reported a speed, so maybe I thought I had hooked up the new power supply wrong?

So I took the side off the case while it was running and shined in a flashlight to see what the deal was. All 3 fans were spinning, and when I held in my hand - carefully, of course - I didn't feel any hot air around the fans. So what's the deal, I thought? If it was really super hot in there, I'd feel it!

And then I saw it - through the CPU fan, the heatsink was literally PADDED with dust. I'm talking like a coat of dust. How I hadn't seen it sooner escaped me. So anyway, I pulled it out, separated the fan and heatsink, and gave them a good wiping with a microfiber cloth. I also adjusted all the power supply and data cables a bit to make sure they weren't blocking anything (but they hadn't been before). Put everything back in and powered 'er back on.

OMG!!! My temps are now all under 40. This means that at worst they should only go to mid-40s or low 50s. In short, so far I conclude that...

• my crashes were still heat-related
• I didn't need a new power supply (but I'm glad I got it because I've got a 5-year old computer acting as a server, and when the power supply goes on that, I can pop in my old Studio power supply)
• I didn't strictly need a new video card, but really I did because of that video card resetting issue, which hasn't happened again since

I'd read about people cleaning out dust...looks like I'm part of that crowd now.

I'm still skeptical, though. Maybe it's just because I've fought this problem so much that I feel like it'll never go away. But at least now if it doesn't, I can say pretty much for sure that it's not heat-related...and then I guess I'll run diagnostics again.

Will post back either way. Fingers crossed.

Still crashing!!! I don't get it! Is it because I live in L.A.? I opened it up again, and the fans are all still working...heat sink is not dusty again...CPU fan is blowing TOWARDS heatsink as I read it should...is there just not enough cooling happening? The cables aren't blocking any fans...they're just tucked in the side against the back of the optical drives...the mobo connector is resting next to the hard drive and clipped in with one of the clips that was on the case...airflow should be ok....so I don't get what the issue isssss...it DOES seem to be heat because I saw my CPU temps sneaking up to 50+ again while working...but they go down a lot quicker and float lower...so something seems to be causing a spike in CPU temperature, and I guess this triggers the error.

Maybe I'm totally off and barking up the wrong tree...I dunno...will do some more research....this forum seems kinda dead (or I'm doing something wrong in terms of making my posts answerable...)...so I'll perhaps ping another one if the problem persists.

But you know, my laptop CPU temps sometimes get 50+ but it doesn't crash...I wonder why...maybe it isn't only heat-related...could I have a bad CPU? How would I know?

Thanks.

OK, I think I ruled out CPU heat at least. I ran Prime95 for a few minutes and the temps were well in the 70s. The fans on my quiet Studio were SCREAMING. It did not crash. I think that if it was crashing due to the heat tripping off something in the CPU, said thing would have been most certainly tripped off.

Not totally ruling out heat as the cause, but I think it might be something more finnicky. I know it has happened a couple times when using Skype and iTunes...mid-audio play...I wonder if it's audio-related? I'm going to keep the computer on mute for a few days and see if anything happens. It's a long shot, but who knows.

Also going to run chkdsk /R on the disk.

If it happens one more time and I've run the chkdsk, I'll run wider diagnostics.

Darn, it happened again with the audio muted. I guess in theory muting it wouldn't make much of a difference, but it was worth a try. Haven't really got time to try the next thing, which are the diagnostics, yet...but will either next time it happens, or soon.

It went 3+ days this time without a problem so...that's interesting. Maybe it is somehow driver-related, just not directly audio. Perhaps network-related, but I don't see how this would cause a WHEA bug check...

If anyone has any ideas...let me know...I'm guessing this thread has probably already been buried and that I'm talking to myself, lol.

So I left the audio muted, and I was good for around 6 days, but it happened again yesterday (a somewhat hot day and with the heat trapped inside). So it does seem awfully related to heat, but not exactly...just like whatever it is, heat MIGHT exacerbate it, but alone is not enough to cause it. What could it be?

I'm gonna run Prime95 for a while though and see what happens. I've also switched the audio back on...it, or it alone, is obviously not the cause. But I'll see if it happens more frequently. It's hot today, too, so there's a good chance.

I know it's not the CPU cuz with Prime95 going they are sitting at a solid 70C and it's been running a half hour or something, and no crash...

My current suspicions are a driver issue of some sort, but it's hard to tell which...a faulty hardware component that I haven't tested, like the sound card, or an actual temperature issue, but not on the component I think. The motherboard seems OK...I'm thinking it probably would have crashed by now if it was motherboard temps, but there are a couple that are surprisingly cool given everything. "Temp1" and "Temp3" haven't even hit 50C, but I'm certain I've seen them there when NOT running the stress test. I wonder if the fast-blowing fans are cooling them in a way that they normally don't. Maybe just running the fans faster than normal would avert the issue? Dunno.

I'm pretty sure it'll crash even with this thing running sooner or later...just a matter of time.

I've also considered faulty memory as a potential cause, but last time that happened to me it was causing IRQL_NOT_LESS_THAN_OR_EQUAL errors, not 0x124. But maybe not all memory errors manifest the same.

Still need to run system diagnostics...so after I've been running Prime95 for a while, I'll then try that. It's got to be something.

Tried all the Prime95 tests, and it ran fine with those, including overnight. Turned it off, and within an hour I had problems. The blue screens appear to have stopped, and the thing just flat-out freezes now. In place. While I'm working.

Running diagnostics on it out to see if I can make it freeze or at least find out what is faulty. Would suck if it is actually the graphics card, which might be possible because the Catalyst Control Center seems to be silently crashing and restarting all the time...and because the card is new.

Hopefully I can track down the root cause and throw some money at it to fix it. Unfortunately, from past experience, sudden freezing tends to be the motherboard...and I've never changed that and don't really want to...so hopefully that is not the cause... :/

Any ideas anyone?

OK...well, the sudden freezing stopped, or at least hasn't happened again yet, but the crashing is back.

I ran diagnostics on it and was encountering hard drive issues...so I replaced the hard drive and re-imaged back onto it and just created a separate partition of the extra space (old one was 640 GB, closest they had at Best Buy was 2 TB...).

I'd say at this point that I've replaced all the heavy-hitters, and given that Prime95 didn't cause a crash after running all night, I really really doubt it's the CPU. Doesn't seem to be the motherboard either...it passed all diagnostics tests.

So power supply, ruled out. Graphics card ruled out. Hard drive ruled out. (I mean, maybe it could be these, but probably isn't...) Throwing money at it isn't helping. I have a nagging feeling that a reformat wouldn't either . Might as well see if I can update any drivers...Catalyst Control Center (has to do with the graphics card) keeps crashing....so I'll see if I can update that + driver. Will update audio driver if new one is available, and network card driver, etc...

If after running full diagnostics again and updating drivers, it's still a no-go (oh, I'll also try Driver Verifier)...I'll post this on another board, as maybe it's too old on this one to get any attention or suggestions. And then if I can't resolve it even like that...then it's reformatting time...after taking a system image of course, and if it still crashes I can restore the system image.

I guess at that point I'll have to think about calling Dell or sending it in, but it's out of warranty so that'd suck. Still...they'd probably manage to fix it.

Wish me luck.

While continuing to research/troubleshoot, I got a hunch that COMODO, although they have improved things, might still be causing the issue on my desktop. It's hard to tell because it never happened on my laptop, but who knows...

I also tried Driver Verifier, and my audio driver is indeed doing some naughty things...so I'm going to see if an update is available on Dell. I'll let things sit and see if I get more crashes...if so, I'll see if Creative itself has a driver.

When I switched hard drives, my recovery partition stopped being accessible from the boot menu. I found a post on how to fix it, but I'll just do it if I need the diagnostics. The new hard drive is obviously working fine...no self-test errors (I'd hope!).

I think if problems persist I'll keep playing with Driver Verifier. Seems like a useful tool.

I also realized that one major component I haven't experimented with is the system memory...so that's another thing I should check at some point, maybe remove one memory module and see if crashes persist.

Alright...well, uninstalling COMODO didn't fix it either. I installed Online Armor and started having problems with a program I often use (NX Client for Windows) - it wouldn't connect for some reason; I guess Online Armor was too restrictive in some way, although I allowed the program.

Anyway, long story short, after a couple days of it not working, I uninstalled Online Armor and just reverted to Windows firewall. Immediately NX started working again...and the computer crashed after a few hours. I think I'm seeing a pattern here, actually, and can fairly safely say that I've narrowed down the issue to one of three (well, four) things:

1. NX Client for Windows is causing some sort of conflict, and thus a crash

2. Using one DVI, one VGA monitor in the same graphics card and then running the NX Client (or maybe not?) is causing some kind of conflict. This honestly seems possible since the graphics card probably wasn't designed for this use...hmm...

3. One of the memory sticks is bad, and has gotten worse over time, but the error is only triggered intermittently.

4. Still a nagging driver issue somewhere...

So I'm going to first just not run NX for a week and see if I get a crash anyway. If I do, then I will try putting one of the monitors back into my laptop and see if that resolves the issue...in fact, that could be the very reason that it started happening again, now that I think about it. I switched to dual-monitor on the desktop (instead of having the extra one attached to the laptop) not too long ago. I suspect that these issues started approximately around the same time. Maybe I am exceeding the specs on the graphics card somehow...hmm...yeah, I think I might be on to something.

Anyway, guess I'll see how it goes. Almost sure it's #1 or #2. #3 is kind of a last resort. I updated the drivers, so I don't think it's #4...

The issue isn't bad enough to reformat at this point, at least, and it never seems to happen unless I'm actually using Windows (in other words, I encounter no problems when doing diagnostics, even for many hours, no freezes, etc.). Maybe two desktops is fine for it, but once it has to also render my other machine's desktop graphically through the NX Client (it's a remote access client), it might be too much on it...

Anyway, time will tell. I've been optimistic a few times in this thread, so I won't get my hopes up.