Particularly nasty crashes with flash

Question

First, I am going to paste a description of the problem I initially posted on tomshardware. It took me a while to realize that
the only connecting thread between the crashes I am experiencing was Flash.
i5 2500k
asus p8p67le
8GB gskill
Sapphire 6850 (11.9)
Coolermaster 600w
No overclocking. All the temperatures are fine. Tried a clean install of Radeon drivers.
This crash has been bugging me for a long time. It usually occurs while gaming but not always. Also occurred while viewing flash videos and even just simple images. Appears to be happening in random. I can have a few days without a crash or a couple of hours with 3 crashes.
Description:
The monitor turns off abruptly as if it isn't receiving a signal. Sound will continue for about 10 seconds and will then loop. After that the only way to get back to normal is a hard reset. Just hitting the reset button doesn't work. The PC resets but the monitor doesn't turn back on. I can see by looking at the hard drive led that the this reboot is stuck somewhere it doesn't get to load windows. The only way to get things back to normal is completely power off the machine and power it back on again.
After I'm back in Windows I get a "the system has recovered from a serious error" message:
The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck. The bugcheck was: 0x0000000a (0xffffffffffffffff, 0x0000000000000002, 0x0000000000000000, 0xfffff80002ed4bb6). A dump was saved in: C:\Windows\MEMORY.DMP. Report Id: 112411-19952-01.
Event viewer doesn't show anything else because apparently the crash takes windows down instantly. Using Whocrashed, I get the following:
On Thu 24-Nov-11 19:13:54 GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\Windows\Minidump\112411-19952-01.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: ntoskrnl.exe (nt+0x7CC40)
Bugcheck code: 0xA (0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF, 0x2, 0x0, 0xFFFFF80002ED4BB6)
Error: IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
file path: C:\Windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System
company: Microsoft Corporation
description: NT Kernel & System
Bug check description: This indicates that Microsoft Windows or a kernel-mode driver accessed paged memory at DISPATCH_LEVEL or above.
This appears to be a typical software driver bug and is not likely to be caused by a hardware problem.
The crash took place in the Windows kernel. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver which cannot be identified at this time.
On Thu 24-Nov-11 19:13:54 GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\Windows\memory.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: atikmdag.sys (atikmdag+0x4BA2C)
Bugcheck code: 0xA (0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF, 0x2, 0x0, 0xFFFFF80002ED4BB6)
Error: IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
file path: C:\Windows\system32\drivers\atikmdag.sys
product: ATI Radeon Family
company: ATI Technologies Inc.
description: ATI Radeon Kernel Mode Driver
Bug check description: This indicates that Microsoft Windows or a kernel-mode driver accessed paged memory at DISPATCH_LEVEL or above.
This appears to be a typical software driver bug and is not likely to be caused by a hardware problem.
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, ATI Technologies Inc.).
Google query: atikmdag.sys ATI Technologies Inc. IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
I am pretty helpless diagnosing this crash. No logs and and black screen give very little information. How can I find out what runs at ntoskrnl.exe +0x7CC40 ? Why does whocrash blame two different modules for the crash (the kernel and ATI driver)?
I feel that the fact that a hard reset is necessary might give some clues but I have no experience with these types of crashes, it's also impossible for me to try and reproduce.
Any help is very much appreciated.
I've been experiencing these crashes while doing 3 different things:
1) Wathcing twitch.tv (online streaming site which uses Flash)
2) Playing starcraft 2 (which uses flash for it's gui)
3) Playing Skyrim (uses flash for it's gui)
I think that there is a very high probablity that flash is the culprit here. Is there a way to diagnoze this? Some sort of Flash log to look into?
Thanks ahead

Answer 1

almogo wrote:
Hi,
This is a new instlation of Windows 7 x64. There is no last known good configuation because I've been having these problems ever since I assembelled this machine.
>You may be having problems with Flash as a direct result of an unstable system, but that app isn't the cause of the problem in this particular case.
How can you be so certain?
All Windows systems have a Last Known Good Configuration option. If you don't have it, then the operating system is not installed properly and that's where the problem lies. See this article for details: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows7/Using-Last-Known-Good-Configuration
Flash cannot cause the problem because it's occurring at level 2 (Dispatch_Level), that is to say during the time the operating system and drivers are loading. Since Flash doesn't load during startup, it cannot be the cause of the problem.
The system is unstable because either a driver or the operating system failed to load properly. Consequently, anything you try to use the machine for is likely to go pear-shaped. Since Flash taxes the system, it probably will crash if the operating system is unstable, whereas you can probably run a low level app like Notepad without any problem.
After you built the machine, did you install the chipset drivers? Something often forgotten.
Do you have any black exclamation marks inside yellow circles in Device Manager? Is there an "Other Devices" category? The latter means that a hardware component has loaded, but Windows can't find a driver for it.
Are there any "Problem Devices" in the system? You can check by going to Start, then Run, type: msinfo32 and click OK. Then open the Components tree and then the submenu called "Problem Devices". If you get an error when you run msinfo32, apply this fix: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/977620