Blue screen of deaths

Some_Guy

Some_Guy

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I'm going to make this quick as it may be lurking in the shadows ready to pounce again.

So I've recently (a couple hours ago) been getting blue screens of death, not sure what's causing it, and is starting to get annoying, I've maintained a healthy pc for a long time, regular scans and dusting and whatnot. not really sure what's causing it so I'm hoping one of you computer gurus can help me out

Most of the times it hangs at the screen, and there was one instance where it rebooted...

Specs:

Windows XP pro 32 bit SP2
Intel E8400 w/ thermalright ultima
Gigabyte P5-DSL
evga 9800gtx (the old one)
Mushkin 4Gb DDDr2 800mhz (the blue ones, forgot the name)
Western digital 640gb and 500gb harddrives

All settings are stock

screens:
http://img99.imageshack.**/img99/6613/bsod2wg6.jpg

URLs, if the image isn't showing...
http://img99.imageshack.**/my.php?image=bsod2wg6.jpg
http://img53.imageshack.**/my.php?image=bsod1jj8.jpg


Thanks in advance


EDIT: Arr! there she goes again

forgot to mention I've noticed/hearing the 500gig harddrive (one with the os installed) revving then lowering the revs and then starting to rev up again,
 
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When does it occur? Can you even go into Windows?
How long have you been using the computer and what is the power unit?

Also, If I were you I would run a memtest (that's the actual name of the program) to check your RAM for errors.
 
Wow, appreciate the quick reply! :D

It's a PC power and cooling 720Watt power supply, and I've had everything since March/April of this year

It just pops up randomly; typing up the first post, when a flash ad is loading, midway through watching an AVI, even when that popup you get when you plug in some sort of storage device asking you what to do(ie: plugging in the SD card and it asks if you want to copy the pics etc)

..and running memtest right now

Hmm, just saw yer post dogbert, going to try that out first
 
Bah, tried dogbert's link, and still getting it :( going to try running memtest now

Whoops, sorry about the double post
 
When Windows goes wrong:



-Format C:\.
 
I had an issue similar to this recently.

It happened when I tried to open too many Firefox windows. I think it could be related to ram.
 
When does it happen?

Does it bsod on bootup, or while you are already on the desktop?

Also, have you tried booting up into safe mode?

If safe mode is alright, then it could be hardware or device driver related.
 
Had similar Problems with the PC I bought for my GFs brothers.
I un- and then replugged everything in the PC and since I suspected the HDD, I changed the Sata cable. After all that it works perfectly for months now. Not a good process of elimination, but after your done with memtest (ran that on the aforementioned PC as the first measure, but the RAM was fine) it can't really hurt and is quick and painless.
 
Posmo said:
When Windows goes wrong:



-Format C:\.
Click to expand...

Not always. I've worked on a computer that constantly gave BSODs and it was because of the RAM. It wasn't compatible with this particular mainboard. But on another computer it ran perfectly fine.
 
20+ hours of memtest and no errors yet, passed 30 or so tests. It sometimes it bsods at the blue screen with 'Welcome' on it, at others it would be in windows, tried booting up in safe mode and also got the BSOD (Argh!) starting to suspect it may be the harddrive or windo
 
Schedule a thorough Scandisk on your drive (My Computer>Right click on your drive>Properties>Tools>Check Disk
Put a tick on Automatically fix file system errors.

Next time you restart your computer, scandisk will check your hard drive before it gets into Windows.

If this doesn't help...format C:
 
Back up all your important stuff while you can, just in case it's the hard drive. I'm working on a computer right now that was doing the exact same thing because of a bad hard drive.
 
Well, it turns out the harddrive is toast, looks like it'll be going back to warranty...

also, is there any way of extracting data from a harddrive that is only able to function half the time?
 
If it will run for a while before dying, copy off what you can, let it sit for a while and try to do some more later.

This will sound weird if you've never heard of it, but you could try freezing it if you can't get it to work at all. Put the drive in a sealable plastic bag and put it in the freezer overnight. Then plug it in straight out of the freezer. The cold won't hurt it any more in any case. It doesn't always work, but I've been able to save quite a bit of data from a few hard drives that way.
 
HDDs are cheap nowadays. Buy a new one, install windows on it, put the old in an external case, save what you can, then send it in...
RMA takes some time, I guess you can't live without the PC for 3 weeks anyway...
 
Freezing it eh? I'll give that a shot, just need it to function long enough to get a couple gigs off it

Buba said:
HDDs are cheap nowadays. Buy a new one, install windows on it, put the old in an external case, save what you can, then send it in...
RMA takes some time, I guess you can't live without the PC for 3 weeks anyway...
Click to expand...

Damn computer store nearest to me wasn't open on the weekend, so I had to wait 'til Monday to pick up the new one

Thanks for all the help guys!
 
Some_Guy said:
Freezing it eh? I'll give that a shot, just need it to function long enough to get a couple gigs off it



Damn computer store nearest to me wasn't open on the weekend, so I had to wait 'til Monday to pick up the new one

Thanks for all the help guys!
Click to expand...

Is there any way you can post some of the dump files from C:\minidumps (3 would be ideal).

If they're always BSOD 0XF4s, poking at the dump file will pinpoint the culprit.


And formatting your HDD to fix a blue screen is like opening a beer with a nuclear bomb. Sure it'll get the job done, but it's just a hint of overkill.
 
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der_jackal said:
Is there any way you can post some of the dump files from C:\minidumps (3 would be ideal).

If they're always BSOD 0XF4s, poking at the dump file will pinpoint the culprit.


And formatting your HDD to fix a blue screen is like opening a beer with a nuclear bomb. Sure it'll get the job done, but it's just a hint of overkill.
Click to expand...



Haha, I tend to try to mend windows before doing a reformat since backing everything up is a pain

Thanks for the help, but it turns out that the hard drive is toast, warm buttery toast! At first the platters spun in a stop/go fashion, spin for 2 seconds come to a complete halt, then the drive would just disappear/virtually disconnect itself... so I sent it back for warranty earlier this week.
 
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