Software or hardware problem

[abuelitojd]

Hello all, I bought a used HP Pavilion Elite m9300t PC with TV/PVR e6600 2.40 GHz with 4GB of memory and a 750GB HD on EBAY. Also a refurbished Magnavox zv427mg9 vcr and dvd combo and a new Diamond VC500 video capture device from Amazon. My purpose was and is to be able to view video cassettes on my computer screen (I don't have or want a TV). Everything seems to work on my laptop but when I tried it on the Pavilion Elite m9300t PC, the PC crashed and I got a blue screen of death. I read the apparent cause which was a bad driver. My question is if I restore the windows vista using the restoration disks, will this fix my problem? Or if I update to either Win 7 or 8, will this fix my problem? Or, is this a hardware problem? The individual I bought the computer from said the rear sound port did not work. So there may indeed be a hardware issue. any help will be greatly appreciated.

 

[cl-scott]

Assuming you didn't get the unit with a fresh Windows install, and haven't reinstalled things yourself since, that would definitely be worth a try.

Other than that, I would say running memtest86+ on the thing would be a good step as well. Bad RAM is a pretty common source of driver related issues, especially if the same basic hardware is working on another computer.

Upgrading the OS is unlikely to do anything other than make the problem worse however, so save your money. It would be sort of like if you hadn't showered for several days, and then just tried to cover up the smell with some cologne.

 

[abuelitojd]

One other note, the computer crashed twice, once with the diamond vc500 and once without, just plugged into the s-video or the composite RCA plugs.

 

[abuelitojd]

Assuming you didn't get the unit with a fresh Windows install, and haven't reinstalled things yourself since, that would definitely be worth a try.

Other than that, I would say running memtest86+ on the thing would be a good step as well. Bad RAM is a pretty common source of driver related issues, especially if the same basic hardware is working on another computer.

Upgrading the OS is unlikely to do anything other than make the problem worse however, so save your money. It would be sort of like if you hadn't showered for several days, and then just tried to cover up the smell with some cologne.

Thanks for your reply. As far as I know the computer was reset to factory default before I bought it. I have copied and pasted a statement from the seller FYI.
"The PC is restored to factory default. When you turn it up for the first time, you can choose your own name and finish the initial setup."

It does have an option at start up to run an HP Diagnostic Tools test (powered by PC-Doctor) which shows the CPU, the memory, the hard-drive, CD/DVD drive and the boot path with no problems. So if upgrading would not resolve the problem, any suggestions? BTW I downloaded memtest86+ and ran it on the computer for a little over 90 minutes before I rebooted. I don't think/know if memtest needs to be run till it is finished. It did say at the bottem of the screen that no errors were found.