[Solved] Unending BSODs with New System

This one has a bit of an explanation, so bear with me. Also, I have a thread on the same system but before I bought a new mobo, processor and RAM, which may or may not be relevant. It is located here: Cannot Boot Windows

Anyways, on to the problem. Being a Computer Science major and living close to home, I am the IT support for my family. I built my little brother a computer, which we upgraded this past weekend, here are the specs:

Old System:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ 2.0 GHz
Asus M2A-VM microATX mobo
4x1GB DDR2-800 RAM
GeForce GTS 250
250GB SATA HDD
60GB IDE HDD
IDE DVD-RW drive
Cooler Master 650W PSU

New System:
AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition 3.2 GHz
Gigabyte GA-880GA-UD3H ATX mobo
2x2GB DDR3-1333 Patriot Memory
GeForce GTS 250
250GB SATA HDD
SATA DVD-RW Drive
Cooler Master 650W PSU

During the issues we were having before (mentioned in the old thread) I gave him my SATA DVD drive which I no longer needed. I also scrapped the 60GB IDE HDD, just to eliminate as a source of the problem. Eventually I managed to solve the previous problem and reinstall Windows which worked fine for a while until we upgraded the mobo, RAM, and processor. After installing them, while I was helping him install drivers and such for his new components we started getting blue screens. Unfortunately I didn't think to write them down right away, but I can tell you that they were varied.

When this started happening I figured it was something to do with the drivers and that it would probably be easiest to just reinstall Windows. So I did that...or TRIED to do that. I tried about 3 times and each time it would either freeze during the install or give me a blue screen. The last few installs gave me a blue screen after it had restarted after the initial install. I should also mention that each time I tried installing I reformatted the HDD. During all this, the 2 blue screens I saw (the others were cleared by my brother) were ntfs.sys and "Bad Pool Header". Going off the ntfs.sys BSOD I thought that a bad HDD would describe almost all of his past issues, so I grabbed a 250GB HDD out of my main system but again had the same issues.

I have included a list of information below, that I thought may help and I will update that as people as questions about stuff I haven't though of (which will no doubt happen). I'm stumped, so I'd greatly appreciate your help!



- Using the 1st HDD I also installed Ubuntu which installed just fine and which I used for about half an hour with no issues. However, my brother doesn't know how to use Ubuntu very well and he like playing PC games so this isn't really a solution.

- All installs except the last one were made installing Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. I also made a copy of the install DVD on my main system, just in case there was some scratch or something...thought it was worth a shot, but it didn't help. I also tried installing using the 32-bit install DVD but again had the same issues.

- Since I first tried to reinstall Windows after the initial blue screens, the farthest I have gotten in the installation process is the screen where you enter the product key but it gave me a blue screen right as I clicked the "Continue" button, and I only got that far once.

- With only the DVD drive, HDD, 1 stick of RAM, monitor, keyboard, and mouse connected I was able to successfully install Windows.

- With only 1 stick of RAM installed I was able to install a bunch of programs, the graphics card and its driver, run the Windows System Rating, and play about 15 minutes of Black Ops, all without blue screens.

- With the 2nd stick of RAM installed I got a "Page fault in non page area" blue screen immediately after the System Rating finished, and I got an "IRQL not greater or less than" blue screen about 30 seconds into Black Ops. However, I ran 16 passes of Memtest86 (booting from the CD) without producing any errors.

It could be that Memtest just can't detect everything (at least, I've seen other posters say that here). Alternatively, it could be that the DIMM slot on your motherboard is bad. Have you tried the second stick of RAM in different DIMM slots on your board?

indeed hastibe is correct, and sadly it may mean you have to rma the mobo board, but if you swap the dimm and it doesn't work again, you know it is probably that ram stick

Best answer selected by bikeracer4487.