Keeps crashing

[Nickolie]

Hi all,

A friend of mine ordered some new kit to upgrade his computer after some hardware failure. Here is a list of what he got:

AMD Phenom X6 1055
8Gb DDR3 Corsair RAM
Asus M4A88T-M

He has 3 HDDs. A 40Gb Raptor drive, a 2TB WD drive and a 500 Gb WD drive.

He also has a Nvidia GFX card - not 100% sure of the model I think it's a GT 240 1024mb.

Anyway, I did a clean install of Windows 7 64bit on the 2TB HDD, it installed fine, no problems and I started to set up the computer, installing device drivers, etc and then it crashed - so I restarted and when it boots up and gets to the 'Welcome' screen it crashes. It gives me the option to 'Repair Start-Up' but it crashes on that.

I figured there could be a hard-drive issue as these where the only components that hadn't been replaced - but the same thing happens. The computer works fine for about 2 hours, but it varies. I also tried installing MY own HDD in his computer which I had just had delivered for my own build and the same thing happens.

I can't figure out what the problem is - I've used two copies of Windows 7 (my own and his - both legal!) and everything seems to work perfectly, then it crashes and fails to start up again.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, as this is giving me a right head ache!

Cheers,

Nick

 

[dalethepcman]

First step is to identify which BSOD you are getting. The stop error will tell you whats failing.

power on the system and press F8 to open the Advance boot menu. Select "Disable automatic restart on system failure" then boot normally until the machine BSOD's

google "BSOD 0x00000000" but replace the 0's with your stop code to find what causes that specific BSOD. The chances that windows will install onto the 2tb hard drive, let you login and update some drivers then blue screen because of a hard drive failure are nonexistent. This is related to something else, usually chipset or video drivers.

 

[T_T]

If the problem is consistent enough, try booting with less hardware, as there could be some conflicts. The best thing to do is to:

1. Breadboad the system
2. Use the bare minimum to boot in your breadboard
3. Go to the Advanced Boot Options menu, as suggested by dalethepcman
4. Select Safe mode

From this point, monitor the performance and behavior. If the systems still crashes, move the RAM stick to another slot. Also consider using Linux Live as your OS, for diagnostic purposes.