Blue screening ..

[Blank2k3]

my PC is about a year old now, ive had general blue-screening issues now & then but nothing serious so i havnt be bothered by it, generally nail it down to the PSU cause its a 500w "no-named" PSU.... havnt been able to afford a new 1.

today its been blue-screening quite alot... not sure why, figured it was something i was doing, but while laying in bed its just blue screened twice in about 4hrs....disks are defragged & no viruses.


specs are in my sig...EDIT: (which seems to have disapeared, to tired to sort)

sorry if this is the wrong forum, im half asleep atm... just hoping somone can give me a few ideas so when i wake up in errrrr 3hours time i can get the problem sorted.



currently im thinking RAM.


Spec:

Crucial Ballistix Dual Channel Ram 1gb (2* 512) PC3200
AMD3500+ newcastle cpu
K8N Neo2 Platinum mobo (on-board sound disabled)
xfx 6800gt 256mb gfx
audigy 2 soundcard

 

[weskurtz81]

if that PSU has between 20-35 amps.... it should be fine... that is a low power setup.... I would try reseating alot of the componets.... run memtest86 to check your memory.... make sure you have no bugs...also... I would turn off anything in bios which you do not use. Another thing, did you build it yourself? If so, something that has helped stability for me on occasion, depending on the memory, is raising the memory voltage.... I have some corsair running at 2.7 or 2.8..... is anything overclocked?

 

[mr_hayt]

ahh yes, the wonderful BSoD. The computers i have built have had this problem on occation. When it does happen i usually take the following steps.

1. spyware, virus scan
2. Get rid of useless crap programs
3. memtest
4. Check your temps, make shure nothing is over heating

if the first steps don't fix the problem than:

5. reformat and cross fingers.

if that doesn't work

6. Pop open your box and blow out all the dust and re seat everything.
7. look at what the computer is doing when it crashes, is it under load, is it reading from the disk drive, are you playing a game, has it been on for a long time (crashes due to being on for along time are usually either power supply or windows related).
8. after step 7, if you haven't isolated the problem you can always try re flashing the bios (unlikely)

after that, i cant help you other that the components that have caused my BSoD's are the hard drive the memory and the power supply, GL mate

 

[sailer]

I used to have a similar problem, lots of blue screens of death. Then a local computer shop told me that the line voltage from the wall sockets varied a lot in my area and he suggested an uninteruptable power supply to give a controlled voltage. Guess what? Since I got the UPS, I get about one blue screen a year. Anyway, a drop in line voltage will take out your computer fast. The PSU can't supply enough power, because it isn't getting enough power, so the rest of the system fails.

Ok, maybe its a long shot, but its something to think about. As wekurtz said, do a memtest on your ram, but that probably isn't the problem. Another possiblity is that your basic programing has become corrupted. If the ram tests out fine, back up everything and then try reloading the operating system. If the problem disappears, it was a corrupt OS.

 

[weskurtz81]

as Mr Hayt said, I actually had a non system raid 0 array crashing windows... maybe it was using it to page... not sure... but I had one of my two maxtors crashing windows on my 500gb storage raid..... so..... I guess that goes to show you, raid0=bad storage, if it is important data. I would only have lost half of the data otherwise.... oh well.... just a bunch of large 4.7gb files, which will remain nameless.

 

[mpjesse]

/me sighs at the majority of replies

OK man. 1st thing. It's extremely unlikely it's your powersupply. It could be a virus, but you already stated you did a virus scan. Spyware is also unlikely.

That leaves 1 major thing: memory. From my experience, BSOD's are usually caused by just TWO things:

1. Faulty, poorly written BETA drivers
2. Memory

Firstly, try updating your video card and mobo drivers. If you've already done that, run memtest. Burn memtest to a bootable CD and run it. I can almost guarantee you have bad memory.

Good luck.

 

[weskurtz81]

one other thing to think about.... I have had some bad sata cables.... they sometimes become loose due to the poor mounting mechanism on the hard drive, and I have seen them loosen up. A long shot, but worth a look. Also, when windows reboots, is it checking and fixing your file system every time? Does it even try to do that, cause if I remember correctly, you are given the option to skip it, and it might be messed up and you just skip it every time.

 

[SidVicious]

Have you looked up the hexadecimal error code that the BSOD gives you (0x********) ?

You may have to disable "Automatically Restart" in order to see the full report :

Start > Run > sysdm.cpl

Navigate to the Advanced tab, click on the Settings button, uncheck Automatically Restart, click OK then Apply the changes and close the window.

RAM is a likely suspect but the CPU could also be at fault, you can use Prime 95 Torture Test mode to find out if your hardware is unstable under full load from within the OS.

 

[TechnologyCoordinator]

Try using each stick of RAM on its own.

 

[Blank2k3]

wow, didnt expect this many replys.... thanks guys.

yea ive done the reutine of spyware / virus scan blablabla.. seems to have gotten worse overnight, couldnt click my firefox icon without it rebooting.

currently running on 1 stick of ram, seems to be ok atm. gunna download memtest now if it'll let me.

and yea i built the PC myself, Ballistix seems to like a higher voltage so its running at 2.8.... even says that on the box, and nothings overclocked

thanks for all the replys guys, hopefully ill be able to check back soon should the pc permit it

 

[Blank2k3]

1 stick of Crucial Ballistix PC3200 dead.

thats the second stick of ballistix ive had go in about a year, luckily the first 1 was under warrenty.. this 1 isnt.

time to switch to a new make of RAM i think, suggestions? (note: i want performance ram but im not paying £200 for a LED meter)

 

[SidVicious]

Get anything with TCCD memory, works great with the K8N Neo2 due to the relatively low maximum Vdimm that you can set.

If you're going to overclock, look for the 1.C3 modded BIOS, it allows a lot more OC headroom than the stock BIOS.

 

[Blank2k3]

Get anything with TCCD memory, works great with the K8N Neo2 due to the relatively low maximum Vdimm that you can set.

If you're going to overclock, look for the 1.C3 modded BIOS, it allows a lot more OC headroom than the stock BIOS.

aint gunna overclock... hoping to majorly upgrade or sell on the system soon, so dont wanna risk killing anything lol

hoping to go to PCI-Express & a conroe processor, waiting for DX10 graphic cards will be awhile i know

 

[weskurtz81]

also.... the latest version of firefox has been causing some problems.... fyi...

 

[hacky_maximus]

you could look for GeIL, Patriot,Kingmax and TCCD . Those are the brands I like, mostly because they're not too expensive and the performance is good (if you do't want do do some extreme oveclocking)

 

[Blank2k3]

you could look for GeIL, Patriot,Kingmax and TCCD . Those are the brands I like, mostly because they're not too expensive and the performance is good (if you do't want do do some extreme oveclocking)

ive ordered.....

"Corsair 1GB DDR XMS3200C2PT TwinX (2x512MB) CAS2"

since ram prices seem to be cheap atm...

no idea what all this XMS / C2PT / TwinX" crap is about, but eh... ill plug it in, hopefully it'll work

only needs to last another 8months n ill be happy lol

P.s
512mb ram is horrible!

 

[SidVicious]

you could look for GeIL, Patriot,Kingmax and TCCD . Those are the brands I like, mostly because they're not too expensive and the performance is good (if you do't want do do some extreme oveclocking)

Hmmm... TCCD is'nt a memory module vendor's name, it's a model of Samsung DDR-SDRAM chip :

Are you randomly dropping names you don't have a clue about ?

 

[hacky_maximus]

Are you randomly dropping names you don't have a clue about ?

Damn no ! Just my english isn't so good as it should so I had made an mistake. I know what's TCC5/TCCD or what's BH5/BHG/UTT (winbond chips)... those are some of the best chips in the world so there's no way to confuse them with brand names, but as I already said, my english has some deficiences, and there was an missunderstanding. Ok, I made an mistake, anyone who read my post figured out that TCCD is a brand name (a memory producer), but I was referring at a chip, in TCCD case (I know in the other sentence I specified " those are the brands", but as I already said...)
Word

 

[SidVicious]

Are you randomly dropping names you don't have a clue about ?

Damn no ! Just my english isn't so good as it should so I had made an mistake. I know what's TCC5/TCCD or what's BH5/BHG/UTT (winbond chips)... those are some of the best chis in the world so there's no way to confuse them with brand names, but as I already said, my english has some deficiences, and there was an missunderstanding. Ok, I made an mistake, anyone who read my post figured out that TCCD is a brand name (an memory producer), but I was referring at a chip, in TCCD case (I know in the other sentence I specified " those are the brands", but as I already said...)
Word

Sorry ! No insult intended !

Thanks for explaining what caused this slight misunderstanding, many subtleties are lost in translation when going from a Latin language to English.

 

[FeareX]

Hi,

Well I had a lot of BSOD's lately. It said:

DRIVER_IRCQ_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

After some reading, this problem could lead to anything :roll:

A year ago i had allot of bsod's too and that was summer too so i thougt something maybe overheating, but before buying new cooling i tried the other possible things.

Bad RAM was a possibillity, so i tried each stick at a time, after trying I thougt my ram was bad because on 1 stick he didn't bsod'ed. But after a few days both stick started BSOD'ing.
So i formatted my computer (just like last year but last year it didnt worked). And just plain install and it runs like silk again . I still dont really know what the problem was. I was thinking of the ageia drivers or something.. but didnt had them a year ago. But further difference is that im running SP1 now.

Maybe reïnstall a plain windows with the drivers only and you crashing applications on, might solve the problem. And further just install each program and test it after it, till it crash again.

FeareX

 

[hacky_maximus]

DRIVER_IRCQ_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL error could also be caused by some bads on your HDD
PS: SidVicious, yes, it's hard to lern English if your native language is latin-based

 

[The_Prophecy]

DRIVER_IRCQ_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL...... uhhh... shouldn't that say DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL? According to the MSDN list of bug check codes for blue screens... DRIVER_IRCQ_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL does not exist.

 

[hacky_maximus]

Who really wants to know how a Microsoft error sounds like? Maybe we should write it down and pass it to the next generations, to laugh like they just heared a good joke
DRIVER_nevermind_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL always cause a blue screend just because there's where you see that error. It doesn't matter if it's IRCQ or IRQL, the blue screen is present and causes are the same (almost)

 

[FeareX]

ahh well for me it was something with windows/drivers.. luckely its over now

And it really said that error.. I throwed away the paper wich i wrote it on, so maybe i spelled something wrong

And now its over, and i can play games again :twisted:

 

[mpjesse]

1 stick of Crucial Ballistix PC3200 dead.

DAMN I'M GOOD.

i'm a duchebag, I know.