Blue Screen Of Death

[Thaising]

I’m running out of trails in solving my PC blue screen of death. Fully scanned for viruses and spyware, even reformatting and reinstalled, cleaning up heat sink and fans, re-sitting ram checking all wiring and still the BSOD keep coming back. Google the problems still bringing me nowhere and is making me crazy in damping the whole PC.

I’m no IT expert, just only an amateur using PC for my daily email and browsing the web. Any advice or suggestions to troubleshoot these problems is very much appreciated.

[The Coder]

Ideas: start the system in safe mode, uninstall as much as possible, and see if it can boot normally. Take a picture of the blue screen and post it here.

[Guest Reimar]

Check Mempory!!

Take a pencil rubber and clean the connector's form each bank of memories.

Test the computer boots. If not, write down the error code from the blue screen and check the MS Knowledgebase what this error means.

You can also try to disconnect all other drives and cards except the HDD and AGP. If works, connect one by one with every time rebooting.

Update the Bios of your mainboard.

[Lannig]

I’m running out of trails in solving my PC blue screen of death. Fully scanned for viruses and spyware, even reformatting and reinstalled, cleaning up heat sink and fans, re-sitting ram checking all wiring and still the BSOD keep coming back. Google the problems still bringing me nowhere and is making me crazy in damping the whole PC.

I’m no IT expert, just only an amateur using PC for my daily email and browsing the web. Any advice or suggestions to troubleshoot these problems is very much appreciated.

First, you need to write down the STOP code and the four values between parentheses which follow it on the blue screen of death each time your PC crashes. If they go away too fast for you to write them down, go to the System control panel, advanced, startup and recovery, then uncheck 'automatically reboot'.

Then next time it crashes, write down the relevant information. See this article for an example. You need the first line:

STOP 0x.....

and the line that says (in this particular example):

*** WXYZ.SYS - Address ...

Now see if this information comes up consistently, especially the STOP code (same code) and the line like WXYZ.SYS (same name here). If yes, this probably is a software problem. If not (not even the STOP code) it's probably a hardware problem and the advice given by Reimar is a good start (it doesn't hurt to do it anyway).

Oh yeah... among the basic things to check too: make sure that all the fans in your case are still spinning at normal speed, especially the one on top of the CPU. You said you cleaned them, which is good, but have you watched them spinning?

If you post the information mentioned above, we may me able to provide some more tips.

--Lannig

[Thaising]

Check Mempory!!

Take a pencil rubber and clean the connector's form each bank of memories.

Test the computer boots. If not, write down the error code from the blue screen and check the MS Knowledgebase what this error means.

You can also try to disconnect all other drives and cards except the HDD and AGP. If works, connect one by one with every time rebooting.

Update the Bios of your mainboard.

Thanks a lot for the recommendation, I will give a try on that.

[Thaising]

I’m running out of trails in solving my PC blue screen of death. Fully scanned for viruses and spyware, even reformatting and reinstalled, cleaning up heat sink and fans, re-sitting ram checking all wiring and still the BSOD keep coming back. Google the problems still bringing me nowhere and is making me crazy in damping the whole PC.

I’m no IT expert, just only an amateur using PC for my daily email and browsing the web. Any advice or suggestions to troubleshoot these problems is very much appreciated.

First, you need to write down the STOP code and the four values between parentheses which follow it on the blue screen of death each time your PC crashes. If they go away too fast for you to write them down, go to the System control panel, advanced, startup and recovery, then uncheck 'automatically reboot'.

Then next time it crashes, write down the relevant information. See this article for an example. You need the first line:

STOP 0x.....

and the line that says (in this particular example):

*** WXYZ.SYS - Address ...

Now see if this information comes up consistently, especially the STOP code (same code) and the line like WXYZ.SYS (same name here). If yes, this probably is a software problem. If not (not even the STOP code) it's probably a hardware problem and the advice given by Reimar is a good start (it doesn't hurt to do it anyway).

Oh yeah... among the basic things to check too: make sure that all the fans in your case are still spinning at normal speed, especially the one on top of the CPU. You said you cleaned them, which is good, but have you watched them spinning?

If you post the information mentioned above, we may me able to provide some more tips.

--Lannig

Yes, I did wrote down the STOP code with the four values numbers and did a double check on http://aumha.org/win5/kbestop.php, and everytime it crash it shown a diferrent STOP code and values number that make me scratching my head. Already uncheck 'automatically reboot' without any success.

All fans spinning O.K. Hard disk working fine and mainboard battery just changed. Could it be the mainboard frying on me.

My budget PC spec:

Asus MB A7V8X-X

Asus 64mb display card

AMD Athlon XP 2500

512x2 Kingston memory stick

Win XP - SP 2

Many thank for your kind advice.

Edited August 28, 2006 by Thaising

[SamuiJens]

If you find that all this doesn't work and a repair would be too expensive, my advice would be to get a mac (Apple computer)' Just an idea, since they can be trusted.

[Tywais]

Many thank for your kind advice.

One possibility is an unstable power supply. If you can borrow one to test the MB with it would be useful. You might also reseat your video card if you haven't already, clean the edges like with the memory. Better still if you can borrow a VGA card in case the one you have is marginal.

Edited August 28, 2006 by tywais

[Thaising]

Many thank for your kind advice.

One possibility is an unstable power supply. If you can borrow one to test the MB with it would be useful. You might also reseat your video card if you haven't already, clean the edges like with the memory. Better still if you can borrow a VGA card in case the one you have is marginal.

Thanks tywais, Will have to do it on weekend, this bloodies BSOD troubles has taken up enough of my time.

[Thaising]

If you find that all this doesn't work and a repair would be too expensive, my advice would be to get a mac (Apple computer)' Just an idea, since they can be trusted.

Would love have it, but the problem is some of the software are not compatible with the Mac.

[Guest Reimar]

If you find that all this doesn't work and a repair would be too expensive, my advice would be to get a mac (Apple computer)' Just an idea, since they can be trusted.

Would love have it, but the problem is some of the software are not compatible with the Mac.

Where you're living? In Bangkok? if you live here, I think I can help you send me a pm with your mobile No. or skype to me, info in my profile.

[Thaising]

If you find that all this doesn't work and a repair would be too expensive, my advice would be to get a mac (Apple computer)' Just an idea, since they can be trusted.

Would love have it, but the problem is some of the software are not compatible with the Mac.

Where you're living? In Bangkok? if you live here, I think I can help you send me a pm with your mobile No. or skype to me, info in my profile.

Thanks, first allow me to learns the bloodies BSOD problem. If can't solve will pm you for assistance.

[danone]

get a mac. no more death screens.

you wont regret anything.

[SamuiJens]

Thaising, the 2006 macs work with both OS macs and Microsoft software, so you get the best of the 2 worlds, But with secure OS for both.