Re: Blue Screen of death

Tech-Archive recommends: Repair Windows Errors & Optimize Windows Performance

This morning before I went to work I booted my machine with the Mentest86+ Cd that I had. I let it run whilst I was at work. Came home to a message that NO errors were found.
I will try the other tests that you mention. The Microsoft also mentioned the possibility of a processor problem; a heat problem or a power problem.
Appears I have some work\playing to do.

Thanks for your reply. I will come back with the results.
Paul wrote:
Theslaz wrote:
Running a Compaq Presario; 3400 AMD Processor. 2.68 Gig of memory and 1 terabyte of storage. Running Windows XP; Service Pack 3 with all the updates. Using Trend Micro as my anti virus program.

Been having problems in the last month with this computer. It is left on 24/7. Just about daily I will have this computer shut down unexpectantly. An instant shut down black screen, and I have to do a hard reboot. No warnings or blue screen. Except this morning I came to a blue screen ( 1st time; it appears that it happened when my weekly back up program started. Acronis True Image ). Along with all the warnings it did mention that it appeared that the file "WIN3k.SYS" was causing the problem. I did a Goggle and came to read a Microsoft article on what may cause this problem; however; it did not give any solutions.

I have all the latest patches installed for the programs on my computer as I run the Secunia Software Inspector. I do not know if all my drivers are up to date. Can't recall if any new programs that I may have installed date back to when this problem first started. I do have a memory checking program that I have not tried recently. I will wait to see what someone with more knowledge than me has to suggest before I do any more checking.

It can be noted; that about 6 months ago, I added 2 Gig of ram ( new ); that I put in with what I had. Is it possible that the new and old are not compatible?? Computer is about 5 years old and like I said is running 24/7. Is it time to retire this thing??

Thanks in advance

An unexpected shutdown can be caused by a processor that is overheating.

Instability could be caused by a bad power supply. A bad power supply
could also shut down the computer without warning.

It is possible the addition of the RAM is a significant event. Did you buy
the RAM on Ebay ? Is the RAM the "high density" type ? Were you warned
on the Ebay web page that you were buying high density RAM ?

You should have given the model number of the Presario, to make
it easier to find info on it.

A standard set of tests would be:

1) Go back to the old RAM. Test for a few days with that. Does the
problem disappear ?

2) Test with just the new RAM. Depending on whether this is S754 or
S939, there can be performance reasons for running just the 2x1GB
(in dual channel). You might get slightly better memory bandwidth.

Test programs:

1) memtest86+ from memtest.org . Available for floppy or CDROM. This
tests all the memory (except for about 1MB reserved by the BIOS).
Do a minimum of two complete passes. There is a pass counter on the
screen, to tell you how many test passes have occurred. Test 5 used
to be where the real testing seemed to happen. Some of the other
tests aren't as effective.

2) Boot your regular OS. Get a copy of Prime95 from mersenne.org/freesoft
A program like p95v259.zip is multithreaded, and will test each core
of a multicore processor. The program does a calculation with a known
answer. If the memory is bad or the CPU makes a mistake, Prime95 will
stop one test thread showing an error has occurred. I run this for a
minimum of four hours, without errors, before concluding the processor
and memory are OK. On my 2GB RAM machine, this program can test about
1600MB of memory. When you run the program for the first time,
when queried, answer that you're "Just stress testing". You don't
need to join the GIMPs project to use the program.

Prime95 will make the processor get hot. If there is a cooling problem,
the computer could shut down soon after the program starts. If there
is a power supply problem, the power supply could overload at that time
as well. The exact timing of the events, may indicate whether the problem
is thermal or power related.

3) For graphics testing, http://majorgeeks.com/3Dmark_d99.html has a copy
of 3DMark2001SE Build 330. I like this, because it is a relatively
small download, at 40MB. This gives an opportunity to load up the
graphics subsystem. In some cases, I even run this, at the same time
as Prime95 is running. But I would do test case (1) and (2) first, to
get some idea the processor is stable, before doing any graphics testing.
If this program errors out, while (2) ran error free for four hours, I
might conclude the graphics card was at fault. I'd check the graphics
card fan was cooling the card, that the heatsink was still firmly
attached and so on.

4) You can test disk drives. I have a Seagate disk drive, and use the free
SeaTools from the seagate web site, to test my drive. This is for cases
where you suspect disk errors. I don't suspect that at the moment in your
case, but in terms of general test tools, testing the disk is all part
of the tests you can do. Not all disk manufacturers offer test diagnostics.

Run some tests and report what you see in terms of symptoms.

You should disable automatic restarts in WinXP, so that the blue screen
error will stay on the screen long enough for you to copy the error
numbers and driver name. If the driver or file names seem randomly
distributed, that could indicate a memory component to the error.
If the same driver, like nv4_disp is always at fault, that could
narrow the problem down to one piece of hardware or a bad driver.

Since you have both your old memory and the new memory in your hand,
you have plenty of material to do some comparisons of stability,
with either the old, or just the new RAM present.

Paul
.

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