BSOD issues, help!

Ugh, I've had a shitty run of luck recently. First I blew my amp with a dodgy FM tuner, then my PC power supply failed, and now my comp is randomly crashing and showing a Blue Screen of Death.

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89 Posts
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Joined 2003-02-20
Ugh, I've had a shitty run of luck recently. First I blew my amp with a dodgy FM tuner, then my PC power supply failed, and now my comp is randomly crashing and showing a Blue Screen of Death.

Thing is, I can't replicate whatever causes the system crash; it just happens randomly whilst I'm using WinXP (approx once a day). The comp is on for about 9 hours per day.

All that the BSOD says is:

"Hardware Malfunction

The system is halted.

Please contact your vendor."

Not very helpful, huh? I just press reset and it reboots fine.

I haven't changed anything important (CPU, memory, video card) and system temps look normal (CPU at ~52C, the same as it has been for like 2 years). All I did was replace my old PSU that died. Could this be it? What else could be wrong with my box?

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Responses to this topic


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45 Posts
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Joined 2005-09-24
well, the annoying but sure way is to take out all of your cards, and try it ...
now, cpu temp isnt the only thing that matters, gpu, even hdds can have temp problems, and they usually get to bsod, if your overclocking, even a bit, take it off, and, well, good luck, bsod with no reason can be mem or gpu usually, if you have multiple ram stickes, i'd start with going one by one, and if you wanna short the bsod time, than just run cpu/mem intensive progs, prime95, memtest, 3dmark for gpu, ah... dunno, even sandra's burnin

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52 Posts
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Joined 2003-11-07
Awwww... bad lucky dude.
Try to scan the HD for a bad sectors.

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89 Posts
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HD seems fine, it scanned ok. Whacked another 120mm fan in there for the moment, no BSODs *yet*...!

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501 Posts
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I bet its mainboard.
If it comes back.

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try to run some tool like Memtest86 over night http://www.memtest.org/

if it crashes you surely got some real problem ... if it does false calculations it could be a clocking / timing problem .... if it runs perfectly it has to be a software problem ....

just try this one (burn the .iso to a CD and boot from it - thats it)

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89 Posts
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Joined 2003-02-20
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Since I installed an extra 120mm system fan the CPU and HDD, CPU and ambient temps dropped by over 10C each and (touch wood!) there have been no more random crashes as yet... if it happens again will def try memtest and the suchlike!

Cheers, P

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24 Posts
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Joined 2004-12-28
Just start ruling out your hardware.....The power supply probably fubared your RAM.....