BSOD has gotten worse, can not figure out the problem, I turn to you guys.

Ok for the last month or so I have been dealing with a BSOD that will pop up randomly. At first I thought it was a RAM problem but have run memtest and replaced both sticks of RAM. I'm leaning towards it being a video card problem because I was getting a Memory Parity Error BSOD, and also an atidiag BSOD. Those 2 BSOD's would alternate. Well now I just get random BSOD's that could be almost anyfile name.

The main problem I have now is I can't get by the windows boot screen, and if I do, no more than 2 mins later I get another BSOD. Occasionally I don't even make the windows boot screen. I have tried to do a windows repair by booting off the CD, but it crashes while the windows CD loads all the drivers or whatever, so I can't even reinstall windows if I wanted to.

I also have recently reformated the hard drive, done a clean install of windows and have not solved this problem. I'm still leaning towards it being a video card problem, but now my question is could the video card cause a crash before windows even starts up? Or am I looking more towards a motherboard problem? I'm lost as to what to do, it's not like I could run diagnostics on it (which would be pointless cause I've done all tests possible.)

I would appreciate any help that can be offered. I'd be more than happy to give you anymore information if you need it. Thank you guys in advance.

 

Random BSODs that point to nearly everything is either memory or motherboard problems, in my experience. If you have access to other systems and components, replace everything in your computer except the motherboard. If you still have problems, it's your motherboard. If the problems stop, add your own components back one by one until the problems return. Whichever part you added just before that, is your guy.

Good luck!

 

The two big reasons for BSOD is RAM and video card. Since you have ruled out RAM, I would say it is video. Go find or buy a cheap PCI video card and see if it stops BSOD after you install it.

The second thing to check is your HDD and the data on it. Run a chkdsk c: \r in a command prompt and see if it gives you any errors.

 

well it ran before and found several errors, probably from constantly crashing, so i was going to run it again to see if i could periodically stop the BSOD so i could at least do some testing, but I can't even get far enough to run that. I might just buy a new video card and see if that will solve my problem. I've also heard that Wi-fi cards could possibly be the culprit, does anyone know anything about that??

 

Will the computer reboot without a video card present??

 

Into set-up, yes. Into Windows... probably not. You don't say anything about your system/motherboard, but if it is one with on-board graphics, then you should be able to use that temporarily to test the computer without a videocard installed.

 

So you ran a Memtest before and found errors? If that is the case, that is probably the culpruit.

 

How did I miss that? :banghead

If you ran memtest and found a lot of errors, replace the memory first of all.

 

I did run memtest, but everything checked out fine. No errors.

My system is a Dell Latitude D810, It does not appear as though it has a built in Video Card as it is the Radeon x600, which I know is replaceable and fairly easy to acess. I could try removing it to see if I can at least run chkdsk so I can actually get the Hard Drive Straightened out after crashing so many times.

Oh and also to rule something out, I had already uninstalled drivers and reinstalled the drivers as well as upgraded the drivers for the card so it is not a driver issue.

 

wait I understand the confusion, The errors i got were from running chkdsk not memtest. It was all screwed up from crashing while loading and stuff, it worked for about a day after it fixed all the errors, but now that it's crashed so many times I'm sure the HD is a bit screwy from it causing half of the problems.

 

My mistake. For some reason I thought you got errors running memtest, but I wasn't paying attention to what you were saying. :yum

So you ruled out RAM by running memtest.

You need to rule out the graphics by using a card that you normally don't use, whether that in on-board to the motherboard or an extra graphics card.

You could rule out the HDD by using a different one and installing windows.

 

Ok so I took the computer apart and was gonna try to start it without the video card but the LCD plugs directly into the video card and I don't have a spare monitor lying around to hook the laptop up to. I did remove the video card though, and there was a huggggeeeee piece of lint/dust/whatever you wanna call it underneath the heat sink. I wonder if that caused the video card to finally overheat and get all screwed up. Once I put it all back together i was able to run chkdsk through the windows cd, but once I restarted windows it crashed right away. Sooo I'm thinking even more now that it is the video card and might just throw $100 and give it a try. Like I said after seeing this lint ball about an inch long and 1/2 inch wide sitting dircetly under the heat sink i was pretty sure as to what had happened.

 

yea, that is a likely possibility

 

Ouch. Yes, that is a very likely explanation...

 

OK so i am responding to my own thread to update people on what's going on. It's been like 5 months i've been dealing with this problem.

Around christmas I bought a video card from dell, replaced mine, booted up and the card dell sent me worked worse than the one I had. Everything was pixelated, screen constantly went white, so I put my old one back in and everything appeared normal besides the fact the comp was still crashing.

So i played around some more and couldn't for the life of me figure out what the hell was going on. I finally brought it to someone to fix. He claimed the issue was the video card and replaced it for me and told me windows was corrupt (which it really couldn't be cause I've reformated the damn computer like 6 times now. So I got it back and sure as hell the problem still exists.

I either get the ati2dvag BSOD or the NMI parity Error BSOD. I'm starting to believe it's the mother board. Is that really the only other thing it could be? The RAM tests fine. I'm completely lost and about to give up. What should be my next step?

 

Luckly i've used windbg as of today. All my mini dumps are caused by the same problem, which seems to be an ATI problem. The video card was just replaced and the drivers are freshly loaded cause windows was reinstalled. I'm wondering if it's on the mother board end.

Here is the info you requested.

Microsoft (R) Windows Debugger Version 6.11.0001.404 X86
Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.


Loading Dump File [C:\WINDOWS\Minidump\Mini040209-02.dmp]
Mini Kernel Dump File: Only registers and stack trace are available

Symbol search path is: SRV*c:\symbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols
Executable search path is:
Windows XP Kernel Version 2600 (Service Pack 3) UP Free x86 compatible
Product: WinNt, suite: TerminalServer SingleUserTS
Built by: 2600.xpsp_sp3_gdr.080814-1236
Machine Name:
Kernel base = 0x804d7000 PsLoadedModuleList = 0x80554040
Debug session time: Thu Apr 2 09:31:45.437 2009 (GMT-4)
System Uptime: 0 days 0:13:47.035
Loading Kernel Symbols
...............................................................
...................................................
Loading User Symbols
Loading unloaded module list
.............
*******************************************************************************
* *
* Bugcheck Analysis *
* *
*******************************************************************************

Use !analyze -v to get detailed debugging information.

BugCheck 100000EA, {89cc6da8, 89d33100, bacebcb4, 1}

Unable to load image ati2cqag.dll, Win32 error 0n2
*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for ati2cqag.dll
*** ERROR: Module load completed but symbols could not be loaded for ati2cqag.dll
Probably caused by : ati2cqag.dll ( ati2cqag+97c1 )

Followup: MachineOwner
---------

kd> !analyze -v
*******************************************************************************
* *
* Bugcheck Analysis *
* *
*******************************************************************************

THREAD_STUCK_IN_DEVICE_DRIVER_M (100000ea)
The device driver is spinning in an infinite loop, most likely waiting for
hardware to become idle. This usually indicates problem with the hardware
itself or with the device driver programming the hardware incorrectly.
If the kernel debugger is connected and running when watchdog detects a
timeout condition then DbgBreakPoint() will be called instead of KeBugCheckEx()
and detailed message including bugcheck arguments will be printed to the
debugger. This way we can identify an offending thread, set breakpoints in it,
and hit go to return to the spinning code to debug it further. Because
KeBugCheckEx() is not called the .bugcheck directive will not return bugcheck
information in this case. The arguments are already printed out to the kernel
debugger. You can also retrieve them from a global variable via
"dd watchdog!g_WdBugCheckData l5" (use dq on NT64).
On MP machines it is possible to hit a timeout when the spinning thread is
interrupted by hardware interrupt and ISR or DPC routine is running at the time
of the bugcheck (this is because the timeout's work item can be delivered and
handled on the second CPU and the same time). If this is the case you will have
to look deeper at the offending thread's stack (e.g. using dds) to determine
spinning code which caused the timeout to occur.
Arguments:
Arg1: 89cc6da8, Pointer to a stuck thread object. Do .thread then kb on it to find
the hung location.
Arg2: 89d33100, Pointer to a DEFERRED_WATCHDOG object.
Arg3: bacebcb4, Pointer to offending driver name.
Arg4: 00000001, Number of times "intercepted" bugcheck 0xEA was hit (see notes).

Debugging Details:
------------------


FAULTING_THREAD: 89cc6da8

DEFAULT_BUCKET_ID: GRAPHICS_DRIVER_FAULT

CUSTOMER_CRASH_COUNT: 2

BUGCHECK_STR: 0xEA

PROCESS_NAME: iexplore.exe

LAST_CONTROL_TRANSFER: from 804f9030 to 805417bf

STACK_TEXT:
af6e8b68 804f9030 bacebb40 bacebb70 00000000 nt!KiUnlockDispatcherDatabase+0x77
af6e8b7c bac58a67 bacebb94 00000000 00000000 nt!KeSetEvent+0x74
af6e8e70 804fdaf1 bacebb40 af6e8ebc af6e8eb0 watchdog!WatchdogKernelApc+0x13b
af6e8ec0 806d2c35 00000000 00000000 af6e8ed8 nt!KiDeliverApc+0xb3
af6e8ec0 806d8dbd 00000000 00000000 af6e8ed8 hal!HalpApcInterrupt+0xc5
af6e8f50 806d8de8 af6e8fd0 bf81986d 00000000 hal!HalpQueryPerformanceCounter+0x1d
af6e8f58 bf81986d 00000000 00001000 bfa187c1 hal!HalpPmTimerQueryPerfCount+0x8
af6e8f64 bfa187c1 af6e8f84 00001000 88fe6000 win32k!EngQueryPerformanceCounter+0xd
WARNING: Stack unwind information not available. Following frames may be wrong.
af6e8fa8 806d8de8 00000246 aa9e7100 80541098 ati2cqag+0x97c1
af6e8fb4 80541098 00000000 000000d1 af6e904c hal!HalpPmTimerQueryPerfCount+0x8
af6e8fb4 ff0f0000 00000000 000000d1 af6e904c nt!KeUpdateSystemTime+0x150
af6e9078 af6e90ac 00000000 e1d00488 e1c96f64 0xff0f0000
af6e9104 bf80f28c 00000000 00060000 bf810ef3 0xaf6e90ac
af6e9110 bf810ef3 e1f48e70 af6e9908 e32f8a38 win32k!EXFORMOBJ::vComputeAccelFlags+0x77
af6e91fc bf810205 af6e927c e32f8a38 af6e93b0 win32k!bGetNtoW_Win31+0x54e
af6e932c e1ce5000 00000000 7ffd73ca 00000020 win32k!bGetNtoD_Win31+0x179
af6e94b8 bf805866 e32dc9a8 e3368a20 af6e966c 0xe1ce5000
af6e9558 bf805550 00000ec4 020510eb bc410eb0 win32k!REGION::vDeleteREGION+0x14
af6e956c bf805550 00000ec4 00000000 e3368a20 win32k!HANDLELOCK::vLockHandle+0x75
af6e9580 00000000 e3368a20 bf908d4c 00000001 win32k!HANDLELOCK::vLockHandle+0x75


STACK_COMMAND: .thread 0xffffffff89cc6da8 ; kb

FOLLOWUP_IP:
ati2cqag+97c1
bfa187c1 ?? ???

SYMBOL_STACK_INDEX: 8

SYMBOL_NAME: ati2cqag+97c1

FOLLOWUP_NAME: MachineOwner

MODULE_NAME: ati2cqag

IMAGE_NAME: ati2cqag.dll

DEBUG_FLR_IMAGE_TIMESTAMP: 41e41419

FAILURE_BUCKET_ID: 0xEA_IMAGE_ati2cqag.dll_DATE_2005_01_11

BUCKET_ID: 0xEA_IMAGE_ati2cqag.dll_DATE_2005_01_11

Followup: MachineOwner
---------

 

Silly question everyone, could this be a problem with the PCI bus?

And, have you reset your CMOS?

 

how would i reset the cmos on a laptop?? I wouldn't have any idea.

 

OK, then you haven't...

 

that would be correct

 

The more I read over the data, and though I may be wrong, I firmly feel you have an issue with the PCI slot that the board is in. I suggest you run a mobo utility, and see what the results have to say about the PCI.