Blue Stop Screen

I am running a P4 processor and XP professional with service pack 2, Dell 4550 desktop. Spyware and virus checks are negative. I have also ran hardware diagnostics and results were negative. Computer will crash even when sitting idle. Power supply and case fans are running. Don't know about a CPU fan.

Blue screen =IRQL_not_less_or_Equal
I have run "Windbg" aganist a minidump and identified "ntsokrnl.exe"
symbol name KiInsertTimerTable+4e

Event log: Stop 0x000000a, 0x0000000, 0x00000002, 0x0000001, 0x804dc-901

Any help will be much appreciated. I am new here but this appears to be a wonderful site. Thanks in advance.

p.s. I don't know how to capture the bug check analysis screen or I would have posted it.

 

hmm
it might be overheating, can you check the cpu fan?
btw, are you overclocking anything?

 

Aaaah... The infamous BSOD or blue screen of death. Perhaps you should check your RAM and power supply, I have heard these are two causes. Have you added any other hardware lately?

 

Can you post your debug output for review please?

 

Exactly what hardware diagnostics have you run? Were you able to test your system RAM? How about testing your hard drive thoroughly -- able to do that and find no problems? Last, how long ago did you install SP2 and did your problems appear shortly after that upgrade? I've seen lots of posts on the web and in various computer magazines about a host of problems resulting, on some systems, from Service Pack 2.

 

Ive been having the same problem... and other BSOD too.... i think it might be the ram but after running lots of ram testers there have been no errors.. but, jut out of curiosity, how does ram just suddenly "break" like that?

 

Update on my problem:

I have changed out most of my hardware in stages. It now looks like the problem may be fixed and as near as I can tell I had a bad stick of memory.

The memory had tested good with (3) DIFFERENT test programs. ??????

Thanks to everyone!

 

Re: Blue Stop Screen and bad RAM

I had a similar experience when I bought some brand new RAM some years back. I started having problems after installing it (was running Win98 then) and used the RAM test software that was part of OnTrack's FixIt utilities (now owned by VCOM I think). It said the RAM was defective (FixIt had an exhaustive set of RAM tests some of which took quite awhile to run in the most comprehensive mode) so I took it back where I'd purchased it. It was a small local computer shop and I was a regular customer so the guy invited me back into the workroom while he tested the RAM on some special device they had for the purpose. According to their tests the RAM was fine, but the fellow accepted my statement that the tests I had run showed it as defective and he gave me another stick to replace it and once I installed that everything was fine again.

Apparently RAM problems can sometimes be difficult to diagnose if you don't run exhaustive tests.

As to Olley's question about how RAM can just suddenly go bad... A voltage spike could zap it on a system without a surge protector I imagine or, like an electronic circuit in a TV or radio (or on your motherboard for that matter) it can just burn out because of some small manufacturing defect or just because nothing lasts forever, not even electronic stuff. The heat generated in RAM and other electronic devices eventually takes its toll I guess and while proper cooling can slow it down the effects of all the electricity and consequent heat generated over time does cause RAM, CPU's and other electronic stuff to eventually wear out -- and sooner rather than later if there's a small manufacturing defect like some sort of impurity in the silicon.

And that reminds me of something really arcane I read somewhere recently about computer errors. It's actually possible for a cosmic ray to flip a bit in a bank of RAM causing an error to occur -- or worse yet, no apparent error but resulting in a faulty calculation! This is quite rare apparently, but with newer RAM that doesn't have the redundancy and error checking features that older RAM used to have it can happen. If I recall correctly, this doesn't cause any damage to the RAM just can result in some sort of error that may go undetected. But before you start worrying about building some sort of cosmic ray shield for your system I believe this sort of error was estimated to occur on the order of maybe once every 4 or 5 years in any given desktop computer!

So the next time you get waxed playing an online game, for example, just tell your opponents your RAM got zapped by a cosmic ray and that's why you lost! *L*

But as for defective RAM, as I said, it just burns out sometimes -- like a circuit in a radio, TV or a cellphone does if it's used long enough.