Frequent BSODs, cause unknown.

Some time ago I began building a desktop. My dad gave me some older parts from one of his more recent computers, and I bought some myself. The machine seemed to work fine, but I never really used it for more than a backup.

My laptop recently died, so I had to switch to the desktop and use it as the primary system. It was then that I began hving problems.

The machine had several recurring BSOD messages. The most frequent was stop 0x8E, and 0xD1. Then one day it refused to boot up. I didn't want to reformat, and a reinstall solved nothing, so I added another, small scrounged hard drive to use as a boot device. This worked to get it booted and run, but I still got frequent BSODs.

I began to tinker with the machine. Every time I got a BSOD, I looked it up as best I could. Unfortunatly I don't have any but the most recent BSOD codes recorded anywhere; those I'll add in below. First, here is the system as it stands now.

Antec Sonata case and power supply (bought new for the system)

Asus P4P800S-X Motherboard (bought new for the system)

1.70 gigahertz Intel Pentium 4 (scrounged from older computer, only used a couple times)
8 kilobyte primary memory cache
256 kilobyte secondary memory cache

ATI Radeon 9600XT graphics card with 256mb memory (bought new for the system)

Creative SB Live! Value sound card (scrounged; not sure if this is the right model or not)

One stick of memory from Crucial, reccomended for the mobo. (new for system)

Maxtor 91360D8 [Hard drive] (13.60 GB) set to master (scrounged, formatted for system)

SAMSUNG SP0802N [Hard drive] (80.06 GB) set to slave (bought new for system)


I am running Windows XP Home with Service Pack 2 installed. I have a number of programs installed; I have noticed no correlation between which are running and when the BSOD occurs.

SINCE THE SYSTEM WAS CREATED:

In the time since I built the system I have changed several things. I currently have one stick of 512 in my system for RAM; before I had two scrounged sticks of 256. one was samsung, the other something else from crucial. Swapping sticks around seems to have no effect ont he stability.

I have recently put in the radeon graphics card; previously I had a NVidea GeForce 2/MX. Swapping to the new one, with properly installed latest catalyst drivers w/control panel seemed to make it much more stable, however it recently has crashed more commonly. As for stability, it seemed to have eliminated the 0x8E stop error's appearance. However, it did nothing for the other ones.

When I first build the system, XP Home w/ SP2 was installed on the samsung HD. When it ceased operation, the Maxtor was scrounged, formatted, installed, and set to master. The Samsung is set to slave and windows was removed; it is more or less used for data storage and installing most programs to.


CRASHES:

I experienced over a week of crash-free operation starting two days after installing my new graphics card. Today it crashed a while after booting. Without paying much attention, other than noting it was a D1 stop error, I hit reset. As it booted I walked away, as it typically takes several minutes to boot. When I returned, it was at another BSOD. I am unsure if it hit that BSOD while booting or shortly after. I hit reset again, and nothing happened. The monitor remained in standby mode, as if there was no signal coming to it. After several attempts to shut down and restart, and no results, I opened it up. I tried first shifting around the memory between slots, and using a different stick; no effect. I put the 512 memory back in and exchanged graphics cards to the old GeForce card, and it worked. It crashed again; this is when I began writing down the errors.

stop error 0x00000050
parameters (0xF3F00112, 0X00000000, 0XBF82783E, 0X00000000)

(Note, this is the first one I can remember actually referencing a file, most stopped with the code above.)

-- win32k.sys
address BF82783E, base at BF800000, Datestamp 422511a2.

At the time of this crash I was running with the GeForce card on windows default drivers (the nvidea drivers had been uninstalled.) I was running at the time Firefox and AIM.

After recording the information above, I hit reset and rebooted. When again I walked away to discuss the situation with my dad; when I returned, BSOD.

Stop error 0x0000008E
parameters (0xC0000005, 0xF83EA8C6, 0xF894CF7C, 0x00000000)

(this one also referenced a file; this particular error has occurred before with this graphics card, never with the radeon.)

-- ntfs.sys
address F83EA8C6, base at F83CA000, datestamp 41107eea

Here I restarted, booting into safe mode with networking. It seemed to work fine as long as I used it (perhaps an hour.) While discussing options with my dad, we decided to swap back graphics cards just to see. The GeForce was removed and the Radeon placed back in. It booted up fine. I decided to tinker with the services running; using the list by Black Viper (http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm) I set everything to "safe", though I believe I was still set to defaults previously.

After some time of use, I was called away for a shopping trip. When I left, all that I had running was AIM. When I returned, it was to a BSOD.

stop error 0x000000D1
parameters (0x00000041, 0x00000002, 0x00000001, 0xFFB9B700)


I recorded the BSOD and reset the computer. Then I decided to post here. with AIM and Firefox (on this site) running, I got another stop error.

stop error 0x00000024
parameters (0x001902FE, 0xA80836DC, 0xA80833D8, 0x00000000)

I recorded and reset. I decided to write this post instead on notepad, saving every several seconds to make sure not to lose work in the event of another stop error. The only programs I ran were notepad and belarc advisor (the results displayed in firefox) Whire writing, I got another BSOD.

stop error 0x000000D1
parameters (0x84000010, 0x00000002, 0x00000000, 0x84000010)

These I recorded and restarted. This time, I booted to safe mode with networking. As of the time of thos posting, it has remained stable in safe mode for twenty minutes; as yet no BSOD. Updates and additional information to come.

Any stop error that I didn't reference a file on, means it had no file referenced on the BSOD.

the BSOD in some cases suggests uninstalling any antivirus programs, backup utilities, and such. I have Norton Systemworks installed; while I have told it to not run anything at startup, I believe there is still a service for antivirus, and possibly other symantec related services, still set to automatic and running in the services.msc window.

I check the event viewer after every few BSODs; back with the Geforce card it would record most of the stop errors, though tended to not provide any new information. Since the Radeon, at least, It hasn't been recording the stop errors. It shows errors for some of the services disabled from BlackViper's listings


If anyone has any idea of what could be causing the problem, let me know. If you need any more information, I'll do my best to supply what I can. I'm somewhat tech knowledgable, but there are a lot of things I still don't know, so feel free to assume I don't know what you're talking of right off the bat.

While these errors are annoying, so long as the computer remains mostly functional I can still perform the duties as forum mod (on a different forum, of course) and such that I need; especially if safe mode is stable. However, it isn't something I'm going to get excessivly angry about, at least not yet. As yet I would like to do everything in my power to avoid reformatting by drives; while the majority of my essential data is backed up on my USB drive, there's still a good 45 gigs of data i'd liket to save if possible. I would also like to spend as little money as possible if purchases are involved; I WILL be getting a new sound card for my birthday (later this month), a newer soundblaster. The problem with the soundblaster I have now is i'm unsure of it's exact model, thus drivers are hard to find; also it's old enough to be unsupported. The only things left to purchase new for the computer are another stick of RAM, and a processor. Unless some device is faulty.

Also to note; some friends have in the past suggested memtest86 to test the RAM; I have no floppy drive and apparently can't use it. the same goes for updating BIOS; though I havn't checked for an update yet, or what an update would solve were I to, I do not know of a way to upgrade my BIOS without a floppy drive.

Once more, any and all help is appreciated, and I'll do my best to remain patient and provide what information I can.

 

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=329052#appliesto

link to microsoft support for the STOP 0x1E Error Message in Win32k.sys . doesn't look like it would help much tho...


you can also have memtest boot from a cd...

 

Nope.... I really can't say that has much to do with my problem at all.

The oddest thing is, yesterday and today I've been having no troubles at all, in normal boot mode. I can't find anything our of place or anything, it just seems random and arbitrary that it fritzes out.

 

Sounds like a mobo prob .. im thinking swollen caps....Ya look at the mobo and check if any caps are swollen or leaking ?

 

I shouldn't have posted that. >.< not half an hour after I did, it started crashing again.

Circumstances are all basic; either firefox, ff and aim, just aim, or something of the sort running... in a couple of the instances, i had basically booted and walked away, and even without any input it died.

note: checked the mobo as best i can without unseating and pulling everything out, but I don't see anything; nothing looks out of place or out of shape, i see no signs of leaking or discoloration anywhere.

Today i've had a 0x8E, a second 0x8E, a 0x50 (in safe mode, even), and another 0x8E. the final 8E was fresh-booted, after i'd played around in services.msc and msconfig. All i'd done is turned off anything relating to norton systemworks/utilities or the antivirus attached.

I found where windows has been saving all the minidump.dmp files, but I have no idea how to utilize the information contained within them, so if anyone knows how, I can provide them. (some of the older ones would be unlikely to be of help, as they are likely from the older, different hardwre configurations)

I'm running out of ideas, really. Short of a reinstall (time consuming, possibly unhelpful), i'm out of ideas as to what software conflicts it could be... as for hardware, the only real options i have left (that I can see at least) would be some compatibility between the processor, motherboard, and boot hard-drive. everything else has been changed/replaced at least once since this all began so long ago.

 

Does it do it only when the system has been running for a while ? Maybe a overheating prob ?
Have you tryed memyest of prime95 to test stability ???

 

I havn't done any memtesting yet... at the moment I'm on my laptop (which is working for the moment, oddly enough) and running chkdsk on the desktop. It's acting a little oddly (hit 50%, paused, jumped to 75%, dropped back to 50%, made its way up to 75%, dropped back to 50%, is not up to 65%...) I don't have much time at the moment to watch it as I have to leave for school soon.

It doesn't seem to be overheating, at least not anything major like the processor. Sometimes (like this morning) the computer wasn't on at all overnight and was barely on for ten minutes before erroring. Sometimes it IS after a while of continuous running, but not always.

Looking up every error gotten in the last week, on microsoft's site for them, it appears that;

most of them could possibly be because of drivers, either mismatched, incompatibale, or simply broken

all of them have under "possible causes" something to do with memory. several of the errors are read errors from the memory, a few are write errors, and some others are various memory-related issues.


It would seem like memtest is the next step, assuming this chkdsk ever finishes.

 

It sounds very mutch like a hardware problem to me then a software prob...Iv seen memtest jump around like that before ya try just running one stick or the other ??

 

it was chkdsk that was doing the odd jumping, not memtest... i'm running one stick of 512 in the first mem slot, the second is empty, though filling it didn't seem to have any effect, nor did using the older memory or a combination of the three.

anyways, i stuck home long enough to see the chkdsk finish; it said it found and repaired one or more errors on the disks. i didn't have time to boot afterwards so i shut down right after and left for school (didn't want to be late to class)

i'm home from school and all looks well for the moment. i booted normally the moment i got home and it immediatly errored, another stop 0x8E error, but this time referencing PCIIDEX.SYS as the troublemaking file. I booted into the recovery console and copied the file from a different place (frlom systempackfiles\i386\ to \system32\drivers\) and booted; it hasn't errored since then.

if this indeed did fix it, then it's probably that the pciidex.sys driver was sitting on a bad sector of the hard drive, and chkdsk moved what it could of the file and did whatever it does to bad sectors; the corrupt or incomplete version of the file then wouldn't run, thus causing the error, and my copy fixed it. that is assuming, of course, that it's fixed. time will tell.

 

I got my hopes up too much. Computer froze up, but no BSOD. reset and tried to boot to safe mode, instantly BSOD'd with an 8E, not referencing anything specific. rebooted and now uninstalled all sound card related programs and drivers, and removed the sound card itself (there was a possibility that i had the incorrect drivers installed for the hardware, it's old.)

 

Issue Resolved!

From the looks of things, it was a bad CPU. I reformatted and attempted to reinstall, but it crashed when attempting that repeatedly; the only things left were a faulty motherboard or CPU.... I happened to have another CPU on hand and was able to try it out, that so far has solved all concerns. Havn't had a BSOD since replacement.

Thanks for the attempts at help, I appreciate the effort, even though it didn't really work.