General issues

The PC has been acting strange over the last weeks. There are different problems that I don't know how to connect with each other.

1)Computer restarts like if it had a timer. It can stay up for an hour running a game, then I leave the room and when I come back it's booting. It's not temp issue, the temps in the BIOS seem normal.
2)I had a couple of freeze ups. The same thing happened with a specific media player (Cyber Link). I removed it but now it occurred again. Everything becomes unresponsive except for the NumLock button. CapsLock and ScrLk don't work, that's why I'm mentioning it.

There's something more that make me suspect malware. The Spyware Terminator shield reports "File extension change..... filename.exe to .key". Once it said .torrent instead of .key. It happens out of the blue with games, browsers, media players, that's why I can't figure out where to start.
I also have a blank tab in FF when ever I enter Hi5. The address bar says it's media.fastclick.net (I don't link to it )

Any possibilities that I should check before taking the malware removal tests?

 

SOS.....
I don't have much time until next crash so briefly:
I booted disabling "Restart on System crash". Instead of restarts I got BSODs. Each one was different but here I list a couple of them

1) ***STOP:0X0000007F (0X0000000D, 0X00000000, 0X00000000, 0X00000000)

2)***STOP: 0X0000008E (0X80000003, 0X804ED050, 0XF43C46F4, 0X00000000)

I guess I'm packed with malware but I can't keep the system up long enough to take the scans. Anything I can do using the XP disk?

 

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=35246

find the cause, good man

 

Hey, Adryn, thanks for the reply. Does this mean that it's software problem and not malware? (malware is software but you get the point) .
There's something I don't get though.

the link is not valid anymore so I can't see what this is about. I will have to enter a URL as the symbol path?

There's only one .dmp file in my minidump folder, while last week there were about five. Also I noticed that the "application" events in my event log have been reset. I can see only back to 3/11.
Sorry for not understanding, I'm a mini-dumb .

 

That link is valid.

You use that entire line as your symbol path.

 

It worked. But of course I can't understand a word of the analysis . Should I paste the entire log or is there something in it that I must look for?

 

You can paste it here if you like.

 

Here are two logs from two .dmp. I also used the "!analyze -v" command.
They are a little too big to be inline so I attach them as .txt
View attachment mini031407-01.txt
View attachment mini031307-01.txt

I hope they make sense.

edit: er.... the minidumps doubled to four. Should I keep posting logs or are the above enough?

 

One points to an ADSL USB modem driver.

Update em, to start. ADSL USB drivers are pathetic for stability. Can you connect through an ethernet NIC?

 

Ah, I expected it would cause problems one day. It's one of those modem they give for free together with the connection.
The tutorials I found on how to connect through NIC seemed like too much so I updated the modem drivers. No crash so far.
What about the other log? Crashes have occurred when I was off-line as well so there must be something bigger.
I attach the other two logs. Even if I don't understand much I think the filenames mentioned are important; they are system files.
View attachment crash dump 031407-02 .txt
View attachment crash dump 031407-03.txt

 

well, Im hoping the modem driver was causing it all. This particular file should never, ever be crashing, and one of the other memory dumps pointing at win32k.sys.

Usually its something else that causes those to fail, and the wrong cuplrit gets pointed a finger at.

Can you check your ram too? Make sure you run the tests for quite a while, as this is a random problem.

 

I've had similar symptoms with a bad power supply, and also a CPU temperature shutdown set too low.

 

it's a 430W Tagan so I don't think it may be causing this.

I'll take some memory tests (would memtest86+ be fine?) as Adryn suggested.
The PC has been running with no problem since yesterday, when I updated the driver so this could be the only cause.
Thanks for the help, I'll post back, probably in hardware, if the RAM turns out bad.

 

These are stop errors doing this, its actually rebooting, not powering off.

 

Arg, it was too easy to be true :banghead....
I had a few more crashes and the dump was pretty clear. Memory Corruption...
View attachment 58022 there are three minidumps like this one.

I ran memtest86+ v 1.65 and let it running overnight. When I woke up it was still in test #4!:eek Is it possible that it finished during the night and started over again? Anyway, it reached test #8 with no errors and that's when I stopped it.
Now I'm completely lost. Memory corruption is hardware problem? I mean, do I have to shell out $ for new modules?

 

Are you running these tests from within Windows?

Are you overclocking?

 

No, memtest was installed together with Ubuntu so I run it from the GRUB menu. But that's just for the record.
Problem solved. Or at least the culprit has been found and removed. I thought to take out one of the memory dims. With one of them the PC ran smoothly, with the other one it rebooted after a few minutes. I'll have to buy a new stick of memory.
Thanks for the help.