Hardware causing bluescreen (can't determine which part)

(complete description of hardware/software at the end of this post)

My WinXP computer was working fine for a little over a year, and then suddenly, while watching a movie, it locked up. Rebooting causes a blue screen that appears for a fraction of a second, followed by another reboot. If the computer is left on it will get to the screen that offers to let you start windows normally, in safe mode, etc. No matter which I choose, it inevitably bluescreens and reboots.

Here's what I've tried so far:

TESTING HARD DRIVES - I thought it might be the SATA hard drive, so I put in a different working SATA hd from another computer. It bluescreened. Thought maybe something was wrong with SATA cable, so I put another cable (bluescreened), replaced the hard drive with an IDE (ATA) hd (bluescreened). All the hard drives, including the original, work fine on other computers. So I'm assuming the drives are not the issue.

TESTING GRAPHICS CARD - nViDIA 8800gt PCIe card. The motherboard (ASUS P5K-VM) has onboard graphics, so I removed THE 8800gt and used the onboard graphics. The computer still bluescreened. Tested the 8800GT in another computer and it works fine.

TESTING THE MEMORY - I do not have another computer capable of testing the memory (I think it's Kingston 8500 DDR2, running at 1066mHz, and later at 800mHz for testing purposes). So I ran memtest86+ in the broken computer to see if the memory was ok. The memory passes, and oddly enough, the computer doesn't crash/hang while running memtest86+ from cd!

TESTING THE MOTHERBOARD - (ASUS P5K-VM) I do not have enough equipment to test the motherboard. I initially assumed that the motherboard was the culprit, so I sent it back to ASUS, who replaced it with, judging from the dust bunnies covering it, a refurbished motherboard. Sadly, the computer still bluescreens as described above.

I also reset the bios to factory settings, but that didn't help either.

TESTING THE CPU - I have not tested the CPU, because I don't have another computer that it will fit into. Intel (Q6700 - 2.67Ghz quad core)

TESTING THE POWER SUPPLY - The only test I've performed in this area is to remove the graphics card, fans and DVD drive to see if it works with less peripherals drawing power from it. It did not solve the problem. I think I'll install the power supply in another computer this afternoon to make sure it is working properly.

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So that's my problem, in a very large nutshell. Can anyone think of what to do next? I've almost run out of ideas, and I'm very sad, much like this frowny face . Thanks in advance for any advice.

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Other information:
-No new hardware has been installed in over a year
-No new software installed in weeks (except I think I saw Firefox do an auto update)
Sysinfo
Windows XP sp3, updated to about 2 months ago
Processor: Intel Q6700
Memory: DDR2 PC8500 (1066MHz)
Graphics card: nVidia (Gigabyte branded) 8800GT
Motherboard: ASUS P5K-VM
Power supply: Silverstone 400W
Hard drive: Western Dig WD1001FALS
Keyboard: Logitech (very dirty, btw)

 

How about tring to reinstall XP?

 

Sorry, I forgot to mention that I tried reinstalling Windows. What happened seems strangeto me.

I started with a blank hard drive and the XP CD.The installation software took my cd key, copied all of the files over, ask for my local time as Windows installations always do, said 'finalizing settings'... and then blue screened just like it does with all of the other hard drives.

So it worked fine for the 30 minutes that it took to install Windows. It just won't run Windows. This whole thing makes no sense to me.

 

If you hit F8 during start up to get advanced options is there a selection such as "disable reboot on error"? It might be helpful if you could read the blue screen.

 

There is not. the only options are:

Safe Mode
Safe Mode with Networking
Safe Mode with Command Prompt
Start Windows Normally

All four of which cause it to bluescreen and reboot. I just put a camcorder in front of the computer and turned it on to see if it might catch the bluescreen, but I'm not confident that it will. Sometimes the bluescreen is so short that you don't even see it, and it looks like it just rebooted.

 

Do you have more than one memory module? Have you tried booting with only one module?

 

Try taking everything out of the case including the motherboard.

connect everything up cpu,ram,all the power connections,hardrive,optical drive,video card.

Basically you want to run the hardware just like you would in the case but outside of it.

Try and boot like that.

Im saying this because something could be grounding out on the case.Its a hailmary but I have had to me before.

If thats not it then..

mouse and keyboard maybe?

 

I have two 1G modules. I tried booting with one only. It bluescreened, so I tried booting with the other only. Bluescreened again .

Onescreen, it can't be the mouse since at the end of my troubleshooting, I just removed the thing an tried to boot without one. Without success of course. I also tried using 1 ps2 keyboard and 1 usb keyboard. It didn't have any effect.

Tonight I'm going to see if it will run unix from a cd (in about 6 hours). After that test, I'll try removing the system from the case as you suggested. Thanks for the idea.

Just a thought: Does anyone think that ASUS could have sent me another faulty motherboard with the exact same problem as my original motherboard? Or is that just me being paranoid?

 

My guess is it is Windows related because of the blue screen. But I can't figure out what could be causing it. A bad driver seems unlikely on a fresh install. The only hardware bluescreen I can think of is memory related and you have tested that two different ways.

Linux Mint is a good Live Linux CD. My guess is you are not going to have any problem running any of the Linux distros.

 

Any thing is possible when it comes to computers

 

I'm baffled. I ran linux from a cd (Knoppix, because that's what I had), and it runs on the proplem computer without errors. I can read and write to the hard drive without problem as well.

So the only thing that doesn't work is Windows XP. Which is odd as hell because:

-It has always worked fine.
-the hard drive with Windows on it works on our other computers.
-A total of three different hard drives with XP installed will not run on this computer, but run on other computers without problem.

I'm about to give up and toss the whole thing out, but it's a fantastic computer when running. I just don't know what to do.

Oh, and it's got an Intel Q9450 quad processor, not a Q6700 as I mistakenly wrote earlier. Just in case that matters.