Blue Screens and Restarts

lav011

Solid State Member
Messages
9
New to the forums, came here hoping to find some much needed help. My comp has been getting frequent blue screens and restarts and I am stumped on what to do next (I have tried everything my limited knowledge of computers has led me to trying). To my knowledge all of the important drivers are updated, except BIOS. The problem I have been having (for months now) happens mostly when playing 3D games such as World of Warcraft and Elder Scrolls Oblivion. But it is now happening even when I am not playing games. I actually got a blue screen 10 minutes ago while I was typing all of my system info on this post and lost all my work :mad: . Cannot wait for the day I get rid of these blue screens, errors, restarts. I beg you all for help.

Problem: PC either (a) locks up - freezes while playing game, can hear the music playing in an infinate loop from where it froze. (b) Restarts on its own (no blue screen). (c) Blue screen and a restart. (d) Random error causing game to shut off.

What I have tried: Updated most of the drivers: Radeon 9800, Sound Card, Nvidia chipset drivers.

Virus/Adware: I have Panda Titanium Anti-virus running on my comp, don't think that the problem could be virus/adware related.

Now for my system info (used EVEREST this time :) )

Computer:
Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
OS Service Pack: Service Pack 2
Directx: 4.09.00.0904 (DirectX 9.0c)

Motherboard:
CPU Type: AMD Athlon XP, 2166 MHz (13 x 167) 2700+
Motherboard Name: Shuttle AN35(N) Ultra (5 PCI, 1 AGP, 3 DDR DIMM, Audio)
Motherboard Chipset: nVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400
System Memory: 1024 MB (PC3200 DDR SDRAM)
BIOS Type: Award (12/05/03)

Display:
Video Adapter: RADEON 9800 PRO - Secondary (128 MB)
Video Adapter: RADEON 9800 PRO (128 MB)
3D Accelerator: ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (R350)
Monitor: Philips 107E5 (GS4) [17" CRT] (CX 051865)

Multimedia:
Audio Adapter: IC Ensemble Envy24 Audio Controller
Audio Adapter: nVIDIA MCP2 - Audio Codec Interface

Storage:
IDE Controller: NVIDIA nForce2 ATA Controller
Floppy Drive: Floppy disk drive
Disk Drive: WDC WD800JB-00FMA0 (74 GB, IDE)
Disk Drive: ST320014A (20 GB, 5400 RPM, Ultra-ATA/100)
Optical Drive: SONY DVD-ROM DDU1613 (16x/48x DVD-ROM)

SMART Hard Disks Status: OK

Partitions:
C: (NTFS): 76308 MB (45663 MB free)
D: (NTFS): 9085 MB (3467 MB free)
Total Size: 93.2 GB (48.0 GB free)

Network:
Network Adapter: NVIDIA nForce Networking

Someone save me!
 
Im thinking it might me the video card cause of the blue screens happening u sure its not overheating
 
I am not sure if its heat or not, I recently got rid of some dust it had inside of it. When I send in the error report, microsoft says I had a stop error caused by a device driver. How can I find out if its overheating?
 
I was checking the heat today using Everest Home Edition. When I am not playing games my CPU temp is around 44 C, when I ran a game it slowy shot up to 51 C. Is 50 C + too much heat?

*CPU cooling fan is running at 2300+ RPM

Also to note is I have these blue screens 90% of the time because of playing 3D games.
 
No. Those temps are fine.

Few things.. when was the last time you formatted?
Is your OS completely up to date?
and, have you used a different program for scanning for viruses?.. sorry to say but I don't think that panda anti-virus is really all that reliable...

I suggust you try http://free.grisoft.com/doc/2/lng/us/tpl/v5

Another thing you can do is try running memtest86 and see if you get memory errors. Also, how are your voltages holding up? they bouncing around?

while playing a game you say? IMO I think that could narrow it down to either the Power supply or your memory..

check this out:
http://www.memtest86.com/

see if you can get that running, useful tool
 
I acutally have not reformated in a while and have not ran a full scan for virusus, I will get that done right away and will also try memtest. **Yes my OS is up to date. I recently purchased xp home edition hoping that it would solve my problems. I had an illigal version.

And the voltages do seem to slightly jump.
 
Well, if the voltages were to jump a lot, then there could be problems regarding that. But these days, it seems more often than not, you have the memory to blame for blue screen crashes.. and power supplies to blame for just plain restarts.
Which would make sense, considering you use a lot more memory when running games.. (particularly WoW, very demanding of memory.)

As for the illegal version of your os.. that really doesn't have much to do with crashes I don't think.. at the most maybe just not being able to activate windows.
 
Actually I reformated a few weeks ago when I purchased XP home. Well right now I am going to try memtest first, then I am going to run scan disc, defrag and a virus scan. I'll get back to this post when I'm done. Which will probably be tommorow. Thank you much for your advice.
 
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