quillan
01-11-2005, 06:34 AM
This is going to be a kinda lengthy post. I had a serious computer malfunction, to the point where I think it's dead. I have a suspicion what is wrong, but I'd like some suggestions. Please, I'm looking for advice from people who really know what they are talking about.
For starters, I'm running Windows XP Pro with SP2. I'll list the system specs at the end. Here's what happened, as well as I can remember it. Monday evening, I was in one of those "blah" moods, where I really didn't feel like doing anything I could think of. I'd just recently finished reading a novel set partially during the Vietnam war, and decided to reinstall Vietcong and play that for a bit. I got it all installed and patched, and started playing.
The game locked up during a level transition early on. I didn't think anything of it, since that had happened before playing VC, so I rebooted and continued. The game played fine, but shortly thereafter the computer crashed during the game. I thought it was just a crash to desktop, but it continued into a BSOD (I once thought you weren't supposed to get those in XP). There was no specific error mentioned, just a memory address that I didn't write down.
I should mention, that this has happened a few times in the last month or two. It's not every night, or even every week, but I've seen three or four since around the start of December. Every time it's happened, I rebooted the computer, and it worked fine. This time, however, when I rebooted, I got a BSOD during the boot up sequence. It told me my BIOS wasn't ACPI compliant, which is untrue, but something went wrong during the start up. Attempted rebooting again produced the same error. Thinking that perhaps something had overheated, I checked all the fans (all working fine), then turned the computer off and let it sit for about half an hour. I rebooted, it started up fine, and ran without problems for the hour or so until I turned it off and went to bed.
Last night, when I got home, it started up a bit slowly (more on that to come), but booted up fine. I checked my email and started a bit of surfing. Perhaps 15 minutes later, I got a BSOD, "Page file error in non-paged area" message. When I tried to reboot, I got the ACPI error again. After some more attempts, I did get the computer to boot, got another page file BSOD, got another ACPI when rebooting, and started really getting worried.
My boot up sequence is fairly fast. Normally, I get the BIOS info, the detection of IDE devices, one screen that really flashes up too fast to read, and down near the bottom of the screen I get something that reads "Verifying DMI" or something similar. Normally, that's only on the screen for an instant. Now, it's hanging there for a good 30+ seconds before moving on. DMA stands for Direct Memory Access, so I figured DMI means something similar. After an attempted system restore to last week's settings, I can get the computer to boot, but it locks up within a minute, no matter what I am doing. The combination of errors made me suspect a memory problem.
I've got some older memory that I upgraded last year, so I started switching out memory sticks. No matter what memory I have in it, I get the lock ups. I can boot the computer into safe mode without it locking up, but it's very choppy. I even switched in an old hard drive and booted into Windows 98 SE, and got an almost instant lockup there.
Given all that, I am convinced the problem is hardware related, and I suspect it's the motherboard. Does anyone have any other ideas, or do you think I'm on the right track here? There are no viruses that the most up to date version of AVG can detect.
System specs ---- everything is running at stock speeds, there is no overclocking here
Abit KG7 motherboard, up to date Hyperion drivers
Athlon XP 2000+ processor, Thoroughbred B core
Alpha PAL8045 heatsink with Sunon 50 CFM fan (no heat problems here)
Normal memory configuration is 1 512 meg stick of OCZ PC3200 DDR (running at PC2100 speeds) and 1 256 meg stick of Crucial PC2100 DDR ram. As I said, I ran it with just one stick, the other stick, or the old stick, and got the same problems.
Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro video card
Creative Audigy 2 sound card
Generic 10/100 Ethernet card
Lite-On 52x CD-ROM drive
Plextor PlexCombo 40/20/10-12 CD/CD-R/CD-RW/DVD drive
WD Caviar Special Edition 120 gig hard drive (master)
IBM Deskstar 60 40 gig hard drive (slave)
For starters, I'm running Windows XP Pro with SP2. I'll list the system specs at the end. Here's what happened, as well as I can remember it. Monday evening, I was in one of those "blah" moods, where I really didn't feel like doing anything I could think of. I'd just recently finished reading a novel set partially during the Vietnam war, and decided to reinstall Vietcong and play that for a bit. I got it all installed and patched, and started playing.
The game locked up during a level transition early on. I didn't think anything of it, since that had happened before playing VC, so I rebooted and continued. The game played fine, but shortly thereafter the computer crashed during the game. I thought it was just a crash to desktop, but it continued into a BSOD (I once thought you weren't supposed to get those in XP). There was no specific error mentioned, just a memory address that I didn't write down.
I should mention, that this has happened a few times in the last month or two. It's not every night, or even every week, but I've seen three or four since around the start of December. Every time it's happened, I rebooted the computer, and it worked fine. This time, however, when I rebooted, I got a BSOD during the boot up sequence. It told me my BIOS wasn't ACPI compliant, which is untrue, but something went wrong during the start up. Attempted rebooting again produced the same error. Thinking that perhaps something had overheated, I checked all the fans (all working fine), then turned the computer off and let it sit for about half an hour. I rebooted, it started up fine, and ran without problems for the hour or so until I turned it off and went to bed.
Last night, when I got home, it started up a bit slowly (more on that to come), but booted up fine. I checked my email and started a bit of surfing. Perhaps 15 minutes later, I got a BSOD, "Page file error in non-paged area" message. When I tried to reboot, I got the ACPI error again. After some more attempts, I did get the computer to boot, got another page file BSOD, got another ACPI when rebooting, and started really getting worried.
My boot up sequence is fairly fast. Normally, I get the BIOS info, the detection of IDE devices, one screen that really flashes up too fast to read, and down near the bottom of the screen I get something that reads "Verifying DMI" or something similar. Normally, that's only on the screen for an instant. Now, it's hanging there for a good 30+ seconds before moving on. DMA stands for Direct Memory Access, so I figured DMI means something similar. After an attempted system restore to last week's settings, I can get the computer to boot, but it locks up within a minute, no matter what I am doing. The combination of errors made me suspect a memory problem.
I've got some older memory that I upgraded last year, so I started switching out memory sticks. No matter what memory I have in it, I get the lock ups. I can boot the computer into safe mode without it locking up, but it's very choppy. I even switched in an old hard drive and booted into Windows 98 SE, and got an almost instant lockup there.
Given all that, I am convinced the problem is hardware related, and I suspect it's the motherboard. Does anyone have any other ideas, or do you think I'm on the right track here? There are no viruses that the most up to date version of AVG can detect.
System specs ---- everything is running at stock speeds, there is no overclocking here
Abit KG7 motherboard, up to date Hyperion drivers
Athlon XP 2000+ processor, Thoroughbred B core
Alpha PAL8045 heatsink with Sunon 50 CFM fan (no heat problems here)
Normal memory configuration is 1 512 meg stick of OCZ PC3200 DDR (running at PC2100 speeds) and 1 256 meg stick of Crucial PC2100 DDR ram. As I said, I ran it with just one stick, the other stick, or the old stick, and got the same problems.
Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro video card
Creative Audigy 2 sound card
Generic 10/100 Ethernet card
Lite-On 52x CD-ROM drive
Plextor PlexCombo 40/20/10-12 CD/CD-R/CD-RW/DVD drive
WD Caviar Special Edition 120 gig hard drive (master)
IBM Deskstar 60 40 gig hard drive (slave)