Bsod recently frequent

[Benihana]

CPU: Athlon 64 X2 4800+
M/b: ECS KN1 SLI Extreme
RAM: (2x) 1GB PC3200 DDR
GPU: nVidia GeForce 7600 GS w/ 512 DDR3
PSU: 500W Antec (~4 years old)
OS: WinXP Sp1a
HDD of concern: Seagate 750GB sata2
Other ATA133 HDD: WD 180GB, WD 40GB, WD 250GB
Other sata2 HDD: WD 1000GB sata2

First off, my computer used to work fine for months on end, and only recently it has been giving me bsods at least once every other day. I run a few servers off this machine, so it is usually up and running 24/7.

Last time I re-installed windows fresh was 5-6 months ago, so the system is quite clean and new, and only for the last month have I been having bsods. At first they occured once a week, and now they are happening almost everyday.

I know for a fact that the hdd power molex connector to my 750GB is loose, it has always been loose for a good 2-3 years now. In the past, a hdd would randomly shut off due to loss of power, but I never had any bsods.

I have attached 4 minidump files, as well as a screenshot of my primary channel ATA device properties, and a screenshot from SpeedFan. The ATA channel reports a downgrade in speed, while the SpeedFan image is for voltage readings.

I ran MemTest86 and my RAM passed just fine.

I suspect that my hdd is losing power, either due to the PSU or the faulty molex or a combination. At any rate, if y'all could take a look and offer advice it would be greatly appreciated. I know my hdd always had a loose molex for 2-3 years, but the bsods have occured only very recently and as such I don't know what to reason. If y'all think my PSU is also wearing out, I will gladly replace it. Thanks in advance.

 

[Route44]

All four of your minidumps cited 0xD1 errors and these are caused by faulty drivers.

The driver in question is nvatabus.sys which is an NVIDIA nForce IDE Performance Driver belonging to the software NVIDIA nForce IDE Driver.

 

[Benihana]

I went ahead and jiggled the loose molex power connector to generate a bsod. That one was a MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION, so it is different than the one's I have been normally getting. Therefore I conclude that the power is not the issue at hand.

I uninstalled all my nVidia IDE drivers, as it seems several users have had issues with nV's iDE drivers in the past. I am now running the default MS drivers, and we'll see what happens.

Thanks for your help Route44.

 

[Route44]

Yes, those nVidia IDE drivers do cause problems. Keep us informed if your issue has been resolved.

 

[Benihana]

Well, I went to work for a good 14 hours and came home to another bsod, this time I was happy that it wasn't pertaining to the nvatabus.sys. This time it was a KERNAL_XXXX_INPAGE_ERROR where XXXX was either STACK or DATA, I forgot which. I have uploaded the fifth minidump that occured from this file, and to be honest I recall seeing this type of error in the past before.

 

[Route44]

0x7A and it cited memory corruption. I know you have run MemTest but for how many passes?

 

[Benihana]

I just realized I left both sticks in while running the test. I'll rerun it tommorow one stick at a time for 7 passes. Thanks though!

Ah, I ran each stick individually for 9 passes each and never a single failure. At least the RAM's good!

I went ahead and disconnected the faulty molex power connector, so now I should have no issues with power as far as connectors go. We'll see what bsods generate now.

Ah, time for an update. I just re-installed winXp SP2 fresh and clean, and I completed this last night at about 12-ish. I installed AVG 8.0 and disabled the automatic reboot, but enabled automatic scanning and updating at 4-6 in the morning. I just got on this machine and it has been reboot. I checked the event viewer and it shows that at 5:24 am the event log was started, so that is when it reboot spontaneously. My AVG reports "error, scan not completed" as it starts at 5 am. I had these problems before, but I figured a clean install would solve it. Perhaps the PSU?

 

[Route44]

I have been reading lately that quite a few people have been having issues with version 8 of AVG. Could it be this software?

Also, do you have a multimeter that can test your molex and other power cables to see if your PSU is stable in its power output?

 

[Benihana]

Route44, I sincerely do appreciate all your help with these issues. Thank you very much.

With that said, I bought a new PSU and so now there shouldn't be a PSU problem at all. It's quite nice actually, Corsair 520HX, nice, quiet and no more blue LEDs illuminating my room! I was wanting a new one for a while as I'm planning on getting a new gfx card, and my old PSU wouldn't pump enough watts. Plus, it's about 5 years old now, I think it's had a nice run.

I set AVG 8.0 to run a full computer scan at 5 am everyday, and the first day my computer reboot at 5:24 am leaving the scan incomplete. The second day it reboot at 5:18 am, and I think what I will do is leave my computer running for a few days and see if there is a pattern to the times of reboot.

I am also running winamp 5.03a, Active Smart 2.6, an Apache 2.2 web server, and no-ip's dynamic update client 2.21 (DUC221). I too am thinking the AVG 8 may be conflicting with perhaps Active Smart. Other than that there are no other programs/processes running. We will see though, thank you for your patience, I'll post my findings in a few days.

I was out of town for 2 weeks, but I am back now. I have not figured out the reason for the spontaneous reboots. I have at times turned the computer on, logged in, and then pressed win_key + L to lock the machine and left. Come next morning, my computer is no longer in locked mode, but rather in login mode, indicating a reboot.

As of the moment I have disabled AVG's automatic daily scanning and will run it manually so long as the reboots stop.

 

[Route44]

Thanks for the continued updates. Let us know if disabling AVG's automatic scanning works for you.

As I said in an earlier post, many people are having issues with AVG 8.

 

[Benihana]

Sorry to leave y'all hanging like that, but as it turns out disabling AVG's automatic scanning did indeed help. Now I manually run a scan and it works out just fine. I still do not understand why AVG's software causes these reboots, but oh well! So long as it works one way or another!

Again, thanks for all your help Route44.