Many frequent STOP error messages (blue screens of death).

I will try and give you as much details of my problem as i can as briefly as possible.



Problem 1: Multiple, frequent stop messages (blue screens of death).

most frequent are 0xD1 and 0x8E but i have also seen various others including 0x50, 0x24, 0x1A, 0x4E and "c000021a fatal system error". They have sometimes also referred to various files:

win32k.sys
acpi.sys
usbport.sys
tbcwdm.sys

Problem 2: Some programs spontaniously close themselves in an instant. The most frequent culprit is Football Manager 2005 which will just close and return me to my windows desktop within a second. It gives no warning and i can find no patern as to when programs crashes, except they tend to involve significant amounts of data on my hard drive(s).

Problem 3: Various programs can now be unstable. eg Windows media player (and other media players), ULead VideoStudio and dc++. Each may crash and windows will ask me to send an error report. dc++ in particular has its own crash messages and normally will just say "dc++ has crashed".


I am most concerned with Problem 1, but thought i should mention the other 2 problems in case they are relevent.


My computer has ran stably as it is for a long while but gradually it has recently been becoming more and more usntable.

Firstly i can discount any software issue since i have recieved STOP errors while reformatting a hard drive (NOT in windows).

I can also say i have tried 2 different graphics cards * (one agp one pci), i have removed all unnecessary devices (second hard drive, DVD drives, sound card etc) and have tried to eliminite my memory. I have 1 512Mb and 2 128Mb sticks. I have removed the 512Mb stick and seen it crash and i have removed the 128Mb sticks and seen it crash.

*After recovering from one of the stop errors windows asks me to send an error report which to begin with just said some device driver was dodgy. Then it said a graphics device driver. Most recently it says an NVidia Graphics device driver (i have NVidia GeForce 3 Ti200. I do NOT have an NVidia chipset or anything NVidia on my motherboard), though since getting this i still get the random message that it could be any device.

I can reduce the possible causes down to CPU (AMD Athlon XP 1700+), motherboard (Gigabyte GA-7VTXE), hard drive (80Gb western digital special edition), RAM with some confidence. I updated the BIOS to the most recent version and reset it to default values.

I have been in touch with Gigabyte technical support over this matter. Unfortunately the only help they could offer was limited to a lack of power (so i tried a new PSU for a P4 system) and temperature (comparing the temp of the cpu minutes before a crash and when it ran stable a couple of years ago suggests it isnt this).

I'm all out of ideas and have no ideas how i could locate the exact cause of the problem. If anybody knows anything much about the stop messages i have received it would help. I have of course searched google and found some help on the matter, but got no help for cases where lots of different ones accur as in my case. Any help / suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance,
Andy

From your problem description, probably faulty ram is the culprit.

1) Reseat the memory stick to another memory slot.
2) If still occurs crash and you have more than one memory stick, take out a memory stick. If windows does not crash, the removed RAM is faulty.

thank you cpc2004 for your quick reply!

I have already experimented with the memory, reseated them etc with no luck. I have definitely tried eliminating the different sticks of RAM a few weeks ago but i will try again in the morning. I have run two memory tests on my RAM. One was the one provided my microsoft that you run from a floppy like a start up disc, the second was a similar one by someone else. Both came back with no errors. I may run one for a few hours tomorrow evening while im out.

I dont fully understand what is going on with minidump files. I have just recently reinstalled windows (have got SP1 at the moment). i Used to have Sp2 and have noticed i dont seem to get the error reports anymore when booting windows after a crash.

Anyway, i've attached four of the minidump files in this folder in a hope that someone knows what to do with them! They are from the day i installed windows (090205 in US format, MMDDYY).

Hi Andy,

One of minidump shows hardware error. The transfer address is changed and this is symptom of faulty motherboard.


BugCheck 24, {1902f8, f768e850, f768e550, 0}

*** ERROR: Module load completed but symbols could not be loaded for Ntfs.sys
Probably caused by : hardware

Followup: MachineOwner
---------
*** Possible invalid call from 80572a96 ( nt!CcMapData+0x105 )
*** Expected target 80572c42 ( nt!CcMapData+0x12d )

wow that was quick! thank you ever so much!

You say it is a "symptom" of a faulty motherboard. How certain can i be that i do indeed have a faulty motherboard?

(i have plenty of other dumpfiles i can send if needed)

My PC does not have your hardware problem. My experience is based upon the feedback of the problem owner. I resolved similar problem with the same symptom and this is reason why I know this is faulty mother board.


Unconfirmed case: No feedback or not yet confirmed
http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic17691-pg14.html&pp=20 (problem owner cal)
http://www.techspot.com/vb/showthread.php?p=179524#post179524

You can send them a message to confirm what is the root cause of their problem then you will understand my frustration that half of my reply is no feedback.

Hi again cpc2004,

I have sent both cal and ultimate_warior a message to find out if they have found out what was causing the problem. I will let you know if either of them have any news.

In a couple of days i will have full access to my brother's computer which is a similar set up to mine. I will first try my RAM in his, and his in mine, because this should be easiest to do. I may also try and eliminate my primary hard drive as well, although im pretty sure this isnt the culprit. If this is all inconclusive i will consider swapping over CPUs and this should tell me if it is indeed the motherboard.

I'll let you know how things get on.

Regards,
Andy

hi AndyS trying ur hardware in a different computer is an easy and safe way to troubleshot which one is causing errors or corrupted.

i just started this forum im not very good as cpc2004 but ill try to help friends to troubleshout their problems

Peace

Hi Andy,

The following cases are confirmed case of faulty motherboard but only registered user can view the detail.

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Operating_Systems/WinXP/Q_21222403.html
http://www.experts-exchange.com/Operating_Systems/WinXP/Q_21237485.html
http://www.experts-exchange.com/Operating_Systems/WinXP/Q_21236265.html
http://www.experts-exchange.com/Operating_Systems/WinXP/Q_21481556.html

CPC can you help me with a similar problem

My computer (a 3 month-old Dell Dimensiom 3400, 2.80 Ghz, 512 MB Ram) has been giving me the blue screen of death(with various STOP error messages: x0e, x50..) right away the moment I turn it on since August 29! Today i tried starting in safe mode which succeeded but it would sometimes went blue again if i leave the computer idle for 3-5 minutes. I attached the 7 minidumps that were created today. Can you help me take a look and advise me if I should try fixing it myself or just send it back to Dell cos it is still under warranty?
Thank a lot!

Hi eveningWC,

Definitely it is hardware problem. I am not sure whether it is faulty RAM or CPU. Attach more mindump here.

BSoD 0x8E

Dear CPC
I processed a debuglog.txt after this 0x8E STOP error. I have no idea what is going on, been having various STOP errors with different codes. My guess is a bug.
Please help?
Yours,
Maarten

From the stack trace, windows stops at nt!ExAllocatePoolWithTag+0x671 and this is the footprint of bad ram.



Stack trace
ebc00c0c bf87c978 00000001 00000001 34306847 nt!ExAllocatePoolWithTag+0x671 (FPO: [Non-Fpo])
ebc00c2c bf8721a0 00000718 34306847 00000000 win32k!HeavyAllocPool+0x72 (FPO: [Non-Fpo])
ebc00c4c bf87dffd 00000718 00000004 00000000 win32k!AllocateObject+0xa8 (FPO: [Non-Fpo])

RAM failure??

I attached another debuglog.. If it is the same type of RAM fault, what do I do next,
I hate sending my laptop to it's manufacturer.... but if you say it is needed...
greets, Maarten

HI Maaten

Your second minidump is also caused by faulty RAM.

Suggestion
1. Reseat the memory the same memory slot.
2. Clean the dust inside your laptop
3. If it still crashes, replace the RAM.

More minidump from eveningWC

Hi CPC,
I have here another 8 minidumps. When i start the computer in Safe mode ( with networking), it seems to work fine, but rather slow. When i restart it in normal mode, it crashes 80% of the time, and the other times i got Windows started, but immediately it goes into trouble, services terminating or the whole computer just hangs.
Thanks

Hi eveningWC,

After further analyze, it is faulty RAM. Diagnostic which memory stick is faulty if you have more than one.

Thank a lot CPC

Hi CPC,
Thanks a lot, i am going to go through the memory sticks today and hopefully things will be alright

Hi cpc,

It turns out CAL took out his nVidia graphics card and replaced it with an ATI one. He then put the nVidia card back into a different machine. Apparently neither pc has crashed since.

I decided to change graphics card again, so i put in an old S3 Virge PCI card we have from our first ever pc.This worked ok for 4 hours then i got four crashes in quick succession. I've downlaoded symbols for windbg and had a look at the crash dump files myself. The first crash is different to the next 3. See the attachments for what the debugger says.

There are analyses of two dump files. I also wrote in between them and after the 2nd one (becuase i as hoping to post it straight into here).

Thanks alot cpc.