PC problems, help

[toppa]

Hi all,

I wonder if anyone could help me, please? I'm a bit of a hardware novice, I've reached the end of my tether with this particular problem and am not far off selling off another good system for cheap scrap...

First, my system spec:

Packard Bell iMedia - Intel Core Duo 1.86Ghz
2Gb DDR2 RAM
400Gb HD
Nvidia GeForce 8500 video card
XP Home Edition

Right, this could be a long story, but I'll try to include as much detail as I can.

My PC started having problems a few weeks back, primarily through Firefox and Chrome continually and repeatedly crashing and restarting. I was told this could be a Flash issue, so I reinstalled that and reinstalled the browsers. Same problem. Next, and increasingly more common, Windows Explorer frequently started collapsing in on itself, telling me it had to close, followed by the usual Dr Watson post-mortem stuff. This was combined with a series of BSODs, frequently brought about (as with the browser restarts) by watching youtube videos - if there could be a correlation between the two, I'm not sure.

Here's an example of one, but they were all the same variety - STOP 0x0000008E errors.

h tt p:// i32.tinypic. com/ix8e4m.jpg (remove spaces)

I read that these were probably brought about by faulty RAM, so I replaced my old 2 x 512mb sticks with some brand new 2 x 1gb sticks yesterday. The RAM was installed fine, but the same consistent Windows Explorer error kept occuring, to the point where the system was seriously unstable most of the time.

My next step was to reinstall XP, which I did yesterday, but I got the same blue screen errors even when that was in the installlation stages - incredibly frustrating. For a while every time I booted the system I was met with the same error. Somehow I eventually got past that, thanks to persistent reboot attempts.

I ran chkdsk on both my partitioned drives earlier today - it initially found some errors, but these are all now fixed and the drives have been reported as clean.

I ran memtest, and this is coming back with multiple errors (loads!) from both sockets/RAM ports (I can't remember the exact terminology, sorry!). One test reported literally millions of errors. Yet my RAM is brand new and was installed safely and correctly, so I'm completely confused as to why this is the case. Could it be a problem with the RAM sockets on my motherboard?

As a result of the reinstall, my system seems a little more stable - I managed to get online to post this! - but I'm still get the same Windows Explorer/Dr Watson errors/closes and unpredictable BSODs regularly.

Another BSOD I just had was listed in Event Viewer as a system error, ER_KRNLCRASH_LOG .

I'd really appreciate any help.

Thanks.

 

[B00kWyrm]

I have never seen a Memtest report be wrong...
The only question is why...

1. Some motherboards are notoriously picky about RAM. You need to make sure that your new ram is on their compatibility list.
2. If you are overclocking or under/overvoltage, you can get memory errors. Reset to default if you are overclocking.
3. Other things can cause memory errors as well, (there are several kinds)... One might be failing memory in your video card.

To do further diagnostics, we need for you to attach your most recent minidumps. You will find them in your Windows folder, in their own directory.
Attach (paperclip icon above the edit box) up to five of the most recent to your next post.
It would help if you would zip them into a single file, for ease of our downloading them to do the Debug analysis.
When we have them, it should give us a good idea of the source of your problems.

Also when you attach those dumps (preferably as a zip), it might be better to do so in a new thread in the BSOD section.
Several of us watch there for these kinds of issues, where this area is really focused on other matters.

hth

 

[ComputerGuy55]

Hey, your hard drive may be faulty.. If its having troubles even before getting windows installed, parts of the disc on the harddrive could be unreadedable, causing the error, and the fact that you got past it once might be that it skipped that part of the drive.

If you can, download Hiren's Boot CD 9.9. Put that on a cd, run it in the drive(make sure in your BIOS that you switch to boot of CD before the Hard Drive) Run the cd, go to hard drive tests, go to the test that fits your hard drive, if nothing there does, use Maxtor. If any errors, your drive's done. If not, try the RAM, it could be one of the slots on the board rather then the RAM itself.

 

[B00kWyrm]

0x8e: This BSOD usually means

• that your memory is failing,
• that you're missing an important Windows Service Pack, or
• that some other hardware in your computer needs replacement.

Memtest is confirming memory errors. Hard drive issues may or may not be present.
But Memory issues are KNOWN to be present.
So lets take care of them first.

The Minidumps will help us to proceed.

 

[toppa]

Thanks for the replies. I will post a new thread in the other section.