Random BSOD crashes, please help

[zeppelin]

Howdy

Well I am at my wits end with my pc. BSOD appear at random intervals and I am yet to find the cause. They happen very randomly. My system can restart 3 times a week or 3 times every hour. I've done everything I could and would really appreciate some help because minidumps are Greek to me
The restarts happen more on hot days, but my system doesn’t seem to be overheating.

Specs

Motherboard: colorfull c.nf4x-m2 ver1.4 nforce 4 (Chinese junk)

CPU: AMD athlon AM2 Duel core 4600

Memory: 2 X 1 GB Samsung 800

GPU: xfx nvidia 7950gt 512mb

Hdd: western digital IDE 250Gb
Seagate, (barracuda I think) SATA 160 GB - contains OS
Seagate, (barracuda I think) SATA 500 GB

OS: Windows Xp professional SP2 + updates

Powersuply: 400w Cooler master

Idle system temperatures
Motherboard 24 °C (75 °F)
CPU 38 °C (100 °F)
Aux 27 °C (81 °F)
GPU 43 °C (109 °F)
WDC WD2500JB-00REA0 34 °C (93 °F)
Seagate ST3160812AS 36 °C (97 °F)
Seagate ST3500641AS 40 °C (104 °F)

Blue screens of death I’ve received

DRIVER _IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL --- appears 75% of the time
Drivers usually identified
Atapi.sys
Videoprt.sys
Nv4_mini.sys
IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA –appears 20% of the time

MEMORY_MANAGEMENT – only a few times

BAD_POOL_CALLER – once I can remember

And I once got a rather unique stop error when I tried to install amd dashboard
Something like “IO system verification error in amdtools.sys ECT.”

Last stop error received

DRIVER _IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
Stop : 0x0000001 ,(0x8AF5EA10,0X0000007,0X00000000,0XXbA61EEA)

ATAPI.SYS – ADDRES Ba61e5ea base at BA619000 datestamp 41107b4d


Things I have tried
Updating video card drivers
Updating nforce 4 drivers
Updating Bios
Formatting + reinstalling windows(4times)
Ran memtest on old ram, got no errors- bought new ram with no success
Moved single Dimm around
Ran hundreds of checkdisks
Attempted to use verifier.exe to verify drivers
Bought a new power supply after old one got fried by lightning – even though there was no lightning – old power supply was a 500w microlab
Changed graphics card to ATI X1600- nv4_mini.sys then changes to some ati driver
Removed most of the dust form system case with hairdryer and couton buds
Kicking the living sh*t out of my pc


Things I have not tried
Bashing my pc with a hammer till the rage in me subsides
Installing a clean windows on a different drive – I really don’t want to
Installing Vista

In the attachment is my most recent minidumps and a everest report on everything in my PC

I would really love any help from you amazing internet gurus
*sorry forgot to add restarts seem to happen more when watching video or exiting apps

 

[Essex]

Just caught your posting as breezing thru.

Have you carried out a full virus and spy/malware check?

First check I do when the occasional blue screen comes up is a boot scan using Avast!
Then a spy/malware check.
Seems the only obvious thing missing from your catalogue of fault finders...
back to you

 

[zeppelin]

I've run nod32 scan and a spybot scan. but I suppouse no mallware would survive a format... would it?

 

[Essex]

Depends on whether the boot sector/MBR was formated as well. This is often reserved in a hard drive partition that the old Fdisk used to remove and format.

How did you reformat, ie., access the hard drive and what program did you use?

 

[zeppelin]

booted from windows cd, formated , reinstaled windows

 

[cpc2004]

Hardware problem

3 of minidumps are crashed at IRQL x'1c' and it is the symptom of hardware error. Probably the RAM or CPU is faulty. Re-seat the ram to another memory slot. Make sure that your CPU is not overheat.

 

[zeppelin]

bought new ram, re-seated individual dimm to every slot. Maybe I should buy some thermal paste for my cpu. Really getting frustrated right about now. Maybe the hard drive is on the frits. Is the oldest one in the system . Will a faulty hard drive cause these problems?

 

[Cerberus]

hmmmmm

There is definetly a problem with your graphics card/drivers so attempt to boot the pc minus the GPU (use onboard vga). Do you have a spare motherboard you can attatch your existing hardware to? If so attath RAM, HDD, CPU and test. If all goes well add your videocard and soundcard. I think your problem may lie with your motherboard (onboard chips) but i may be well off the mark.... Give it a try.

 

[zeppelin]

good advice, but my motherboard has no onboard vga . I did have a 7900GT that burned out for no reason. Well actually the plastic housing for the fan melted. The manufacture sent me a shiny new 7950Gt > I tried using a Ati card. no Success. The only other motherboard I have is an Intel. So screwed there

*forgot to mention sometimes when I hit power my pc powers up, but nothing else. I have to tap the restart button for it to actually boot. Which I am used to by now because my Microsoft keyboard can magically only work in windows once the restart button has bee tapped (microsoft released a work around but I can't find the damn registry entry I am suppoused to edit)
.

 

[zeppelin]

Well reinstalled windows and my pc crashed during sp2 install. I would say I am pretty ****ed. What should I replace, the CPU or motherboard as it must be one of those two who are causing problems.

 

[cpc2004]

Refer my previous post, the culprit may be CPU or RAM. You have to find out which componene is faulty. My suggestion is CPU but I am not 100% sure. I don't the culprit is hard disk because hard disk error have another symptoms and thousands of btyes will be corrupted and not only 4 btyes of memory are corrupted.

Post your question at hardware forum. Maybe some hardware experts can find out the culprit