BSOD -- suspected firewire adapter .. minidumps attached

Sounds like a good idea to run with just one stick of ram, just for testing purposes of course.

Unfortunately, ram can and does go bad all of a sudden, and without warning.

Let us know how you get on.

Regards Howard

OK, I've tested out different memory configurations. Nothing seems to work .. I even put in a different pair of RAM that I'm positive is good and still no luck. I tried just one stick and seemed to crash much much less, but .. still crashing. What's weird though is now I'm no longer getting blue screens and memory dumps, just freezing up .. or single programs freezing/crashing.

If you're positive those minidumps indicate I was crashing because of memory corruption, what could this mean? If my memory is actually physically all right .. what else could this be? Time for a format? heh heh.

Your computer freezing up, and various programmes crashing, could be a symptom of a psu problem.

I agree that a reformat and reinstall might be beneficial.

Yes your minidumps did indicate memory corruption. Like I said six out of seven minidumps crashed with memory corruption. The other one crashed at win32k.sys. Which is a Windows system driver.

Regards Howard

OK, I take that back .. another blue screen. What does this one tell you?

helas said:

OK, I take that back .. another blue screen. What does this one tell you?

Click to expand...

I don`t know cause I can`t see it.

Post the minidump please, and I`ll take a look at it.

Regards Howard

Your latest minidump crashes at win32k.sys.

Check your temperatures, and clean any dust out of your system.

I still think this is a hardware problem. Probably ram related.

Regards Howard

Okay, after spending a day trying to figure this out, I'm a little confused. Is it possible this problem could be caused by a bad motherboard?

I swapped out the power supply with an identical working one; didn't work. I have also been stress testing different RAM configurations -- interchanging between 4 different sticks (2 of which I know are good), trying different slots, underclocking certain settings in BIOS, testing in other computers -- using Prime95 (I don't know if you're familiar with it). Any RAM configuration in this computer fails the stress test after only a few minutes, but using any of the same RAM in a different, stable computer, the test will go for a while .. so I don't think the suspected RAM is physically bad.

With nothing else I could try, I decided to format, just to see. Of course, no luck. I'm crashing just like before.

So after swapping out all these parts between computers and seeing that the suspected faulty hardware doesn't make the known working computer unstable .. I'm now wondering if it's possible that my motherboard could've gone bad?? I COULD swap out the motherboard, but that's a lot of work. If you think it's a possibility however, I'll give it a shot.

Thanks for your help, BTW.

using any of the same RAM in a different, stable computer, the test will go for a while ..

Click to expand...

What do you mean by the test will go for a while?

It is possible that your mobo is at fault, but that is only a Possibility.

Are you overclocking your system in any way?

If so reset to the default settings.

I`m convinced that you have a hardware problem, unfortunately hardware problems can be very difficult to diagnose.

A ram problem could also be caused by faulty L2 cache ram on your cpu.

Obviously I have no way of telling from here.

All I can do is read your minidumps, and tell you what I find.

Regards Howard

What I meant by "it will go for a while" is that the stress test seems to run for a long time in the known stable computer, with any RAM I try. But using any RAM in the computer I'm having problems with, the stress testing only lasts a few minutes before having an error and stopping. This is what leads me to believe it's not the RAM itself.

So maybe I WILL swap motherboards and/or CPUs. I guess I can take it from here and determine what's wrong .. since you can't do much yourself.

One last minidump for you though. I got this one after the format. On the fresh install, I loaded and tried to play Quake III for a bit. Blue screen within 10 minutes.

Let me know if that one looks the same .. and I'll get on with the mobo and CPU exchange tomorrow. Thanks!

Your latest minidump crashes at win32k.sys. This is the Windows Multi-User Win32 Driver.

This doesn`t help much, as the above crash can be caused by lots of different issues.

Regards Howard

Ok, so I think this problem was being caused by a malfunctioning video card.

I was running Quake 4 for less than a minute when BAM, video corruption and an error saying "... [your graphics accelerator] was no longer responding to graphics driver commands." Then another message only seconds later saying VPU Recover "was unable to fully recover from a hardware deadlock, and has switched to software rendering." I also recall seeing, in the application log, errors from Quake 3 with the faulty module being a certain ATI dll.

I replaced the card with a very similar one, started a fresh installation of Windows XP Pro SP2, and wuddya know .. I've been completely stable for a few days straight. I finished Q4 without getting any errors and was even able to run a torture test in Prime95 (more strenuous than regular stress test) for over 8 hours.. on the same exact system setup I had when first posting the thread (a flaky machine would fail this test within minutes like mine used to).

What do you think? Could those blue screens and minidumps have been caused by a faulty video card?

Time for an RMA, regardless.

Looks like you`ve found the culprit.

Obviously your memory corruption was at your videocard.

Glad your system is now stable.

Regards Howard