Motherboard or software

[itnewbee]

As I stated before, where I’m not sure. I was having trouble with the PC not allowing me to save stuff in word. I’m getting all kinds or error messages including stop error messages. I was also having trouble with the PC turning off and restarting itself. If finally turned off and it would not turn on. It sat for a few days dormant until I could mess with it. The next time I went to start it up, it fired right up. We did a bunch of diagnostic checks starting with the power supply. I put a new power supply in it and it was running the same. It would not start unless you unplugged it and took out the CMOS battery and put it back in. We did all this with and with out the hard drive in. As a last ditch effort we updated the BIOS. It seems to start up and stay started. I can turn it on and off with no trouble. How ever I am still getting a lot of stop errors of all sorts. One being “Beginning memory dump. After all the diagnostic checking it was determined I have a mechanical problem. We narrowed it down to the CPU or the motherboard. Any other thoughts on this. The fact that it is now starting makes me wonder if it is a soft ware problem not the motherboard or CPU. My next step was to reinstall the OS. I have noticed that when I go to SKYPE it throws the PC into a stop error message before I order a mother board nad then possibly a CPU. Any thought or comments would be great. I am running XP media center. Model: Gateway 835GM I found this on another post and it states the problem better than I did. All this was done to my PC

Unplug all external devices (leaving Keyboard; Video or Power connected only)
Remove any addon internal PCI card (ie Modems; Sound Cards; Video Adaptors)
Confirm all internal Power and Data plugs are secure
Reset the CMOS, using the onboard jumper (service manual required fo location)
Remove all internal dust and debri
Confirm all Fans are operational (especially CPU)

Do you think its the motherboad not the software.

 

[Route44]

What does your Event Viewer say and what are your Stop Error codes? Sometimes when it blue screens it will also give a driver name or something else.

 

[itnewbee]

What does your Event Viewer say and what are your Stop Error codes? Sometimes when it blue screens it will also give a driver name or something else.

Thanks for the reply
Havent looked in the Event viewer since I got it back home. I know through research one of the error message says begining memeory dunp the other had somthing to do with add ons.

 

[raybay]

Except on eMachines and Packard Bell computers, the motherboard and cpu are the least likely to fail. Check everything else first.
You could have an infestation, a bad driver for video graphics or one of the other components, a hard drive beginning to fail, power supply errors on one channel, optical drive that is emitting spurious electrical responses, a bad CPU fan, any bad module that is receiving electrical power, or one bad memory module... but you have already tested many of those.
You have an excellent start with your trouble shooting.
I would run the free MemTest86.
Observe your cpu fan, and listen for vibration or wobbling.
Download the latest driver for the video port, then remove or disable the old one and replace it.
Isolate by disconnecting as many components as you can, then observing the changes.
It really seems to me that you have an infestation, or a corrupted Microsoft Office. You can remove your existing Microsoft Office, then defrag, then reinstall after a reboot without losing any data. You can try a number of free scans to see if other software detects problems.
You might also want to run CCleaner or other good registry cleaner, after you run antispyware and antivirus programs.

 

[itnewbee]

Thanks for the reply. I had help with all that from a pretty reliable friend. I think the video card thing was also done. I am thinking about uninstalling and reinstalling the Office as well as the OS. I did do a few scans and nothing came up. I found a few Trojans in my AVG vault. Gen5 & something else but I deleted both. I just want to make sure before I put the money into a new mother board and or CPU that its not a software problem. I will try all of your suggestions later today.

 

[itnewbee]

Took a look at the Event Viewer this is all I found (The time service has not been able to synchronize the system time for 49152 seconds because none of the time providers has been able to provide a usable time stamp. The system clock is unsynchronized.) However we updated the bios so that may have messed it up. Since I did remove the hard drive and was having the same trouble with the machine I'm going to go for the new motherboard. As much as I enjoy researching all the stop errors and other errors I need the PC back sooner than later. Thanks to all who replied.