Hello there, and thanks in advance for reading this post.
I will start out with a little backstory. My computer was running fine until a little less than two years ago, when I had a fatal crash playing some first person shooter (I think it was Doom3). The crash started with the graphics artifacts forming on the screen, and a few seconds later the whole screen was filled with artifacts. A short while later the whole system hard crashed, and I figured that I had fried my graphics card. No big deal, my Radeon 9500 had served me well, and since I had been overclocking it quite a bit for all that time, I figured its time had just come.
For some reason, after a reboot the computer worked fine, or so I thought, so I just kept on using that card for a bit, until more problems surfaced. I sometimes got similar artifacts to what I had gotten before, usually right after a reboot, and they would usually go away after a reboot as well, I probably should have gotten a new card immediately, but I didn't, and I ran the computer for about a week, or a week and a half. I also started to get frequent BSOD crashes. It has been a while, so I am not sure if they were IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL errors, but I assume they were. Eventually I caved in and got a new graphics card, a Geforce 6800GT, and I thought it would solve all of my problems.
Unfortunately, it didn't. I never saw the graphics artifact problems again, but the crashes persisted, every few days at a random time, I would get a BSOD hard crash. I consulted my rather tech savvy friends about it, and they suggested I get a new motherboard, it might be my northbridge fan overheating. I did so, and got myself a new motherboard. I don't remember what my old motherboard was, but my new and current one is an ABIT AI7.
Also of note is that I had been overclocking my processor a bit, from 2.4GHZ to 2.8GHZ. Sometime during this period of time I clocked it back down to normal speeds. It is a Pentium 4 2.4C GHZ processor.
The new motherboard didn't seem to help at all either. Some friends suggested that it might be the PSU, so I got myself a new PSU. I can't remember what the old one was either, but the new one was a 470W Enermax PSU. The model is EG475P-VE. I was assured that it was more than enough power for my computer, my old PSU had only been 350W, I remember that much.
The new PSU didn't help. At this point someone suggested that I get a new hard drive, I got myself a Western Digital 250GB hard drive, and for some weird reason, I just used it as storage at the time and didn't reinstall windows on it or anything, so of course that didn't help.
I got pretty fed up with the whole situation, and didn't really want to throw more money at the problem. Pretty much the only things I had (and have) yet to replace were there CPU and the RAM, which probably should have been my first culprit, the RAM that is. I have 1GB of RAM, two 512MB sticks. I can't remember the brand right now unfortunately, but if it is important information I can open up my case to check it out. I haven't replaced my optical drives either but I kind of assume that they wouldn't be causing a problem like this.
That was all over a year ago. Fast forward a few months. I had pretty much gotten used to living with the crashes, they only happened every couple days anyways. Sure, sometimes I got two crashes in a day, but sometimes I would go for a whole week without any crashes. Then, something happened, I can't remember what it was, but some crash got me fed up enough that I decided to wipe one of my hard drives of all data (At the time I had 2x120GB Western Digitals and 1x250GB Western Digital, and still do) and reinstall Windows on it. Which I did. I didn't have enough space to backup everything on the 250GB drive, which I really wish I had, because even though it is a longshot, I always kind of think that it might be one, or both of the 120GB drives that are faulty. I reinstalled Windows XP on one of the 120GB drives.
I went about 5 hours before I crashed. And then I crashed again shortly after that.
I thought reinstalling would either make it better or not help at all. It got worse. The crashes were down to a frequency of about 2-3 a day. Sometimes more, sometimes less. I very rarely went more than 2 days without a crash. Sometimes the computer would even crash back to back right when I got to the login screen. It has been about a year since then, and it has been very frustrating.
Earlier tonight I had a very frustrating crash causing me to lose way more work than I should have lost (I should be used to saving my work frequently by now
) so it kind of filled the meter and I just must get this problem fixed. That is why I turn to you.
I researched similar problems quite a bit in the past, and although I don't really remember any specific solutions I was given, I know that nothing really worked so I always pretty much gave up. The crashes seem to be completely random. I could be playing an advanced 3D graphics game, I could be writing a word document or surfing the web, or the computer could be idling on the desktop and not running anything while I sleep. It really seems to be completely random.
I read a few posts on various boards before writing this, and in most cases people are asked to post dumplogs. I turned on minidumps using some guide and I have a couple dumps attached with this post. 2 are new that happened tonight after crashes after I turned dumping on, 2 are older and I am not sure why they were in the minidump location.
In the rar I have attached, the dump in the folder labelled "1" happened first tonight. I have no idea how to analyze dumps, but I gave it a go and found this in it: Probably caused by : ndisuio.sys
I googled that file and ended up disabling Wireless Zero Configuration in Administrative Tools - Services according to someones advice.
I didn't expect it to work, and it didn't. I crashed shortly thereafter, and the dumplog in the folder labelled "2" is the dump that resulted in that crash. That dump has a different file under "probably caused by" but I will let you all check that one out for yourselves. My internet didn't work after the crash so I ended up re-enabling Wireless Zero Configuration and then it worked again, so I don't know what my next dump will look like, which file it will have under "probably caused by" that is.
I also seemed to have a few dumplogs from last January in the minidump directory for some reasons, and I attached one of those in the January folder. I can provide the others if you think they will help. They have the ndisuio.sys file mentioned, so I kind of assume I will get that file in my next dumps after enabling that. I also had one dump from September, not sure why that dump is the only one in between January and now, but oh well. It is completely different from the other dumps and I kind of assume that is an unrelated issue to the crashes, but I am no expert at this so I turn to all of you for help!
Thanks again for reading all of this, it ended up being far too long but I thought I would try to give as much information about my situation as I could.
With hopes of getting these damn crashes to stop,
David.
I forgot to attach the dumps, sorry.
Here they are: www.internet.is/zydoran/debugs.rar
Also, feel free to ask me about any information I might have left out, there is bound to be something I forgot to mention.
Edit 2: I have attached a new minidump, as I thought, the "problem caused by" is back to ndisuio.sys.
I will start out with a little backstory. My computer was running fine until a little less than two years ago, when I had a fatal crash playing some first person shooter (I think it was Doom3). The crash started with the graphics artifacts forming on the screen, and a few seconds later the whole screen was filled with artifacts. A short while later the whole system hard crashed, and I figured that I had fried my graphics card. No big deal, my Radeon 9500 had served me well, and since I had been overclocking it quite a bit for all that time, I figured its time had just come.
For some reason, after a reboot the computer worked fine, or so I thought, so I just kept on using that card for a bit, until more problems surfaced. I sometimes got similar artifacts to what I had gotten before, usually right after a reboot, and they would usually go away after a reboot as well, I probably should have gotten a new card immediately, but I didn't, and I ran the computer for about a week, or a week and a half. I also started to get frequent BSOD crashes. It has been a while, so I am not sure if they were IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL errors, but I assume they were. Eventually I caved in and got a new graphics card, a Geforce 6800GT, and I thought it would solve all of my problems.
Unfortunately, it didn't. I never saw the graphics artifact problems again, but the crashes persisted, every few days at a random time, I would get a BSOD hard crash. I consulted my rather tech savvy friends about it, and they suggested I get a new motherboard, it might be my northbridge fan overheating. I did so, and got myself a new motherboard. I don't remember what my old motherboard was, but my new and current one is an ABIT AI7.
Also of note is that I had been overclocking my processor a bit, from 2.4GHZ to 2.8GHZ. Sometime during this period of time I clocked it back down to normal speeds. It is a Pentium 4 2.4C GHZ processor.
The new motherboard didn't seem to help at all either. Some friends suggested that it might be the PSU, so I got myself a new PSU. I can't remember what the old one was either, but the new one was a 470W Enermax PSU. The model is EG475P-VE. I was assured that it was more than enough power for my computer, my old PSU had only been 350W, I remember that much.
The new PSU didn't help. At this point someone suggested that I get a new hard drive, I got myself a Western Digital 250GB hard drive, and for some weird reason, I just used it as storage at the time and didn't reinstall windows on it or anything, so of course that didn't help.
I got pretty fed up with the whole situation, and didn't really want to throw more money at the problem. Pretty much the only things I had (and have) yet to replace were there CPU and the RAM, which probably should have been my first culprit, the RAM that is. I have 1GB of RAM, two 512MB sticks. I can't remember the brand right now unfortunately, but if it is important information I can open up my case to check it out. I haven't replaced my optical drives either but I kind of assume that they wouldn't be causing a problem like this.
That was all over a year ago. Fast forward a few months. I had pretty much gotten used to living with the crashes, they only happened every couple days anyways. Sure, sometimes I got two crashes in a day, but sometimes I would go for a whole week without any crashes. Then, something happened, I can't remember what it was, but some crash got me fed up enough that I decided to wipe one of my hard drives of all data (At the time I had 2x120GB Western Digitals and 1x250GB Western Digital, and still do) and reinstall Windows on it. Which I did. I didn't have enough space to backup everything on the 250GB drive, which I really wish I had, because even though it is a longshot, I always kind of think that it might be one, or both of the 120GB drives that are faulty. I reinstalled Windows XP on one of the 120GB drives.
I went about 5 hours before I crashed. And then I crashed again shortly after that.
I thought reinstalling would either make it better or not help at all. It got worse. The crashes were down to a frequency of about 2-3 a day. Sometimes more, sometimes less. I very rarely went more than 2 days without a crash. Sometimes the computer would even crash back to back right when I got to the login screen. It has been about a year since then, and it has been very frustrating.
Earlier tonight I had a very frustrating crash causing me to lose way more work than I should have lost (I should be used to saving my work frequently by now
) so it kind of filled the meter and I just must get this problem fixed. That is why I turn to you.I researched similar problems quite a bit in the past, and although I don't really remember any specific solutions I was given, I know that nothing really worked so I always pretty much gave up. The crashes seem to be completely random. I could be playing an advanced 3D graphics game, I could be writing a word document or surfing the web, or the computer could be idling on the desktop and not running anything while I sleep. It really seems to be completely random.
I read a few posts on various boards before writing this, and in most cases people are asked to post dumplogs. I turned on minidumps using some guide and I have a couple dumps attached with this post. 2 are new that happened tonight after crashes after I turned dumping on, 2 are older and I am not sure why they were in the minidump location.
In the rar I have attached, the dump in the folder labelled "1" happened first tonight. I have no idea how to analyze dumps, but I gave it a go and found this in it: Probably caused by : ndisuio.sys
I googled that file and ended up disabling Wireless Zero Configuration in Administrative Tools - Services according to someones advice.
I didn't expect it to work, and it didn't. I crashed shortly thereafter, and the dumplog in the folder labelled "2" is the dump that resulted in that crash. That dump has a different file under "probably caused by" but I will let you all check that one out for yourselves. My internet didn't work after the crash so I ended up re-enabling Wireless Zero Configuration and then it worked again, so I don't know what my next dump will look like, which file it will have under "probably caused by" that is.
I also seemed to have a few dumplogs from last January in the minidump directory for some reasons, and I attached one of those in the January folder. I can provide the others if you think they will help. They have the ndisuio.sys file mentioned, so I kind of assume I will get that file in my next dumps after enabling that. I also had one dump from September, not sure why that dump is the only one in between January and now, but oh well. It is completely different from the other dumps and I kind of assume that is an unrelated issue to the crashes, but I am no expert at this so I turn to all of you for help!
Thanks again for reading all of this, it ended up being far too long but I thought I would try to give as much information about my situation as I could.
With hopes of getting these damn crashes to stop,
David.
I forgot to attach the dumps, sorry.
Here they are: www.internet.is/zydoran/debugs.rar
Also, feel free to ask me about any information I might have left out, there is bound to be something I forgot to mention.
Edit 2: I have attached a new minidump, as I thought, the "problem caused by" is back to ndisuio.sys.
