Windows restarts due to fatal hardware error

[Sephirajo]

Okay, I've just spent a frustrating morning on the phone with Dell tech support and I'm about ready to bang my head into my desk. They keep telling me this is a software error but I'm really sure it isn't.

A little background, I have a Dell Inspiron 750. It has 4 GB of ram a AMD II X2 250 3.00Ghz processor, NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450 graphics card. Until last night everything worked perfectly. I logged on to SWTOR and five minutes into game play the computer crashed.

This is what the error log had:

Log Name: System
Source: Microsoft-Windows-WHEA-Logger
Date: 4/13/2012 1:31:45 PM
Event ID: 20
Task Category: None
Level: Error
Keywords:
User: LOCAL SERVICE
Computer: Flemeth
Description:
A fatal hardware error has occurred.

Component: AMD Northbridge
Error Source: Machine Check Exception
Error Type: HyperTransport Watchdog Timeout Error
Processor ID: 0

The details view of this entry contains further information.
- System

- Provider

[ Name] Microsoft-Windows-WHEA-Logger
[ Guid] {C26C4F3C-3F66-4E99-8F8A-39405CFED220}

EventID 20

Version 0

Level 2

Task 0

Opcode 0

Keywords 0x8000000000000000

- TimeCreated

[ SystemTime] 2012-04-13T18:31:45.678894400Z

EventRecordID 23536

- Correlation

[ ActivityID] {733C6CC8-8F95-49CD-9756-B2876680BDE2}

- Execution

[ ProcessID] 1484
[ ThreadID] 1496

Channel System

Computer Flemeth

- Security

[ UserID] S-1-5-19


- EventData

ErrorSource 3
ApicId 0
MCABank 4
MciStat 0xfa00000000070f0f
MciAddr 0x0
MciMisc 0xc00a0fff01000000
ErrorType 7
Length 928
RawData 435045521002FFFFFFFF03000100000002000000A0030000391E12000D040C140000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000BDC407CF89B7184EB3C41F732CB57131FE6FF5E89C91C54CBA8865ABE14913BB441B088EA319CD0102000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000058010000C00000000102000001000000ADCC7698B447DB4BB65E16F193C4F3DB0000000000000000000000000000000001000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000018020000800000000102000000000000B0A03EDC44A19747B95B53FA242B6E1D0000000000000000000000000000000001000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000098020000080100000102000000000000011D1E8AF94257459C33565E5CC3F7E8000000000000000000000000000000000100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000007F010000000000000002040000030000630F10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000007000000000000000000000000000000630F10000008020009208000FFFB8B170000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000B3F8F31CB1C5A249AA595EEF92FFA63C01000000000000009E07C0E60700000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000100000002000000E23C4991A319CD010000000000000000000000000000000000000000040000000F0F0700000000FA000000000000000000000001FF0F0AC00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000


I tried Skyrim next and about 10 minutes into that same error. I ran the diagnostic from bios and nothing came back as being corrupted. I did a system restore and things still aren't working. When chatting with dell customer support we uninstalled and reinstalled all the drivers for everything and STILL nothing. Now they're telling me it's not a hardware error at all and that completely wiping my computer and reinstalling windows is the only option. I can't play ANY of my games while this is doing this, but they refuse to see it as broken because well, it still checks email. :/

Will doing the complete reinstall of windows actually fix anything or should I call again and see what else there is to do first? Or any suggestions for fixes here?

Please?

 

[Tmagic650]

Go here:
https://www.techspot.com/vb/topic51365.html
Perform the hard drive and memory checks mentioned here anyway. Attach any minidumps per instructions. You may have to ZIP them

 

[Sephirajo]

I preformed the ones I could make sense of, also had before this preformed the bios start up test with no errors found. The memory test returned no errors after a couple of passes - right now I don't have the time needed to run it for the seven suggested ones. I also attempted scan disk and to fix errors in windows - no errors were found in any of the files or scans.

What I'm getting isn't exactly a blue screen of death - I have it set up not to restart in case of a fatal error like that. What happens here is there's a "whrrrrr" through the speakers (I don't hear it if I'm not wearing my headphones) and then the screen goes black and windows restarts.

Searching for the event ID/source brings back NOTHING on the sites linked in the info post. Searching just the event ID doesn't pull up anything comparable either.

the .dmp is attached. This has been extremely frustrating as since last night I've been trying everything from system restores to in depth scans to try to figure out what's going on here.

 

[Tmagic650]

The minidump doesn't show any clues. Have you thought about replacing the power supply?

 

[Sephirajo]

The more I read on this the more I'm wondering if that isn't what's going on. I'm going to crack it open when my husband gets home and clean it out and it's something we'll discuss then.

Thank you for looking over the minidump

 

[Tmagic650]

You're welcome,
and yes, check out the insides and again consider a power supply change

 

[damian brown]

I have same issue

asus m5a78l-m/usb3
4gb ddr3 ram
nvidia geforce 9600gt 512mb
amd athlon II x4 640 processor

 

[Tmagic650]

Have you checked to see that the inside of the computer is clean and that the fans are clean and running normally? The video card may need cleaning too