blue screens on brand new Dell

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Hello there.
I've recently bought a new computer from Dell and it is rather unstable. I've formated the hard drive, re-installed XP, then installed the drivers for the chipset, network, graphics from Dell's site, then downloaded the latest windows critical updates.
The computer is on a workgroup connected to a netgear DG834 router/modem/firewall with the latest firmware.

The rest of the specifications are :
Intel Pentium D CPU 3,2GHz - not overclocked
2 250GB hard drives connected in a nvidia stripe raid 0
NVIDIA GeForce 7800GTX
NVIDIA nForce Networking controller
Creative SB X-Fi sound
PSU - Dell's own. 600Watt I think
Windows XP pro SP2
Remember this is brand-new out of the box

I installed the ani-virus program avats4 and have left the computer running a bittorrent program and went away. After a few hours it crashed to a blue stop screen. It continued doing this so..... I formatted and re-installed windows and the drivers and tried again and it crashed again. :(

As the computer is brand new (just over a week) I may try and get a replacement or refund from Dell. I'm highly reluctant to call the support line because I know how stressful and pretty much limited they are. You get through to some bloke sitting infront of one of those standard troubleshooter programs and the advice is reinstall windows etc.

I'm wondering if anyone here is good a decifering 64k mini dump files. Rather than attching them to this post I've put them all here:-
http://www.zen70645.zen.co.uk/crash
with a photograph in living colour!!!! and will be adding to the list as time passes. and machine crashes.......
I know that 3 of them mention something to do with the network controller and as the crashes have occured when using bittorrent I thought it might have something to do with bittorrent putting a strain on it. I know this was a common problem in the early days of bittorrent, about 3/4 years back. But that was only with cheap/poor network cards. I'm using a realitivly top-end brand new machine with networking built into the motherboard. I'm using the latest nVidia driver for it.
The other stop errors are each different.

My previous computer was and is a Dimension4600 from Dell that has seen really heavy use. It's been on literally 24hours a day 7 days a week for the best part of 2.5 years and in that time has only crashed about 8 times and on each occasion the crash could be duplicated and diagnosed.
This thing has been active for less than a week, running a fraction of the programs the Dimension was and has crashed almost as many times with very little pattern to them.

Anyway any help or advice would be very welcome. Have I got faulty hardware, bad memory/over heating etc or is it a driver conflict that can be easily sorted?
 
Hi,

The crashes may have multiple culprits. 3 minidumps are crashed at NVENETFD.sys. You also gets 3 different bugcheck code especially bugcheck code C2 and 24 is usually caused by faulty ram. The last minidump is crashed with bugcheck 7E and the module list is corrupted. They are the signs of faulty ram.

Suggestion
1) Run memtest to stress test the ram
2) 3 system crashed at NVENETFD.sys and they maybe related to faulty ram. For problem isolation, you had better upgrade NVENETFD.sys.

Debug report
Mini030206-01.dmp BugCheck 100000D1, {90014, 2, 0, ba5ea7d5}
Probably caused by : NVENETFD.sys ( NVENETFD+38f0 )

Mini030206-02.dmp BugCheck C2, {7, cd4, 90001, 89543c28}
Probably caused by : ntkrpamp.exe ( nt!ExFreePoolWithTag+2a3 )

Mini030206-03.dmp BugCheck 24, {1902fe, aff2e5c0, aff2e2bc, ba8e9036}
DEFAULT_BUCKET_ID: NULL_CLASS_PTR_DEREFERENCE
Probably caused by : CLASSPNP.SYS ( CLASSPNP!SubmitTransferPacket+57 )

Mini030306-01.dmp BugCheck 100000D1, {90014, 2, 0, ba5ea7d5}
Probably caused by : NVENETFD.sys ( NVENETFD+38f0 )

Mini030306-02.dmp BugCheck 100000D1, {110014, 2, 0, ba5ea7d5}
Probably caused by : NVENETFD.sys ( NVENETFD+38f0 )

Mini030406-01.dmp BugCheck 1000007E, {c0000005, 805a6981, b1525aec, b15257e8}
Probably caused by : Unknown_Image <-- corrupted module list
 
Hi thanks for the response.
I've had another crash since you looked at the files. I'll be posting any subsequent mini-dumps to the same address
http://www.zen70645.zen.co.uk/crash/
This new one mentioned a file that's part of the sound card driver. So the number of possible software culprets seems to grow, suggesting hardware I guess.
I've heard that memtest, or any software RAM tester can't pick up all faults, some can slip by. So it's possible to have dodgey RAM even if it passes for say 24+ hours.
This is a brand new, well 10 days old, computer and was rather expensive so I'll see what the company I got it off have to say and I'll be adding to the online crash dump repository as they occur!
 
run memtest86 from a floppy or CD to diagnose RAM. let is run for a least 7 passes or more
 
Hello. I've tested the RAM with the latest version of Memtest86. I left the thing running the standard tests overnight and after 9 hours there were no errors reported.
How reliable is this? Do I need to run the test for longer?

Incidently I'm adding to the crash dumps as they happen at this address:-
http://www.zen70645.zen.co.uk/crash
 
Hi,

Some faulty ram can pass memtest and you can say that memtest is not reliable tools. Try reseat the ram to another memory slot.


Debug report of your minidumps
Mini030506-01.dmp BugCheck 1000008E, {c0000005, b1959f58, 9779f774, 0}
Probably caused by : ctsfm2k.sys ( ctsfm2k+ef58 )

Mini030806-01.dmp BugCheck 1000008E, {c0000005, 804f4afa, b1c2b5f4, 0}
Probably caused by : aswMon2.SYS ( aswMon2+6578 )
 
Hello. It passes memtest86 so I decided to try the Microsoft Windows Memory Diagnostic:- http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp

And it failed pretty much straight away. All the tests fail and after about 10 secs or so the program freezes.

Now does anyone know whether this really indicates faulty RAM or whether the type of memory used in these machines is incompatible with this test and so produce false negatives?

The memory is DDR2 SDRAM, whatever that means.
 
Reseat memory module to another memory slot

Hi,

Probably it is faulty ram. Reseat the memory module to another memory slot or downclock the ram. If you have more than one memory module, remove one memory module one by one in order to diagnostic which memory module is faulty.
 
I have the exact same problem

Hi melly6... I found this post from a Google search. I have the exact same problem with my PC, it's a brand new Dell XPS600, with specs very similar to yours. I find the crash is most common when I'm running ABC BitTorrent client, although it's been known to happen at other times. Also I can get it to happen more frequently by connecting my cable modem through the USB port instead of the ethernet port. The common factor for all the crashes, I think, is that I'm using the internet.

Did you ever resolve this problem? Or did you just take the computer back? Do you have any advice?
 
melly6 said:
Hello there.
I've recently bought a new computer from Dell and it is rather unstable. I've formated the hard drive, re-installed XP, then installed the drivers for the chipset, network, graphics from Dell's site, then downloaded the latest windows critical updates.
The computer is on a workgroup connected to a netgear DG834 router/modem/firewall with the latest firmware.

The rest of the specifications are :
Intel Pentium D CPU 3,2GHz - not overclocked
2 250GB hard drives connected in a nvidia stripe raid 0
NVIDIA GeForce 7800GTX
NVIDIA nForce Networking controller
Creative SB X-Fi sound
PSU - Dell's own. 600Watt I think
Windows XP pro SP2
Remember this is brand-new out of the box

I installed the ani-virus program avats4 and have left the computer running a bittorrent program and went away. After a few hours it crashed to a blue stop screen. It continued doing this so..... I formatted and re-installed windows and the drivers and tried again and it crashed again. :(

As the computer is brand new (just over a week) I may try and get a replacement or refund from Dell. I'm highly reluctant to call the support line because I know how stressful and pretty much limited they are. You get through to some bloke sitting infront of one of those standard troubleshooter programs and the advice is reinstall windows etc.

I'm wondering if anyone here is good a decifering 64k mini dump files. Rather than attching them to this post I've put them all here:-
http://www.zen70645.zen.co.uk/crash
with a photograph in living colour!!!! and will be adding to the list as time passes. and machine crashes.......
I know that 3 of them mention something to do with the network controller and as the crashes have occured when using bittorrent I thought it might have something to do with bittorrent putting a strain on it. I know this was a common problem in the early days of bittorrent, about 3/4 years back. But that was only with cheap/poor network cards. I'm using a realitivly top-end brand new machine with networking built into the motherboard. I'm using the latest nVidia driver for it.
The other stop errors are each different.

My previous computer was and is a Dimension4600 from Dell that has seen really heavy use. It's been on literally 24hours a day 7 days a week for the best part of 2.5 years and in that time has only crashed about 8 times and on each occasion the crash could be duplicated and diagnosed.
This thing has been active for less than a week, running a fraction of the programs the Dimension was and has crashed almost as many times with very little pattern to them.

Anyway any help or advice would be very welcome. Have I got faulty hardware, bad memory/over heating etc or is it a driver conflict that can be easily sorted?


If its brand new then just call them up and tell them to fix it. No point of fixing it yourself if you can get free parts replacement and diagnostics.
 
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