verve247

System:
Dell Dimension 8300, WinXP
2.8 GHz
1Gig Ram
Radeon 9800 Pro (128mb)
pci cards: d-link wireless and firewire card.
2 IDE harddrives, NEC dvd drive, generic cd burner.

So i just moved and drove with my computer in the car for 7 hours. When i plugged it in at my new apartment, trouble started immmediately. I keep getting this blue screen that says a problem was detected and my physical memeory was dumped and i should run some hardware tests. This blue screen appears randomly after about a hour of use. I never know when it will actually strike.

So i:
Made Sure cables are properly seated.
Ran memtest: memory is fine
Ran chkdsk: caught a few errors, ran again and is fine.'
Now the Blue screen still appears after this.
Any recommendations?
Could it be that my apartment outlets are not truly grounded (i checked). There is a surge protector inbetween. Problems with the mobo? THe video card? Any recommended diagnostic tool to use?

__________________
Vegetarian - Old indian word meaning poor hunter.

CynJon

Re-check and reseat all of your hardware components (memory, video card, etc.) My guess is something got wiggled loose during the moving.

Also, do your temps look normal? Possible that the HSF got moved or came loose, as well.

__________________

verve247

HSF?

Is there a builtin method to checking temp; what should be average? its a 875chipset.

It might be connected to my video card. When i boot up, the welcome screen is all fuzzy, yet fine when it show my desktop. I just switched to a vga cable from dvi. Could it be a bad cable?

And the technical info of the blue screen contianed this:
***stop: 0x0000007F (0x00000000,0x00000000,0x00000000,0x00000000)

DarkFury

Is your Dell still under warranty? If so... give them a call and take advantage of the "tech support" that you paid for...

Let them worry about it.

__________________


DarkFury's Pimptopia - Don't Hate the Playa, Hate the Game!
Home of the Original OG Pimp (accept NO imitations)

verve247

And have to send in my computer to have dell work on it? Ug. That in my eyes is a worse case scenario. This might sound strange, but it might by related to Kazaa. Every time the blue screen appearred, kazaa was running in the background. I tested my computer by running a dvd without kazaa running and it has not shown the blue screen in the last 5 hours. Is such a connection possible? I now use sbcyahoo isp and have a new modem and linksys router.

According to this article it could be anything. I just hope its not a scratched or ruined mobo. Can i just use a regular voltmeter on a mobo to check if its working?
link

Jeffbx

Uh, yeah - Kazaa is the most spyware riddled piece of sh*t ever devised. Uinstall it, run every spyware killer you can get your hands on, and it might take care of the problem.

Then have a look at bit torrent for file sharing.


Also, FYI - if it IS a hardware problem, if you don't have an on-site warranty from Dell they usually ship the parts to you - they don't make you return the machine to them. Then you ship back the bad part (they pay both ways).

brainsmile

I'm sure there are ways of disabling the spyware in the hosts file.

__________________
**********************************
DCM #1 (Founder)





"Nobody beats Vitus Gerulaitis 18 times in a row." - Vitus Gerulaitis on beating Jimmy Connors after 17 failed attempts.

verve247

Well, it was Kazaa lite resurrection I was using which i was under the impression has the least amount of spyware. I thought it was strange that it only started causing problems now after 6 months of use. Yet since i've stopped running it, my computer has been fine since.

Update: Now i'm thinking that it may have to do with my ethernet (built-in nic). It seems that if i try to download too much at once (+ 10 files) the blue screen appears. I'll test it on my wireless card in a few days. That will determine if its a hardware or operating system limitation.

KCEnder

I agree that it sounds like a heat problem. if you take the side of the case off and turn the computer on, check to make sure that all of the fans are working, i had this exact same thing happen to mine, turns out one of the smaller fans over the chipset was failing and after any hard use, i got the BSOD.

bbrian

Post the details in the bluescree the next time you get a bluescreen.. the module name and adresses are very useful to help determine what caused the crash. Usually you can find the details in your system eventlog if you don't want to write it all down.

verve247

That link i posted halfway up the thread describes the one i got and i listed the tech info above that one: unexpected kernel mode trap. Unfortunately it gives several possibilities: hardware (heat on cpu, memeory, cracked mobo) or software.

Further update: my computer seems to be running fine. Can anyone recommend any cpu intensive tasks to see if it is heatbuilup?

CynJon

I use Prime95 or the burn-in feature of SiSoft Sandra Pro...