Another day, another BSOD... - Page 2

RizzyKing · 29-07-2012, 21:27

I would definately say hd or ram is the cause here and while ram kits may say the same timings and so on two seemingly identical kits don't always play well together and here we have two sets of different capacity sometimes time is all that is needed to bring up an error. Hdtune will soon tell you if it is hd related as a crash while running that confirms hd problem of some sort.

**Matt D** · 30-07-2012, 17:19

Latest:

I ran HDTune Pro (trial), and did an Error Scan (quick): All green.

Ran it again, with a full Error Scan: Two red blocks about a third of the way through... and it stopped there.

Told it to scan again... it had a bit of a fit, whizzed through the whole drive, marking *everything* in red, and then the PC froze. I had to force a power-off, and then turned it on again and selected Safe Mode...

... which did not load. The PC went through the motions, didn't like it, rebooted, and I ended up with a normal boot.

I then tried Memtest86+, and left it running for around three hours. It did two full passes, and found no errors.

I then booted up into Safe Mode (successfully this time), and tried another full Error Scan with HDTune... This time everything was green

EDIT: Oh, I also removed the Catalyst drivers yesterday... after the first HDTune Error Scan. Also tried yet another malware scan (I'm paranoid), using the latest version of the free Kaspersky virus remover. Changed it to "High" security, and customised it with "Deep Scan" for rootkits. After three hours of scanning all was clean.

tizmeinnit · 30-07-2012, 17:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by Matt D

Latest:

I ran HDTune Pro (trial), and did an Error Scan (quick): All green.

Ran it again, with a full Error Scan: Two red blocks about a third of the way through... and it stopped there.

Told it to scan again... it had a bit of a fit, whizzed through the whole drive, marking *everything* in red, and then the PC froze. I had to force a power-off, and then turned it on again and selected Safe Mode...

... which did not load. The PC went through the motions, didn't like it, rebooted, and I ended up with a normal boot.

I then tried Memtest86+, and left it running for around three hours. It did two full passes, and found no errors.

I then booted up into Safe Mode (successfully this time), and tried another full Error Scan with HDTune... This time everything was green

EDIT: Oh, I also removed the Catalyst drivers yesterday... after the first HDTune Error Scan. Also tried yet another malware scan (I'm paranoid), using the latest version of the free Kaspersky virus remover. Changed it to "High" security, and customised it with "Deep Scan" for rootkits. After three hours of scanning all was clean.

possible controller issue? is it IDE or sata? I assume its sata? does your motherboard have 1 or 2 sata controllers ?

**Matt D** · 30-07-2012, 17:46

It's SATA. I don't know how many SATA controllers it has.

Taf · 30-07-2012, 18:16

Do you have a processor temperature monitor?

I have seem MANY odd fails and symptoms as the thermal compound dries out between the heatsink and processor.

I am told that lead-free solder is causing many failures too. It is used as the "ball contacts" betwen the processor and motherboard. The number one cause of failures in Playstation 3's and Xbox's too I am reliably told. "Reballing" with leaded solder is the only way forward then.

Scrubbs · 30-07-2012, 19:14

I think I would be narrowing down to hardware, not malaware I am also leaning towards either M/B or power supply.

RizzyKing · 30-07-2012, 19:33

They do have a tendency to put cheap generic psu's into ready made which do degrade over time. But everything you've said Matt is exactly what i had with one of the ibm deathstar hd just before it gave up the ghost. Sure you already do but i would back up anything valuable.

**Matt D** · 03-08-2012, 22:02

Yeah, I have a temp monitor for it. No problems at all.

Increasingly "ropey" noises due suggest to me that it is a hardware issue.

I notice that UAC was disabled again. Re-enabled it. Paranoia then caused more scans. Clean. Also installed Panda Cloud AV (free): All clean. Maybe the UAC weirdness was just another symptom of a dying system?

However... As mentioned earlier, I had a new computer on the way anyway, so was never too fussed about actually fixing anything. I just wanted to make sure that it was a hardware issue and not some insidious piece of malware that managed to hide from every thing I could scan with.

Well, the new computer came on Wednesday, and I'm using it right now. The old desktop is sitting on the floor waiting for me to arrange a recycling collection.

I've run a couple of disk wiping things on it:

First I tried DBAN. It failed every time, "completed with non-fatal errors" one second after initiating each wipe. Also tried HDDerase and some Samsung utility I found on UBCD. Neither of those worked either.

Tried Active KillDisk instead... Worked.

So, thanks for all the help and suggestions everybody - helped reassure me that it was a hardware issue. Would have been nice ot narrow it right down, but I didn't have time for that in the end.

03-08-2012, 23:45

Ropey noises Matt? Sounds like the HDD dude. Graunching or grinding is the best that I can attribute that sound to. Happy that I was of (limited) help.

alferret · 05-08-2012, 07:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Matt D

The old desktop is sitting on the floor waiting for me to arrange a recycling collection.

Would you like to recycle it in my direction if I pay for postage? You can rip the drive out for security purposes.

bubblegun · 06-08-2012, 09:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by alferret

Would you like to recycle it in my direction if I pay for postage? You can rip the drive out for security purposes.

I'd bet on it being a disk problem so that would be a probably perfectly fine barebones system.

Nanor · 09-08-2012, 10:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by Taf

I had recent fails and feezes and using this method found it was Rapport (a security program from Santander) that was the cause.

I've now had six users in work all report that their browsers were not working. When I had a look no browser would even open let alone connect. On each occasion Rapport was the culprit, no longer even try to troubleshoot this I just uninstall the bloody thing and all issues are resolved.