Program Crashes, Services Stop and Lots of BSOD!

[huwb85]

Program Crashes, Services Stop and Lots of BSOD! Hi - ive come to you in my hour or rather month of need!

 

Its difficult to find where to start with this one... Windows Services crash constantly, and not just one but nearly anything Defender, Module Installer, Explorer, Host process for Windows Service, Windows Licensing Service (which prompts my computerhttp://images.intellitxt.com/ast/adTypes/mag-glass_10x10.gif to tell me that none of the microsoft software is genuine) the list goes on....

 

Secondly Programs will crash, most commonly web browsers (as this is pretty much all I have been using since the problems started) but other programs will also crash if given half a chance. I also find that the flash plugin crashes when watching any videos online as well, this happens nearly everytime I watch a video, or play a little miniclip style flash game.

 

Then theres the BSOD's, and man there have been a lot of them! I had been noting down the 0x000000 error codes on each one but then i started running out of space on the paper, which cant be good. Most commonly they are 0x00000050 and 0x0000008e stops, but as I said, there have been many many more, ocassionaly i noticed the win32k.sys file being mentioned, another time I have seen a different .sys file flash up but didnt catch the name, it is not common for these files to be mentioned in the BSOD's.

 

The last time I really remember my computer working well was just after I restored the factory default settings and wiped the harddrive for a "fresh Start". before this the computer was begining to really run slowly so i decided to restore the factory default settings and clear the harddrive. For a few weeks it ran perfectly like a brand new computer again and then I had a BSOD whilst playing a game, this happened every time I tried to play the game and then the windows services began crashing and now here I am....

 

I have tried formating the hard drives and reinstalling Vista but that hasnt helped which makes me think it may be a hardware problem, I have switched my graphics card to a spare to see if that was causing it. I have also run my computer on one stick of ram at a time to try and check the ram (I currently have 3gb ram over 3 sticks so I have taken two out and tried them all seperately) problem persists. I have run the windows memory diagnostic tool which didnt report any problems (although im not confident it ever would :S) I have installed drivers, and reinstalled drivers and probably other things over the last few weeks that I just cant recall. I have also tried switching the DIMM sockets that the ram is in to see if they are faulty but the problem persists ...as always http://b.tsgstatic.com/smilies/frown.gif I have attached a recent perfmon report to the post.

 

I am thinking its either faulty ram, faulty motherboard or faulty processor but how to find out which without replacing each? I just wanted to get your opinions before I go an buy replacements (or replace the whole computer), is it possible for all 3 sticks of ram to be corrupted all at the same time? It is difficult to say what causes the problems as they appear quite randomly, as I write this Host process for windows has just stopped working (thankfully it wasnt explorer, that would have tipped me over the edge! best hurry this one up!)

 

Anyway... Thanks for even reading this far http://www.techsupportforum.com/images/smilies/1-wink.gif .....and thanks in advance for any help.

report.zip

[seedy21]

hmm i try a disk check on your computer to see if it is a software error or a hardware failure

 

go to start , run and type in chkdsk and see if this fixes it

 

 

Seedy21

[huwb85]

yeah I have run chkdsk, it did its thing and then the black cmd screen disappeard, does this mean all tests were passed?

[Dalo Harkin]

If you try and run a chkdsk then what should happen is a small dialog box popup saying it cant check the disk as its in use and then ask if you want it to start at the next boot up. (this is for system drives though) all other 'data' drives will be scanned right away

[huwb85]

ahh yes, I have done this before, in Vista typing in chkdsk doesnt seem to start the one that takes place on restart, it will open a the black command prompt screen opens and it begins testing giving a % completion rate, it does a number of tests and then simply closes down.

 

I cant remeber how I accessed the other one, but it didnt pick up any errors. Have also run memtest for 8 hours now and that has not reported any errors either

[Dalo Harkin]

Both the errors that you listed are RAM errors so I would say that one of the RAM modules is faulty. BUT its not as clear cut as that (it never is :D) a BSOD can be caused by a split second read/write error within the RAM and these are not always detected by RAM monitoring software.

Is the RAM that you have dual channel?

do you know the make and model number of each chip of RAM?

take the RAM modules out and on the sticker it will say along the lines of:-

Speed (PC3200/DDR400) or (PC8500/1066)

Timings 5-5-5-15

Voltage 1.8V

 

when using more than 2 matched sticks the RAM will need setting higher and often the timings revised.

[huwb85]

I have 3 sticks in total but at the moment I am only using one, its a 2gb ddr2 - 800, other than this all it says on the side is 41-09-58 in large letters and a serial number.

 

Only one out of the 3 sticks I have state 5-5-5 on the side, but I am not currently using that one.

[huwb85]

ok...so before I give up one final question, would it have been possible for all of my sticks of ram to have become corrupted/bad at the same time, if this doesnt happen then I guess I can completely rule out it being a ram problem, otherwise I might try to buy a new stick of ram as a last resort.

[Dalo Harkin]

It's VERY VERY unlikely that all the RAM has gone bad at the same time. (99.9%)

I leave the .1 just incase :D

 

If you have tried all sticks independent and in each DIMM slot and nothing works, MOST MOBOs have a limit on how much RAM the bus can handle and although 4.5GB does not seem alot it can be on older boards (most of which only support 2GB max, one GB in each slot) if there are 4 slots then (4x1GB is normally maxing the bus) that being said there are modern MOBOs that can take 16GB over 4 slots (4x4GB)

 

I would remove the CMOS and try the dimms one at a time. again.