Help Please

[Disturbedguy]

Hey all

Some of you may remember that I had some issues with my PC a while ago which turned out to be the RAM.

I thought all was fine, it has been for some months, now today, I have had two physical memory dumps (blue screens) and an entire system lock up, with no warnings or the rest of it.

I have defragged the system just to make sure it is running fast and the rest of it but shortly after this, the lock up happened.

Any suggestions please.

[stevie lee]

have you double and triple checked the ram is running at the correct speed and voltage? run memtest yet?

try swapping the ram to different slots on the motherboard.

have you cleaned your PC recently? it's either really dusty, or you have dislodged something.

yesterday i got 4 updates through the auto update on XP SP3, could it be these causing it? assuming you've got XP that is.. they might have installed incorrectly and if you've done a restart they might be causing problems.

bit of a strange one this - have you got a surge protector? a small power spike might have damaged something inside your pc.


is the comp your talking about the one in 'my system', if it is then it could possibly the external HDD isnt plugged in correctly and the system tries to read something from it, can't find it then locks up or crashes.

can't think of anything else to check..

[Disturbedguy]

Surge Protector - Yes

Always cleaning my PC.

Haven't and wont install SP 3

Don't have the external HD's plugged in unless being used.

I do however think I have found the problem, i think it was the webcam, since removing it, ive not had any problems.

[Disturbedguy]

Well I thought it was fixed.

Just had another lock up.

However this time I noticed something, this only started happening last night.

When I restart the system, usually it detects the drives immediately and they are shown during boot, now however, it takes maybe 10 second before the drive is displayed (DVD Drive).

Anyone got any suggestions?

[KalC]

did you run memtest?

[merdat]

Hi there, well if I am getting any severe grief which is not often then I prefer to do a complete format and re-install. Works wonders -fastest route towards success . Got to make sure that you have everything backed up though. Now endless apologies if you have already done this but yours may be a hardware prob or malware or virus etc . A fresh install is a good start then if you are still having bother you can go back to square one with your hardware. (beware of boot sector virus's always a pain). You seems to have good kit so yours maybe your problem is not hardware. Ram and hard drives are cheap just now and there is no better way of eliminating hardware problems than substitution.

[Disturbedguy]

Ran memtest when i got the replacement RAM, all was and is fine.

Now endless apologies if you have already done this but yours may be a hardware prob or malware or virus etc . A fresh install is a good start then if you are still having bother you can go back to square one with your hardware. (beware of boot sector virus's always a pain). You seems to have good kit so yours maybe your problem is not hardware. Ram and hard drives are cheap just now and there is no better way of eliminating hardware problems than substitution.

No need to appologize mate, first thing i did was defrag so i know its nothing like that. I have spy ware scanned (today) as well as malware and all was fine, only thing I need to do now is virus scan.

I did however noticed that it only seems to lock up when on Call of Duty 4 and come to think of it, this problem only occured AFTER i installed the mapping tools.

Before I go for a fresh install of XP, which I have made plans to do when I get a new HD whose only purpose will be to hold my OS, so looking for a small ish drive, I will re-install CoD4 therefore completely removing the game and its mapping tools.

Out of curiosity, what do people use to fight spyware and that kind of crap.

On this PC, i have: -

SUPERAntiSpyware
Ad-Aware
BoClean - not actually sure what this does, saw it mentioned so grabbed it lol
WinPatrol is one aswell.

Its looking like a hardware issue if reinstalling the game doesnt work.

Thanks merdat.

[Lucio]

What's the actual error message that comes up? You should be able to then check the location it gives against the listing in device manager (set it to View -> Resources by Type, then under Input/Output).

[Jay]

I think this could be a faulty PSU.

[Disturbedguy]

Im not sure what the message is, I cant remember tbh.

It was just numbers and letters if I remember correctly.

Edit: - Forgot to add, when ever my system crashes I always check my Event Viewer to see if the problem has popped up in there but, when the system just locks up, causing me to reset no errors are shown, could this lead me to a solution to the problem or narrow it down?

[merdat]

Have used 'spybot' as well in the past. -another free one.

[nix2811]

Hi i think it has to be a hardware problem.And maybe its the ram.Run system scaning to get info if this is the problem.Try to remove one of the sticks or change the slots. If your Bios is an old version go and update it at 1st before you do anything ,then do all changes on the hardware .Cheers!