New install of Windows and now PC not stable

[Behemoth]

I'm really pulling my hair out with this one now. Did a re-install of XP yesterday because I somehow managed to get a virus on my PC, and no matter what tool I used to remove it, it always came back. Ever since doing that re-install my PC will crash at random times, it could run for 2 hours fine, it could run for 5 hours, then it will only run for 5 minutes and I get a real hard lock up, and the only way around it is to do press the reset button.

Specs are

Gigabyte GA955DSP3 Rev 3.3 (Flashed to F11 bios)
Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 (Allendale core, was overclocked but now running at stock as I thought that was the problem but it wasn't)
ATI Radeon X1800 XT
2 Gig Corsair DDR2 RAM 667 FSB
Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS
Compro DVB T200 TV card

I just don't get it, before the virus it was really stable and depenable, but now arg not happy.

The odd thing is I'm sual booting with Windows Vista 64 and thats really stable, but as half my games aren't supported XP is my primary os (XP Pro, all updates installed and everything has the latest driver also)

I've gone into the bios and turned my memory speeds down to normal, and set the optimal defaults.

Any ideas guys ??

[edp33]

Are all the drivers correctly installed, check device manager.

Also does the event log report any problems?

[Behemoth]

Yup all drivers correctly installed, not got any problems there, also checked in the event viewer and can't see anything there that relates to anything hardware specfic, got a few little errors there with software and it saying that it can't find the ulead burning manager (I don't have anything ulead installed)

Flashed upto F12 bios now and running it all at fail safe settings. Grr darn virus.

[speardane]

sounds like it may have infected the boot sector.

If you know which it (virus) is you may be able to get a tool specific to remove it.

Probably the simplest route is to clean install onto a fresh disk. Load AV etc...
mount the "damaged" disk in a USB drive and try to disinfect it before recovering data.

Sorry if I'm stating obvious - but I hope you're using up-to-date definitions?

once you've disinfected it (and got you're data off), it's probably safer to scrub & re-partition it. I always do this with non windows tools - as essentially we're competing with those evil ................. who write & distribute viruses - writing two-OS viruses is more difficult.

[Oobie-]

Does it BSOD at all, just reboot or...?

A pretty random idea - Try changing the PCI slot that your soundcard is in, I had a crashing problem a while back and that solved it for me.

[Behemoth]

Nope there was no BSOD at all just a hard lock and that was the end of it. It was a worm virus and to re-partiton I used Hiren Boot CD 9, I forget which tool I used exactly now on that CD but I know that any trace of the virus has gone, thankfully for me all my important data is stored on external hard drives which are only powered up when I need them.

I'm using AVG Free Edition, seems to work best if you can catch the virus early enough.

I've put the latest F12 bios on and have set my options to load fail safe, and so far now for the last 5 hours and 5 minutes it's not yet crashed on me, but there's always time.

[Behemoth]

Annoyingly after 5 days of stable PC usage the problem rears it's ugly head again. Really getting annoyed with this now, every time I look in the event log I find nothing to suggest anything majorly wrong and my PC in Vista 64 does not crash, only always in XP

Getting to the point now where I just want to take it outside and beat it with a stick.

[merdat]

Well you will just have to go back to square one and recheck everything. Personally I would see if you can put xp on a separate drive and run your machine from that for a while. p.s. (a boot sector virus is quite a difficult thing to get rid off ).

[Behemoth]

Low Level format time for my 500 gig hard drive it is then.

[excalibur2]

If you have the same MB as me you have some how got the wrong bios installed:-

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Support/M...ProductID=2455

Mine is F5

Can't see how this could happen as it would be detected as incorrect, but it's a long shot that might solve your problem.

[Behemoth]

I've just looked at the original order for my mother board from over clockers and the description says this

Gigabyte GA_965P_DS3 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard

When I got it, it had F10 Bios on it.

[excalibur2]

I've just looked at the original order for my mother board from over clockers and the description says this

Gigabyte GA_965P_DS3 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard

When I got it, it had F10 Bios on it.

Ah! The "P" is/was in the wrong place and you have a GA-965P-DS3 (rev. 3.3), in that case you are correct for F12.

[Behemoth]

Yes I've changed it, grrr I get so confused with motherboards these days.

[IAmATeaf]

What voltage are you running the RAM at, also what frequency is your PCI-E bus running at, try upping the RAM voltage a notch and set the PCI-E bus to 101.

[Behemoth]

It's all running at stock volts.

[Behemoth]

Problem has been resolved, it seems it was my sata drivers. took me a new hard drive to work that out lol