Blue screen of death...

[Dr.Death]

Hi guys I think my computer is just about to die on me it has started playing up slow loading up frezeing up & now I am getting the blue screen of death.
Could this be my main HD failing or the ram any ideas??

[nzo]

Check your temps.
Quite likely something overheating.

Look in the bios for temps, or get something like SANDRA for checking.
Clean out your fans and heatsinks. Check your bios alarm levels for temps.

If your HD(s) are too hot to touch, this is bad.

I had some major heat problems with my old PC and lost HDs. Also, check northbridge on the motherboard. Usually got a crappy fan which can die. I had to replace that one too with a massive heatsink.

[Jim]

Almost certainly heat/failing fans as nzo says.  But worth also checking...
http://www.memtest86.com/

Jim

[zawran]

When the blue screen shows, it will most likely have a line where it has a stop code, you could google that code to find others who had similar problems. Or do a search on technet.com which is microsofts own technical website where they keep their hot fixes and such.

It will probably look something like this:

STOP: 0x00000101 , .....

After the stop code it will have four other codes but usually it is enough to have the first stop code to find a clue as to what is acting up.

[Dr.Death]

Thanx guys I will have another look tonight when I get back from work I will let you know what it is.

[va!n]

i had something similar with a clients PC... i found out, this PC was extremly infected by viruses... esp with a very extreme and destroying virus called "Virut" where i had no change to remove this virus with remover tools nor by hand nor by any antivirus software nor antispy tools - even in safe mode...

Just check out following things:

1. Open your PC case and check if the CPU and GPU coolers are free of dust...
2. Boot your PC and check TaskMen (tasks and if there are any tasks eating a lot of CPU ussage)
3. Try to remove all unneeded AutoRuns and hidden programs starting when booting windows.

If this all fails, try following steps:

1. Download SmitFraudFix and run this program in safe mode...
2. Download Malware AntiSpyware and check your PC...

If all steps fails, you should do following:

1. Turn off PC (disconnect powercable), remove all kind of hardware extensions like TV Card, Modem Card, CD/DVD, so you have at least only the Mainboard + CPU + RAM, GfxCard, Boot HDD...

Check out if the problems with SOD still exist... if so, it could be a software problem or still a hardware problem like an error in RAM module or Error on the HDD or anything else....

What you have to do, is to check all possibilities (software and then hardware) step by step...
Good Luck...

[Dr.Death]

Thanx vain i will try them

Here is the error i am getting stop:0x000009c

[Jim]

If you use google to look up that number you see it is a Machine Check Exception - a hardware fault of some kind, often caused by overheating or failing hardware.
If you're quick enough, one of the other numbers on the screen indicates what kind of component is at fault.
Jim

[combatking0]

I saw something like this on my neighbours PC. Cleaning the dust out from the CPU/heatsink/fan assembley fixed it, but you'll need a steady and careful hand to take it apart and put it back together.

[JL235]

The majority of blue screens of death are caused by buggy driver because they run in kernel mode and so can corrupt Windowz itself. If you have installed any new drivers before this all started, uninstall them and reinstall older versions. You can also try updating your graphics drivers, some official NVidia ones I was using last year were giving my PC a stop error.

[Shockwave]

When it happened to me in work it was caused by overheating. Cleaning the fluff out of the fans solved the problem.

[Yaloopy]

Friend of mine rang me last night to say her new Windows 7 laptop was giving BSODs every time it was loaded normally. Going to have a look tomorrow.

[JL235]

Friend of mine rang me last night to say her new Windows 7 laptop was giving BSODs every time it was loaded normally. Going to have a look tomorrow.

Boot into safe mode and perform a system restore. It'll probably be an update or something else he's installed that has messed it up.

I also had a BSOD on my Windows 7 machine before Christmas after I installed Virtual Box. It installs drivers in the host OS, which again was probably the cause. There was a video on Channel 9 about debugging BSODs where MS said that over 70% of them are caused by bugs in non-MS code.

[Dr.Death]

Thanx for all your input guys but my computer has died tonight I am taking it to a local computer shop for them to have a look for me. I just hope I haven't lost all my stuff of my HDDs..

I will keep you posted what the problem was.

[slinks]

MS said that over 70% of them are caused by bugs in non-MS code.

[JL235]

There is a video on debugging BSODs here on Channel 9. The guy who does it talks about the tools you can use to find out what has caused them. It's very interesting.

[Dr.Death]

I tried a system restore still no joy do I have taken it in to be repaired...

I should be getting it back on Thursday I hope guys.

[Dr.Death]

Hi guys I am back now I got my computer back 2day at last it was a my RAM shagged & my bloody stupid windows downloading the wrong new drivers for my GFX cards..WTF

I hope that is the last of it now.

[va!n]

@Dr.Death:
Nice to hear your machine still works again. Are you sure, windows d/l the wrong gfx drivers or did you d/l the wrong one by hand? Because its the first time, i hear Windows has d/l the wrong gfx drivers! Nothing against you nor your person, but such things are normaly user faults. However weclome back ^^