Advice on determining cause of a BSOD.

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Mar 28, 2005
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Hello [H] friends. Im troubleshooting an old pc for a friend. Its an AMD Athlon 6400+ with 1gig ddr, a 160gig hard drive and windows Vista Basic. Basically the story is this: She says its super slow and it bsod's anytime she shuts down or reboots. I checked it out and naturally her AV software has been expired for who knows how long and she's downloaded a ton of "anti-malware" and "speed up my pc" apps. Sigh...molasses is faster than this thing. :p I back up her photos and music and nuke the drive with a fresh install of Vista Basic. I install avast (my av of choice) and ccleaner...that's it. Then all the windows updates and service packs. The system screams "Im alive!" and starts chugging right along. Its surprisingly quick actually. Problem is that its still bsod'ing anytime I reboot/or shut down and it only does it exactly then.

What Ive tried:
Reinstalled OS and all updates
Ran several memtest programs and tried different ram as well as different ram slots - No errors.
Ran Chkdsk, checked for errors and scanned for bad sectors - No issues
Checked all cables, connectors, etc.
Checked cpu/case temps..all normal
Dusted inside case (compressed air)

Im stumped. Computer runs great otherwise. Any ideas?
 
While you were in the case, did you check the capacitors? I've seen this behavior on systems when the caps on the mobo are beginning to fail. They'll bulge in the top-middle.
 
When you reinstalled the OS did you delete the old partition, recreate and reformat the drive? If not you may still have a rootkit on the drive.
 
Did you run prime95 to make sure the CPU is stable?

I wonder if the voltage to the CPU droops on load either due to bad PSU or bad motherboard power delivery (capacitors mentioned by prior poster).
 
Seems a bit pointless to do all that without seeing the information from the BSOD.
 
1GB RAM on Vista is just asking for trouble.

2GB is really not even enough, but will be leaps and bounds faster than a measley 1GB.

If you have or can aquire some more DDR1 RAM for cheap, throw it in there and watch it speed up a lot.

As for the BSOD on shutdown/restart.. have you tried reseating the processor? It could also be that the thermal cmound has started separating and has a "hot spot" that is not showing up in the CPU temps.
 
While you were in the case, did you check the capacitors? I've seen this behavior on systems when the caps on the mobo are beginning to fail. They'll bulge in the top-middle.
Didn't check that, not at home anymore but ill check tonight.

When you reinstalled the OS did you delete the old partition, recreate and reformat the drive? If not you may still have a rootkit on the drive.
Yes, deleted all partitions and reformatted before clean install.

Did you run prime95 to make sure the CPU is stable?

I wonder if the voltage to the CPU droops on load either due to bad PSU or bad motherboard power delivery (capacitors mentioned by prior poster).
Did not do that, just checked temps. Good idea.
Seems a bit pointless to do all that without seeing the information from the BSOD.
I'm not at home any longer to copy/paste the exact log but it said something about "Page fault in nonpaged area". I googled the error and the consensus seems to be bad memory or file system error.
 
As I mentioned earlier, caps look fine. System ran Prime95 all night without errors. Here is the bsod info.

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: BlueScreen
OS Version: 6.0.6002.2.2.0.768.2
Locale ID: 1033

Additional information about the problem:
BCCode: 50
BCP1: FFFFFFE8
BCP2: 00000001
BCP3: 81E4FD1F
BCP4: 00000000
OS Version: 6_0_6002
Service Pack: 2_0
Product: 768_1

Files that help describe the problem:
C:\Windows\Minidump\Mini062612-01.dmp
C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Temp\WER-225499-0.sysdata.xml
C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Temp\WERF871.tmp.version.txt

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Video driver? I seem to recall having a similar problem with an old nVidia card and Vista.
 
As I mentioned earlier, caps look fine. System ran Prime95 all night without errors. Here is the bsod info.

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: BlueScreen
OS Version: 6.0.6002.2.2.0.768.2
Locale ID: 1033

Additional information about the problem:
BCCode: 50
BCP1: FFFFFFE8
BCP2: 00000001
BCP3: 81E4FD1F
BCP4: 00000000
OS Version: 6_0_6002
Service Pack: 2_0
Product: 768_1

Files that help describe the problem:
C:\Windows\Minidump\Mini062612-01.dmp
C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Temp\WER-225499-0.sysdata.xml
C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Temp\WERF871.tmp.version.txt

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Usually caused by bad memory (system ram, video RAM, or one of the CPU caches).
 
Usually caused by bad memory (system ram, video RAM, or one of the CPU caches).

Thanks. Ive tested the ram as well as replaced it and the error persists. Would prime95 uncover issues with the CPU cache? It passed all tests. I need to dig around for an old video card to put in to see if its the nvidia issue.
 
Because of WHEN the BSOD consistently occurs, I'm inclined to believe this is a power-related issue. Like the OS is sending a power command ( suspend, shutdown, reboot, whatever ) to the mobo and the mobo is freaking out. Or a component may be throwing a fit because it doesn't like notification of a power state change or something. Regardless, the underlying cause seems to be hardware.

Strip everything out, down to the basics; CPU, Memory and harddrive. See if the issue represents. If it doesn't, then start adding components back in, one at a time. If it does it bare bones, then likely a component on the mobo is toast somehow, and it's time to look at replacing it.
 
Advice on determining cause of a BSOD? Easy, analyze the crash dump file with WinDbg. Will tell you exactly what caused it. Saves a tremendous amount of time.

I was going to suggest BlueScreenView, which sounds like it's exactly the same thing --- it actually worked great for me. It analyzed the minidump files created during the bluescreen, and it highlighted what was causing the error, which in my case was a nVidia .dll file, so I determined that it was a video driver issue. I uninstalled the old driver (or reformatted?) after realizing that Windows 7's "optional" updates that I let Windows Update install included an outdated driver for my video card. I installed the latest driver software from the manufacturer's site and haven't seen a blue screen since.

Also, before that, I was getting some BSoDs due to "MEMORY_MANAGEMENT" and "IRQL_LESS_OR_NOT_EQUAL" which turned out to be the fact that my RAM timings had been set to "Automatic" which just wasn't working. MemTest86+ showed that the RAM was perfectly fine, but I also noticed MemTest86+ was using specific RAM timings. I went into bios and changed the RAM timing option from "Automatic" to "Manual" and set the timings to the correct values.

Since fixing those two things, I never see blue screen anymore.
 
I was going to suggest BlueScreenView, which sounds like it's exactly the same thing --- it actually worked great for me. It analyzed the minidump files created during the bluescreen, and it highlighted what was causing the error,

This all I got from the program..no highlighted portions.

Version=1
EventType=BlueScreen
EventTime=129851591487683913
ReportType=4
Consent=1
Response.type=4
DynamicSig[1].Name=OS Version
DynamicSig[1].Value=6.0.6002.2.2.0.768.2
DynamicSig[2].Name=Locale ID
DynamicSig[2].Value=1033
UI[2]=C:\Windows\system32\wer.dll
UI[3]=Windows has recovered from an unexpected shutdown
UI[4]=Windows can check online for a solution to the problem.
UI[5]=&Check for solution
UI[6]=&Check later
UI[7]=Cancel
UI[8]=Windows has recovered from an unexpected shutdown
UI[9]=A problem caused Windows to stop working correctly. Windows will notify you if a solution is available.
UI[10]=Close
Sec[0].Key=BCCode
Sec[0].Value=50
Sec[1].Key=BCP1
Sec[1].Value=FFFFFFE8
Sec[2].Key=BCP2
Sec[2].Value=00000001
Sec[3].Key=BCP3
Sec[3].Value=81E95D1F
Sec[4].Key=BCP4
Sec[4].Value=00000000
Sec[5].Key=OS Version
Sec[5].Value=6_0_6002
Sec[6].Key=Service Pack
Sec[6].Value=2_0
Sec[7].Key=Product
Sec[7].Value=768_1
File[0].CabName=Mini062512-18.dmp
File[0].Path=Mini062512-18.dmp
File[0].Flags=589826
File[0].Type=2
File[1].CabName=sysdata.xml
File[1].Path=WER-53586-0.sysdata.xml
File[1].Flags=589826
File[1].Type=5
File[2].CabName=Version.txt
File[2].Path=WERBAB6.tmp.version.txt
File[2].Flags=589827
File[2].Type=5
File[3].CabName=Report.cab
File[3].Path=Report.cab
File[3].Flags=196608
File[3].Type=7
FriendlyEventName=Shut down unexpectedly
ConsentKey=BlueScreen
AppName=Windows
AppPath=C:\Windows\System32\WerFault.exe
 
The modem? Are you kidding lol

modem.sys modem.sys+fe9cdd20 0x89d17000 0x89d24000 0x0000d000 0x4791913c 1/19/2008 12:57:16 AM Microsoft® Windows® Operating System Modem Device Driver 6.0.6000.16386 (vista_rtm.061101-2205) Microsoft Corporation C:\Windows\system32\drivers\modem.sys
ntkrnlpa.exe ntkrnlpa.exe+118800 0x82238000 0x825f2000 0x003ba000 0x4f79a9be 4/2/2012 8:29:34 AM Microsoft® Windows® Operating System NT Kernel & System 6.0.6002.18607 (vistasp2_gdr.120402-0336) Microsoft Corporation C:\Windows\system32\ntkrnlpa.exe
smserial.sys smserial.sys+fead9c84 0x89c0b000 0x89d16900 0x0010b900 0x4ae5bb89 10/26/2009 10:08:57 AM Motorola SM56 Modem Motorola SM56 Modem WDM Driver SM56 Rel. 6.12.25.06 built by: WinDDK Motorola Inc. C:\Windows\system32\drivers\smserial.sys
Wdf01000.sys Wdf01000.sys+6c16c 0x80542000 0x805be000 0x0007c000 0x47919015 1/19/2008 12:52:21 AM Microsoft® Windows® Operating System WDF Dynamic 1.7.6001.0 (longhorn_rtm.080118-1840) Microsoft Corporation C:\Windows\system32\drivers\Wdf01000.sys
 
Thread hijack. My system has been relatively stable, but there are times when it will BSOD during restart or shut down. I'm also trying to install a LAN driver update, but the system will BSOD unless I try to run the installation program immediately after logging into Windows (apparently, something that isn't loading up later is causing crashes).

BlueScreenView keeps pointing toward hal.dll and ntoskrnl.dll. Aren't these incredibly generic and could point toward anything?

EDIT: Oh, and the bug check codes all seem to be 0x00000133.
 
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