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Diagnosing BSOD (Hal.dll)

P

powersurge

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 1, 2005
Messages
311
I was wondering if you guys might have some good pointers on diagnosing my machine before I sink any money into it. For the past month or so I've been getting BSOD's (caused by hal.dll according to bluescreenviewer) once or twice a day but for the past couple of days its gotten worse (every 10-15mins) and a clean format and reinstall of Win7 didn't help at all. (Didn't think it would but thought I'd give it a go anyway)

So far I've run memtest for about 8 passes without errors and before the BSODing was so often I ran prime for about 5 hours without errors. The blue screens seem completely random too. I could be playing a game or just web browsing doesn't seem to matter. Without any other issues (graphic glitches, corrupted files, etc..) I'm guessing the motherboard is going out but I'm trying to be certain before I sink any cash into it since I don't think its under warranty anymore.

Specs everything is stock speeds etc..

Q9300
8gb ram (2gb x 4)
Nvidia 560 ti
MSI p7n sli plat motherboard
640gb 7200rpm WD and 200gb samsung hard drives
Generic DVD burner
Antec 850w PSU

The only other thing I can think of to do is maybe I should pull the ram and run it one stick at a time but that seems unlikely since memtest ran fine.
 
When the BSOD's started the first thing I did was update all of my drivers. My Nvidia drivers were only a version or so behind but that didn't help and when I reinstalled windows I just grabbed the latest ones.
 
OK, the system is a little old and Nvidia did have some hal.dll driver problems some time ago.

Looks like my guess was wrong.
 
An error with hal.dll usually indicates hardware failure. Do you happen to be overclocking at all?
 
The RAM went through Memtest86+ but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's perfectly fine. Look at the voltages of the RAM to make sure that they're not too high or too low (it could be a weird BIOS setting that leads to mis-volted RAM). I think that it needs to be 1.65V for your chip, but my memory ain't perfect...so maybe look it up.

Try resetting the BIOS back to factory defaults to see if that changes anything and then verify to make sure that everything is configured properly.

Next I would try running the RAM in single sticks to see if you can isolate the problem to a specific stick of RAM. That's really the only way to totally rule out the RAM. Memtest86+ will catch the vast majority of RAM errors...but it's still not perfect.

Basically, try different components (video card, hdd, sound card, etc.) if you can until you isolate the one that's bad. If you manage to replace all of the components (I wouldn't worry too much about the CPU, it's pretty rare that they die) and nothing is fixing the problem, it's probably the motherboard.

Like I said before, hal.dll points to something wrong with the hardware abstraction layer of the OS...so the software and the hardware aren't communicating well. So try to find the latest version of all the drivers to see if that fixes it.

When you reloaded Windows did you notice if it started BSODing before or after you ran Windows updates?
 
Nah I didn't think to notice if it BSOD'ed before or after running windows update. I don't think it did but it seems to happen in groups. For example I could be checking my email with only firefox running have it BSOD, reboot, and then while windows just booting up it could BSOD again only to stop BSODing after a couple of reboots then it would stay stable for an hour or so only to start stuttering, freezing, and then blue screen again.

I ran my RAM single stick but it would still crash and burn no matter which stick was used so I tried cycling through the ram sockets on the motherboard but that didn't seem to help either. Memtest, Prime, and WD's hard drive diagnostic tool all show error free. I'm still not seeing any graphic glitches but I am now losing my video signal randomly and it doesn't appear the machine is functional when this happens. Only fix is to shut the power off and reboot though this is much less common than the blue screens.

Nothing is under warranty anymore and I was perfectly happy with the speed of my Q9300 so I'm just trying to cover all of my bases before I shell out cash for parts since I figure trying to replace the motherboard with another Core2Quad board would be a waste of money in the long run (probably upgrade to i5 stuff).
 
I'm not sure if it was the same issue, but I had similar problems with my machine a few years ago. BSODs every once awhile and then every hour and then even on booting. I did all the recommended tests and everything passed. I eventually swapped out my RAM for new ones and it worked. Mine were relatively new so I was able to get free replacement from Newegg.
 
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