Please assist with this BSOD problem.

[ghostchamber]

Alright, my wife has been getting random BSOD errors for the better part of a year. For the most part they haven't been too bad, as it would only happen maybe a couple of times a week. But lately it's been getting really, really bad, to the point where it can only be booted into safe mode without crashing.

Here are her current system specs:

Biostar TForce 6100-939
AMD Athlon 64 3800+ (single core)
2x512 MB PC2700 dual-channel
320 GB SATA2 (don't have brand name)
350 watt PSU (generic brand, came with a case she bought me three years ago)

Here's a picture of the stop error which has been the most consistent one:

She occasionally gets a "KERNEL_STACK_INPAGE_ERROR" message on the BSOD, but that's not very often. I know that's an issue with the page file, which makes me think it could be an HD problem.

Now, I have done the following to troubleshoot this error:

• Ran Memtest86 for ~20 hours, no errors.
• Ran the Prime95 torture test for ~18 hours, no errors. No crashes, either (of course).
• Removed one stick of memory, still crashed. Replaced with the other stick, still crashed. Tried switching them to different slots, still crashed.
• Switched out processors. I have the same processor, except mine is dual-core. Her computer crashed with my processor in it (and mine, of course, ran fine).
• Created a separate partition for the page file. Had a page file on that partition alone, and on both partitions. Still crashed. Even tried moving the page file completely to her external HD, and it still crashed.
• Switched out the power supply. She was using a generic 350 watt CompUSA supply, now she's got the generic one I listed above. Still crashing.
• Flashed the BIOS. The newest one on the company's website is several years old. Made no difference.
• Did a full-system virus scan. Nothing found.
• Did a complete reinstall of Windows. Still crashing.
• Put in a new SATA HD cable. Still crashing. Tried using another SATA port. Still crashing.
• Defragment HD. Still crashing. Ran chkdsk /r and found no errors. Still crashing.

Any feedback is appreciated. The only things I haven't tried yet are a new HD and a new motherboard. I may make an image of her HD and put it on one of mine to see if that makes a difference. But if anyone's got any more ideas, I'd appreciate them.

 

[ghostchamber]

Off the first page and no replies?

This seems to happen a lot lately.

 

[tiraides]

From what I can tell -- since you've done most of the troubleshooting steps that we could suggest -- the problem lies in the motherboard. Have you tried finding/using the diagnostic software that comes with the hard drive?

 

[OldMX]

If you use an ide optical drive, make sure its jumped correctly as master or slave and is connected to properly channel in ide cable.

hope it helps

 

[ghostchamber]

From what I can tell -- since you've done most of the troubleshooting steps that we could suggest -- the problem lies in the motherboard. Have you tried finding/using the diagnostic software that comes with the hard drive?

That isn't something I had considered, so I'll look for it after work.

I do have a bit of an update though.

I installed CPUz (ID?) on her computer to check and make sure everything looked alright. I realized that the CPU was running at ~2500, which took me by surprise. The multiplier was set to twelve for some reason. Then I noticed that the memory was running at 200, when it's PC2700 and should be at 166. There's an overclocking section of the BIOS, and it was set to "Normal." Neither my wife or I ever touched those settings, so I have no idea what caused them to be that way, but I'm guessing they've been that way since she got the motherboard a year ago. At any rate, I manually changed the processor and memory speeds to what they're supposed to be, and since then the crashes have mostly subsided.

I say "mostly" because she got a "kernal stack" BSOD last night after I made the change. Other than that, she was able to use it without any issues. So I'm going to look for that HD diagnostic software and hope that it's the hard drive, which will be cheap to replace.

I was going to update last night to say that I might have solved it, but I wanted to wait and see what happened. Either way, thanks for the responses guys.