BSOD Experts please help.........

Greetings all,

Hopefully the technical experts in our community may be able to help with a
problem I have been having for quite some time.
Problem:- PC Blue Screens intermittently, but there is a pattern.
The BSOD is usually the "IRQ not less than or Equal" type but sometimes just
plain blue and only occur when playing games (no game in particular either),
NEVER during any other applications or desktop works. The other fact that I
have determined about the BSOD's are that they NEVER occur during actual
playing of the game, they ALWAYS occur when you are either exiting out of
the game through the game menus, OR going through the game menus to start a
game!

I have rebuilt a number of times with various BIOS configurations and
Windows configurations and of course have the system stock (not overclocked)
and the BIOS settings including RAM timings set to SPD default to try and
determine the root cause of the crashes.

Here are my system specs :-

Main Hardware:-
Intel P4 3.0ghz Northwood CPU
Asus P4C800E-deluxe (Intel 875P chipset)
Corsair PC3200 LL 2x512 matched modules
Audigy 2 ZS PCI sound card (Creative EAX4.0 drivers)
Gigabyte X800 XT PE platinum with Arctic Cooler HSF (Catalyst v4.12 drivers)
Thermaltake 1000 Xaser (7 cooling fans)
Antec 550watt Tru PSU

Software:-
Windows XP Pro Corp / Service Pack 2 / DirectX 9.0C
Intel motherboard chipset drivers: v6.2.1.1001
Audigy2 ZS EAX 4.0 drivers from Creative
Catalyst official ATi drivers v4.12

BIOS:-
Plug & Play OS = yes
Hyperthreading = yes
CPU vcore = 1.55v
DIMM voltage = 2.75v
AGP = 1.7v

Please let me know if you have any suggestions or solutions asap.

Regards
IceDOG (aka Gary)

sounds like memory, run memtest86 and see if you get any errors, and this would be best in Windows.

I worked on a computer over christmas that was having this problem (bsod randomly), only difference was it was older (750 mhz or something like that). One other issue that i seen with it was that one of hte cd drives would error out if i tried to use it to install anything. I took it apart and ended up finding that whoever put the cd-burner in ran it against the motherboard. that in turn knock on capacitor off and bent another. I fixed that and now it works better but I would recommend looking over your mobo and seeing if anything is damaged or missing.

One other thought to consider. Your BSODs all happen going into or out of the most graphically intensive programs (I'm assuming) on your system. I know you have the latest official ATI drivers, but does Gigabyte have their own drivers? If they do you might consider trying them in case the problem is that the Gigabyte board is just different enough from Ati standard to cause the occassional BSOD, but not different enough to crash continually.

Just a thought.

DWolf

PS: WELCOME TO THE FORUMS!!!

I've been out for the past few days...otherwise I would have moved this to the MS OS forum sooner.

DreamingWolf said:

One other thought to consider. Your BSODs all happen going into or out of the most graphically intensive programs (I'm assuming) on your system. I know you have the latest official ATI drivers, but does Gigabyte have their own drivers? If they do you might consider trying them in case the problem is that the Gigabyte board is just different enough from Ati standard to cause the occassional BSOD, but not different enough to crash continually.

Just a thought.

DWolf

PS: WELCOME TO THE FORUMS!!!

Click to expand...

about 70% of the time I see the IRQ stop error its generally been bad vid drivers, about 25% of the time its been caused by some component not seated properly on the mobo. and the last 5% of the times its been bad hardware (RAM). So Id update your vid card driver as wolf said since the errors happen when moving between graphic intensive applications. Next open up your case and re-seat all the components to make sure nothing has come loose for whatever reason. If you still have the problems its time to run memtest86 to see if RAM may be bad.

Also check in Device Manager to see if there are any yellow '?' or red 'X' devices listed there and try to find drivers for them or disable them completely. Just in case there is a conflict.

I had this problem when both my hard drives in my raid array were overheating. Threw a fan in front of them, and they never acted up since. Other say this problem is because of bad memory. But before you start blaming hardware for being at fault, you should check your drivers.

Check the manufacturor sites for the components on your system for updated drivers, download, and install them. I'm willing to guarantee this will fix your problem.