I have physically pulled out some of my hair

It happened. I reached a level of despiration I thought I would never have to endure. My once perfect £1000 dream PC is now nothing more to me that a giant POS paper weight.

I have posted on here several times for help with BSOD etc. Nobody has been able to solve the issue. The computer can work perfectly for days on end, pass memtests 20 times in a row, and yet all of a sudden it will BSOD on startup.

I get programs crashing out the blue, my favourites that I saved in IE are corrupt, Ive gotten about 20-30 different BSOD codes, ranging from 0000000A to 0000007F. Sometimes my mobo gives me errors about being in safe mode and that I must reset memory voltages, when no attempt has ever been made to OC the board. I even get the error 25 on the mobo screen which stands for "resevered".

Im sick of it. Something is not working. I will spend money to get it working, but can someone, please, please help me find out which component is not working.

System specs please
Sound's like either a bad hard drive, or bad RAM

What PSU are you running?

Dapman02 said:

System specs please
Sound's like either a bad hard drive, or bad RAM

Click to expand...

doz said:

What PSU are you running?

Click to expand...

Might as well put system specs in your sig. Just to make it easier for those who can offer assistance.

If it makes you feel any better I killed my C2D E6600 by plugging a fan in while its on...

Specs:

3.0Ghz Intel Core2Duo
8800GTX
4GB unbranded RAM from overclockers.co.uk
Evga 680i Mobo
650W Corsair PSU

I just reinstalled vista, and i got a BSOD when it restarts during setup saying:
"Storport.sys
Page Fault in non-paged area"

Im in vista right now, typing, it seems ok but it probably isnt. I have another harddrive I can test the install with and I can nick a bit of RAM from my friend to test that. Its passed a memtest 20 times in a row before though :s

are you running vista sp1? if not, you should install the service pack.
i refer you to this link, I hope it helps man.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/930261

here's a description of the symptom that it fixes:
When you start a computer that is running Windows Vista, you randomly receive a "Stop 0x0000000A" error message that resembles the following:
STOP 0x0000000A IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
Storport.sys
You experience this problem if the following conditions are true:
The computer has an NVIDIA chipset.
The computer has four gigabytes (GB) or more of RAM.

i would run a hard drive test on your hard drive. View the SMART data for your drive. You may have a bad sector on the disk. And no matter how many times you format and reinstall once the drive gets critical data on it in that one spot where there is a bad sector you will get BSODs. lockups and slow downs.

its the memory, change it and see if it gives you any problems

have u tried xp?
u could dual boot and see if the problem is with Vista.

Pull a stick of RAM out and see how it works...seems like RAMs getting corrupted.

terran2k said:

are you running vista sp1? if not, you should install the service pack.
i refer you to this link, I hope it helps man.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/930261

here's a description of the symptom that it fixes:
When you start a computer that is running Windows Vista, you randomly receive a "Stop 0x0000000A" error message that resembles the following:
STOP 0x0000000A IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
Storport.sys
You experience this problem if the following conditions are true:
The computer has an NVIDIA chipset.
The computer has four gigabytes (GB) or more of RAM.

Click to expand...

Did you try this....seems like the fix is for 2 of the things you have on your computer.

Unbranded ram... UNBRANDED RAM?!?!!

I know some pretty cheap brands... but NO brand?

SOMEBODY made the ram...

I agree that all signs seem to point to the RAM... the unbranded ram that is...

I only have about 20 years of experience dealing with RAM issues though (there are elderly, retired gentlemen on this site that have me beat.)

Buy some more ram... I don't know... maybe something with a BRAND.

You can't lose... $5-$75 a pop... 2 gigs... 4 gigs... 8 gigs...

Then you can pick whatever name you want.

Also is the bios up to date on that board?

whoo... slow down guys, youre going to make him pull out more of his hair, lmao.

Ok, so just a recap:

Most likely the RAM, but try to run the tests first before you go buy more ram. by tests, I dont mean memtest, I mean like upgrading to sp1 if you have not already, pulling out a stick of a ram and testing, etc. tbh though it really does seem to be a ram issue. Either your mobo is not completely compatible with the ram you have inserted and is giving it values not well suited for the RAM , like timings that are too tight, or voltages that are too high/low, OR the RAM itself is physically damaged, at which point, a pair of ddr2 is pretty cheap now adays.

Hi guys.

Thank you so much for the tips. I literally did EVERYTHING before I formatted:

It was running SP1
Bios was updated
I ran memtest on the 4GB, even tried running 1GB


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BOIS
Ive been getting ODD bios errors as well for example:

Sometimes the details of my CPU that normally come up when I boot dont come up. Sometimes (but not often) my computer wont post (fans turn on, but mobo never does the bleep when it turns on, and screen is blank).

Doesnt that rule out the harddrive since the HD isnt even being used by this point?

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SOFTWARE

On top of this the BSOD I get isnt always the same BCCode, infact normally I would get 3-4 different ones each day. Does this not rule out the fact that the error is driver / software related?

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RAM

I only have 2GB of the 4GB of ram in my computer at the moment and these sticks passed memtest (bootable) 22 times in a row when I left it on over night. Surely these sticks cant be the problem?

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Again thank you for the help. The second I find out what the problem is im doing next day shipping from overclockers to get this fixed. Ill test the HD today to see if there is a bad sector and I will try to borrow a stick of RAM from my friends computer. If the harddrive comes back ok and it still crashes with the new stick of RAM. What does this leave? The mobo or the PSU?

Brunel07 said:

RAM

I only have 2GB of the 4GB of ram in my computer at the moment and these sticks passed memtest (bootable) 22 times in a row when I left it on over night. Surely these sticks cant be the problem?

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Click to expand...

Why not? Memtest is a good INDICATION if your ram is bad or not. Hell... it might not even be JUST your ram it could be the way your ram is interacting with your motherboard... it could be a one in 1000 memory error (and you only ram memtest 22 times...) It could be a thousand different things that memtest wouldn't pick up.

Again thank you for the help. The second I find out what the problem is im doing next day shipping from overclockers to get this fixed. Ill test the HD today to see if there is a bad sector and I will try to borrow a stick of RAM from my friends computer. If the harddrive comes back ok and it still crashes with the new stick of RAM. What does this leave? The mobo or the PSU?

Click to expand...

Could be both. If it's the PSU it could've easily damaged the motherboard. You can test the PSU just by sticking it into another computer... motherboard is a bit trickier to test for problems.

What the heck is "4GB unbranded RAM from overclockers.co.uk"?

Unbranded ram is dificult to track it's specs down if it's compatible with your particular board. Just because it passes memtest, that doesn't mean it will run normally in your board (or any other board for that matter).

Me thinks that's the problem right there. Do you have any other ram to use?

Also I would test the psu using This Guide .

Nebulous said:

Just because it passes memtest, that doesn't mean it will run normally in your board (or any other board for that matter).

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Thats what I said. I mean, just as an example of how this could work, my particular mobo model is not completely compatible with the particular model of ram I am using. If I let the motherboard control the clocks, timings, and vDIMM it sets the clocks for 400mhz instead of 500, the timings for 4-4-4-12 instead of 5-5-5-15, and the vDIMM for 1.8 instead of the 2.1 its listed to need to run at. this might not seem like a big deal, but if those timings aren't lined up for the way the RAM is made to handle them then you will get random BSOD's from Vista. Vista isn't the most efficient operating system when it comes to utilizing resources. Just because memtest isn't getting errors doesn't mean that Vista isn't screwing something up.

however it could be any number of combinations of things, so keep at it, and if you figure it out, please let us know.

RAM

its the ram!!

"page fault in non paged area" is almost always bad ram. memtest is OK, but not a definitive answer. the ram seems like your key.

i would try different memory diagnostic tools (like WMD or PC-check), and test 1 stick at a time, 1 slot at a time. it will take a while but its the only way to know for sure what the issue is. it could be the MB slots too, ive seen that.