I think I'm gonna go nuts -- Windows XP crashes all the time!

[Daidalos]

Ok folks, I have a HUGE problem.

I do not know where it came from, when it came from or how to get rid of it. It started to happen approximately a few weeks ago, and it so so F**KING ANNOYING!! There are just no other words to say it...

Ok, let me explain:

First of all, it happens randomly. When I open My computer or My Documents folder or Internet Explorer ... and then when I browse around a little or copy and paste file or whatever, AND NOW WHEN I CLOSE IT, an error message appears:

Windows Explorer has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience.

It does not matter if I click close or debug. After I click it, this message apprears again and then windows crashes, everything but a wallpaper becomes invisible, and after a few seconds everything returns to normal, but some icons in the sytems tray have dissapeared.

I do not know why this happens. I have done everything that I could think of. I did scandisk, chkds, disk defragmenter, scanned with Ad-Aware 6 Pro, scanned with Spybot: S&D, scanned with Norton Antivirus, scanned with Avast antivirus, scanned with Trend Micro PC-Cillin antivirus (all with updated definitions), then reinstalled windows xp, updated it, then I cleaned the windows registry with Ashampoo winoptimizer platinum suite, I used the disk cleanup to clean the temp folders, cookies, internet explorer cache and so on. I removed all the unnecessary programs from the startup list, I used Personal AntiSpy to detect any keylogger or other nasty programs, but it didn't find anything.......... whew, I think this is all what I did, though I may have forgot to add some things in here that I did.
Oh and of course I closed all the other programs while scanning or and other operations and I also did a reboot between every progress.

BUT IT STILL HAPPENS!!

I have scanned everything... returned everything to the way it was and and... I dunno. This is driving me mad. I am dead tired, haven't slept for days and very angry.

CPU temperature is approximately 40 degrees and MB temperature is 30 degrees celsius. The system has not been overclocked in any way. The system is very stable and new, but this the ONLY error I get! The ONLY error that I can't fix.

CPU: Intel Pentium 4 @ 2.64 GHz with Hyper-Threading technology, FSB 800
MB: P4 Chaintech CT-9PJL1 USB 2
RAM: DDR 512 MB XMS PC 3200-400 Corsair Platinum Series
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 7.200.7 80GB SeralATA150 7200rpm 8MB cache
AUDIO: On-Board audio CMedia 8738
VIDEO: ATI RADEON 9600 Pro 128 MB R96A-C3
Windows XP Home

All drivers have been updated twice.

Please help me to fix this. Any kind of help would be highly appreciated!

Thank you.

PS. in the attachments, there are screenshots of this error.

 

[Dubbin1]

Do a complete reformat and reinstall XP.

 

[Daidalos]

Do a complete reformat and reinstall XP.

What do you mean by a complete reformat? You say I should format my hard drive and install Win XP again? Well, the problem is that 75 % of my hard drive is full and contains essential data that I have nowhere to backup at this moment.

any other suggestons?

 

[shadymg]

i realllllly agree with the reformat idea (always a good idea to have partitions), however, i suppose you could try System Restore back to day 1 & see if it persists

 

[unreal]

not to sure, sorry i cant help

 

[Daidalos]

i realllllly agree with the reformat idea (always a good idea to have partitions), however, i suppose you could try System Restore back to day 1 & see if it persists

Whoops, forgot to mention, that I already tried the System Restore (recovery) option. Sadly It did not work. I also tried to "restore the last know good configuration" by pressing F8 button after rebooting, but that didn't work either.

I'm pretty much desperate.

Any other ideas?

 

[tbones1337]

with the free space left. Partition that as a different drive and then install XP onto that partition.. No reformat is required.. since all the data is on the other partition.

I keep a 5gb partition for data and my files and web downloads. Only programs and XP are on my other partition.. so when i need to reformat.. i dont worry about data. So.. 20gb is free. make a 15gb Partition and then leave the current drive partition intact.

So.. we have the current partition C
then we make a new one.. thats 15gb.
Install XP onto the 15gb partition.. if you can make the 15gb labeled c and change the 65 gb sector some other letter..

Good luck mate.

 

[Daidalos]

with the free space left. Partition that as a different drive and then install XP onto that partition.. No reformat is required.. since all the data is on the other partition.

I keep a 5gb partition for data and my files and web downloads. Only programs and XP are on my other partition.. so when i need to reformat.. i dont worry about data. So.. 20gb is free. make a 15gb Partition and then leave the current drive partition intact.

So.. we have the current partition C
then we make a new one.. thats 15gb.
Install XP onto the 15gb partition.. if you can make the 15gb labeled c and change the 65 gb sector some other letter..

Good luck mate.

Thanks for the suggestion, tbones1337! I'm pretty much sure that it'll work and I shall definitely try that when I get more time in future. But right now I'm just trying to figure out why this thing keeps happening...

Other suggestion are still welcome

 

[diehrd]

Put all needed straoge info in new folders.Store them in My documents then run partition magic and partition the drive to a size to allow for all your data storage...Now reformat with out any data loss.......Or use CDRW as a means to back up what you have ..This should be done any way just because you said the data is important..

 

[Oni]

Before formatting, have you checked out your RAM? Perhaps it's going bad.

I'd pull in a copy of Memtest86 and give that a good, long run to see if your RAM fails.

 

[Rezin777]

Hmm... first time I have noticed this thread. Sorry to say a format may not help. Best of luck though. This has been happening to me since I upgraded to my NF7-S. I've never had it crash windows, but explorer decides to pop up this error, and I lose one out of the two icons I have in the tray (always the ATi one, never nForce). I can continue computing fine for hours after this happens, but the icon never comes back. Quite frustrating really. I have tried different RAM, Hdds, various overclocks, nothing seems to stop this incredible annoyance. Formatted clean and reinstalled several times. Tried windows and nForce IDE drivers. My computer is prime stable even with versions of Prime95 various people have been having problems with. Memtest stable also. Plays games for hours. Yet, sometimes I go to look for a folder and bam, explorer closes. Happens when opening a new webpage sometimes too. If I had to venture a guess, I would say it has something to do with accessing a hdd. My friend told me to replace my IDE cable last night and I haven't tried that yet, but I think it may be very good advice. When upgrading to the NF7-S I used the IDE ribbon that came with it. I will post back to this thread if it works, and may I ask that if you (Diadalos) find a solution, please let me know. Or if anyone can think of a new idea or solution, I would really appreciate it as well as Diadalos I imagine.

 

[stui_nz]

From my experience, when things go bad like this - usually one of the drivers has got corrupted. You might try reinstalling your video and chipset drivers.

 

[Rezin777]

From my experience, when things go bad like this - usually one of the drivers has got corrupted. You might try reinstalling your video and chipset drivers.

As stated above, I have formatted my bootdrive and reinstalled windows from scratch several times. Five times at the least. Unless the drivers I'm using are corrupted from the preinstall state (on the disk I store my drivers on), this couldn't be the problem. For kicks I'll redownload and replace my drivers. Thanks for the help and keep the suggestions rolling in.

 

[Daidalos]

If I had to venture a guess, I would say it has something to do with accessing a hdd. My friend told me to replace my IDE cable last night and I haven't tried that yet, but I think it may be very good advice. When upgrading to the NF7-S I used the IDE ribbon that came with it. I will post back to this thread if it works.

Yes, please try that and I hope it works... cause it can't think of any other solution myself. Meanwhile i am going to search the web (again) and see if I can find something.

But like always, well so far, if anyone in this forum have any suggestion that might work, please post it in here.

 

[deeman]

Type this in your run command.
eventvwr.msc
Now when this opens go to applications and double click any logs that are red to open them and read what is causing the problems also open system and read the reds it should tell you what is going on if you need help post your findings here

 

[Daidalos]

Type this in your run command.
eventvwr.msc
Now when this opens go to applications and double click any logs that are red to open them and read what is causing the problems also open system and read the reds it should tell you what is going on if you need help post your findings here

Ok, I did exactly like you said and when I double click on those application errors, there always something like this:

Faulting application explorer.exe, version 6.0.2800.1221, faulting module unknown, version 0.0.0.0, fault address 0x01c82fc8.

What should I do?

PS. I also made a screenshot.

 

[BUBBLE]

CAn it be windows?

Well Daidalos you've mention m/c works fine so did this prob happens after doing a windows update? I sometimes suspect this windows update cause I think it may reprduce some other probs after the upgrade of the o/s. One thing you can speacially try is update the vga drives from the manufactures site for the latest and look for the bios update in the vga. I came up with above prob like icons get black and you can't get them back unless you restarted so i updated the vga drivers and it corrected. Hope this might be helpful and also try to lok for mobo bios update also.

 

[L337 M33P]

Diagnostics first, reformat later

www.memtest86.com

www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm

I had some bad RAM that was fun to work with - any program using memory at 120MB or above would randomly crash and burn. It was like Speed only running on less than 120MB of RAM

Run the two programs from the sites above. Any errors in your RAM should be detected by the first, Prime95 will detect errors in either RAM, CPU or northbridge.

If they come up clean then consider reinstalling Windows.

 

[Th0r]

A format is a last option, i am going for RAM or a Hard Drive problem at the moment...

 

[Daidalos]

All test came up clean and stable.
I have reinstalled Windows multiple times already.

Why is it still happenning? Am I cursed?