Repeated BSODs, Windows XP Pro help requested

[reiem]

Hello all, 2 days ago I started to have repeated issues with BSOD's, including 4 or 5 different types such as IRQL_LESS_OR_EQUAL, PAGE_FAULT_IN_NON-PAGED_AREA, PFN_LIST_CORRUPT, etc. I either would randomly BSOD after a few minutes or crash upon trying to enter Windows past the login screen through various problems including one where the logon system would fail and BSOD.

After perhaps 75-100 BSODs in the past few days, when I try and launch Windows now it tells me the system file is corrupt and to try and use the repair installation to fix it. I made a bootdisk on this PC and after booting up, whenever I attempt to access the d:\i386 directory now of my Windows XP CD, it says "Invalid directory." The directory is obviously there and is accessible in this computer and all other directories are accesible on the computer that is in need of repair except for that one in particular. I am totally at a loss, does anyone have an idea of how I can get into the i386 directory to attempt to repair my Windows? Thanks!

 

[DDR-PIII]

thats odd i've been using xp pro for a lil over a year and not once have i seen a BSOD :/ i dunno what to say.... format and reinstall windows maybe ?

 

[Jirnsum]

What are your system specs? Are you overclocked? What voltage are you running at?

 

[Maximouse]

You could always set your bios to boot first from your CD Drive. Then see what happens when it trys to boot of of the XP CD.

 

[reiem]

I have an ASUS VIA KT266 mobo (model A7V266), 1.4 ghz AMD Athlon Thunderbird, 512 megs of Crucial PC2100 DDRRAM, IBM 7200 rpm 60 gb HDD, WD 7200 RPM 8mb cache 120 gb HDD, I don't have the box onhand but I also have an ASUS GeForce3 64 mb DDRRAM AGP 4x card. If you mean my CPU voltage, it is at 1.750, if you mean the type of wattage I am using for my PSU, I have a 500-watt model.

I am not overclocked but I know this forum has a lot of helpful members so I figured I would check here (looked at this place when building my machine about a year ago). As for booting off the cd, for some reason my BIOS does not allow for that even I select my DVD-ROM or CD-RW drives as first in the order under the 'Boot' area, instead it just skips directly over them. The only choices it responds to are a floppy disk or HDD being selected first. I am using the ASUS provided BIOS, I believe it is called Rev 120B or something along those lines.

 

[Maximouse]

As for booting off the cd, for some reason my BIOS does not allow for that even I select my DVD-ROM or CD-RW drives as first in the order under the 'Boot' area, instead it just skips directly over them. The only choices it responds to are a floppy disk or HDD being selected first.

So, when you turn on your computer with the XP CD in the drive then no "press any key to boot from CD" appears?

Sounds like something is wrong with the Bios or board. This could also be because of a failing HD....anyway you can swap in another to test out?

 

[Jirnsum]

Thanks Reiem,

ofcourse you are welcome to these forums We just needed the info to get started out.

First on the BSODs....might be that your memory is going flaky. If you have multiple sticks try swapping them about. Running with one or the other, try to see whether it makes a difference.

Another thing that might be going bad is one of your harddrives.

It is really weird that your system won't allow you to boot from CD. Makes installing Windows a lot more cumbersome in my opinion.

The fact that you cannot read from your CD when having booted from floppy might be because there are no drivers for the CD-ROM drive installed. Having booted from floppy, can you see any other directories?

 

[reiem]

So, when you turn on your computer with the XP CD in the drive then no "press any key to boot from CD" appears?

Sounds like something is wrong with the Bios or board. This could also be because of a failing HD....anyway you can swap in another to test out?

Nope, upon booting up it never recognizes a cd or dvd in the drive. This was an issue I had when I originally installed XP about a year ago (this issue just popped up out of nowhere after a year of usage) as well. However, I had no problems with using a bootdisk and then installing from the CD. Now for some reason it won't access the one folder in particular I need on the bootdisk (I've tried a few different ones from bootdisk.com and no luck on any of them). I would not entirely be surprised if it were a failed HDD since I was unlucky enough to have heard IBM HDDs were good purchases.. but then I've known at least 10 people that have had theirs die after about a year since then.

As for the RAM, I made a memtest86 disk on this machine and just tested it on the other box and it got quite a few errors which leads me to believe one of my sticks may have gone bad. I dont know if this could be the catalyst for all my problems or not but it very well may be. Still, I am as confused as you are why I have never been able to boot directly to CD. Is it possible for me to download a new BIOS on a floppy disk and install it on the other machine? Perhaps I should try that and see if I have any more success with direct cd booting as well?

Thanks for the replies, all.

 

[Maximouse]

Nope, upon booting up it never recognizes a cd or dvd in the drive. This was an issue I had when I originally installed XP about a year ago (this issue just popped up out of nowhere after a year of usage) as well. However, I had no problems with using a bootdisk and then installing from the CD. Now for some reason it won't access the one folder in particular I need on the bootdisk (I've tried a few different ones from bootdisk.com and no luck on any of them). I would not entirely be surprised if it were a failed HDD since I was unlucky enough to have heard IBM HDDs were good purchases.. but then I've known at least 10 people that have had theirs die after about a year since then.

As for the RAM, I made a memtest86 disk on this machine and just tested it on the other box and it got quite a few errors which leads me to believe one of my sticks may have gone bad. I dont know if this could be the catalyst for all my problems or not but it very well may be. Still, I am as confused as you are why I have never been able to boot directly to CD. Is it possible for me to download a new BIOS on a floppy disk and install it on the other machine? Perhaps I should try that and see if I have any more success with direct cd booting as well?

Thanks for the replies, all.

Ok, If you have more than one CD drive in the system, then try removing one of them. Maybe one has started to fail or they are interfering with each other somehow. Also, try isolating the bad stick of ram, run with one at a time to see what happens.

Yes, you can download a new copy of the bios and put it on a boot floppy with the flash utility program and run it from the floppy.

Good Luck

Al

 

[Jirnsum]

Try isolating the bad stick of RAM. Having bad memory can do weird stuff to your system, including all the weird stuff you see, and more......

First try that. If it doesn't work, we'll speculate further. For now, my bet is on the RAM

 

[reiem]

Yes, you can download a new copy of the bios and put it on a boot floppy with the flash utility program and run it from the floppy.

Al

Do you have any recommendations for sites that I could download a new BIOS at? I would check ASUS' Taiwanese website appears to be down at the moment and that is where the downloads section is.

 

[Maximouse]

Do you have any recommendations for sites that I could download a new BIOS at? I would check ASUS' Taiwanese website appears to be down at the moment and that is where the downloads section is.

try here:
http://download.asus.com.tw/mb_alllist.asp

I was just on it a second ago

 

[reiem]

I have still not been able to access that site, it's been shown as down for me every time I've tried over the past few days. Guess I will check google for some other sites that may be of help.

 

[Maximouse]

I have still not been able to access that site, it's been shown as down for me every time I've tried over the past few days. Guess I will check google for some other sites that may be of help.

They went back down again and have not come back up since
most other sites link to asus to d/l so they dont work either.

Try this site...its not in english, but I figured out the word "letoltes" means "download"
(The d/l links work)

http://www.drivers.hu/product.php?prodid=2041

 

[reiem]

I was able to find a site with a new version (8.27.2002) of my BIOS available, but unfortunately it still does not boot off the DVD-ROM drive. Perhaps Toshiba drives just don't support this, I am not sure. However, a friend of mine is lending me his XP cd so I will try it with another in hopes it can access that particular folder. If not I suppose I'll have to likely reformat, install Windows 98 and then upgrade to XP.

 

[Maximouse]

Have you tried using another cable for your cd drive?

They can go bad sometimes.

 

[EeyoreX]

The problem is almost certainly bad RAM. I had the same problem and (I am embarassed to say so) actually bought a new hard drive and CD-ROM (I like new stuff, so it is okay, right?) before it even ocurred to me that I should check my RAM. I felt like an idiot when I found the bad stick, since I missed the obvious (I've been doing this kind of stuff for about 7-8 years, hence my feelings of shame and disgust ).

Seeing the BSODs and other problems you have takes me back to when I had the very same problems and fixed it with a simple, cost of shipping RMA...

Hope this helps

\Dan

 

[diggingforgold]

Hello all- same problem here. Repeated variouos BSOD's. I cant even post this reply without it BSODing. Running WinXP pro on the system below. Will post more later if stability permits.

 

[diggingforgold]

Thing im noticing is that my hard drives are running extremely hot. Hot enough to burn my finger. Im going to put a fan on them asap. Hope it works. Anyone know what i can do to fix this problem. Could it be my memory? Hard drives? Im starting to get fed up with these BSOD's here.

They happen when i:

installed office xp pro
played gta3
used WMP
surfing
typing in these boards
sitting there doing nothing

I dont know whats up. Can anyone help PLEASE?

EDIT: Its amazing the heat that two 7200RPM Maxtors can make. I almost burned myself touchiung them. I have a fan wedged between power cords and ide ribbons pointed at the two hard drives.

I think i found my troublemaker. Its a factor I wasnt thinking about. Excessive heat, an overclockers worst enemy. (well that and voltage). Anyway, since i pointed the fan at the drives, it has been running only warm, and is stable! I think the fact that im running an unbackedup raid 0 array makes it easily succeptable to disk errors, therefore, scrambles windows xp! With no heat there is no errors, and shouldnt be if my hypothesis is correct.

If it turns to a theory, I will search the forums and overclockers.com for a do-it-yourself hard drive cooler.

ANOTHER PROBLEM- a second little guy in my case is overheating. Upon touching my vcard heatsink, it was HOT, almost as hot as the hard drives. That may be a future problem. Funny, its a 1.5V video card, but my mobo software is telling me that its running at 1.79V. My bios system health reports 1.5V. Whos telling the truth. Could my vcard be overclocking- that could cause problems. Theres only a small aluminum heatspreader on that GPU.

YES! I love this! Im solving all my computer problems at last (knock on wood). Hopefully heat was the reason- do you think so?

 

[Jirnsum]

If it turns to a theory, I will search the forums and overclockers.com for a do-it-yourself hard drive cooler.

Nice if you found something on that. Please post back a link here if you do