BSOD repeatedly upon loading windows

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Squirtis

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hey guys.

so here's my story, i really need some help here.

My computer started acting wonky and freezing up and rebooting and then occasionally it, when loading the post screen, it would be unable to detect my hard drive and would just sit there. i would either have to wait a while then boot up or unplug my HD and replug it in and then it would work.

Recently it had been getting really bad so i decided to format my C drive and reinstall windows. Upon reinstalling it would just BSOD when trying to load windows, usually towards the end, so i formatted again and tried installing again. Except this time even when i would go to load the windows disc, it would BSOD. So i thought <snipped>

Tonight i went out and bought a new hard drive thinking mine was just toast. I format it and partition off my drives and install windows, again BSOD when trying to load windows. At this point i'm pretty much convinced my motherboard is fried somehow. My motherboard is an eVGA 680i. I bought almost exactly a year ago. I'm guess the motherboard got messed up when trying to mess with bridge voltages for an OC.

Anyone else have some input before i go out and spend money on a new MB? Has anyone seen this problem? Also, what motherboard should i get to replace this one? I have 4 gigs of 800MHz ram and a quad core processor. I need a solid replacement as i do overclocking too.

Maybe something else is wrong? I can't really think that anything else would be wrong. The fact that my motherboard wouldn't detect the SATA drives upon booting those times prior makes me think it has to be the motherboard. What do you guys think???

Thanks in advance.

i'm looking at maybe ordering the eVGA 750i FTW board, only 150 bux after rebate. anyone know if this board would be any good for a replacement?

*edit* sorry mak...

also, i'd like to mention i did do other trouble shooting, i ran the memory test in the the vista setup and i did defrag and ran multiple hard drive checks, i just thought my SATA connection was wonky or something.

Can anyone else reassure me that it's my motherboard? I tried resetting my BIOS to default and it didn't help. And the blue screen only appears for a split second. Would I be getting problems like this with a fried CPU? I have the Q6600 and people were telling me to be pretty liberal with my OC, i only took it to 3.2 GHz and the temp never rose about 65C.
 
When you are starting up your computer, at the POST area, start hitting F8. This will open a separate boot options menu. Choose "Disable Auto Restart at System Failure" or something close to that effect. Once it reboots, if it BSOD's, it will show the BSOD and let you copy down the error codes. Do this, then tell us what it says. From the sounds of things, I would have thought it was memory because that is what always happened to me when I had bad memory, but you said you ran Memtest already. The only other thing I can think of is that maybe it is a bad driver.

Does it do this right after Vista is reinstalled, or does it start BSOD-ing after you do the first set of updates on a clean install?
 
When you are starting up your computer, at the POST area, start hitting F8. This will open a separate boot options menu. Choose "Disable Auto Restart at System Failure" or something close to that effect. Once it reboots, if it BSOD's, it will show the BSOD and let you copy down the error codes. Do this, then tell us what it says. From the sounds of things, I would have thought it was memory because that is what always happened to me when I had bad memory, but you said you ran Memtest already. The only other thing I can think of is that maybe it is a bad driver.

Does it do this right after Vista is reinstalled, or does it start BSOD-ing after you do the first set of updates on a clean install?

Yea i ran the intermediate memory test, cuz there's 3 levels in the options menu, and it was fine. Um maybe i can take my memory into Frys and have them test it for me.

I've put all my BIOS settings to default. And the BSOD happens right upon loading up Vista for the first time. Like, it gets towards the end of the loading bar which probably goes like 5 times then it stops and BSODs.

The same thing now happens when trying to re-access the Vista installer when choosing to load the vista boot disc. It loads the windows file fine, with the big white bar, then when it goes to load the boot disc menus, it has the same vista loading bar, as if you were going to just laod into the OS, but it BSODs right at the same time.

I didn't think it was the memory cuz i ran that mem test and it wouldn't explain why the post screen was having trouble finding my HD when searching for what's connected to my SATA ports.

When i get home from work i'll disable the auto reboot and get the codes, maybe i'll take my memory into frys too and see if they can do a quick test on it. I didn't OC it for a short period to 1GHz. It's 4 gigs of crucial ballistix 800MHz ram, has heatspreaders and my case is pretty well cooled, so i thought it could hang. I put the clock back to 800 a while back, but recently i have been having more problems. Thanks for your response, i'll get that other info later tonight.

*edit* i just thought of something! could it be cuz i'm installing vista 64 with 4 gigs of ram? i've heard it can have problems and you should only install vista with 2 gigs. but this wouldn't answer why i can't get back into the vista boot menu... hhmmm...

hah, this was the problem the whole time i guess.

stupid vista, you'd think they would have tested if the user could install 64 with more than 2 gigs, jesus...
 
If you have Vista SP1 X64 it would work just fine. It is pre-SP1 that this issue was there.
 
i do have pre SP1, as i had to do it when i first bought my comp, which was almost exactly a year ago. everything is up and running now except....

...now i'm getting a weird problem, whenever i plug in my other 2 gigs of ram, it BSODs upon loading windows. the same crash, i'm guessing.

i've swapped the ram, so i don't think it's the ram. do you guys think the second 2 ram slots on my MB got fried somehow? i've never heard of that and it would be weird as i only OCed my ram 1000MHz and my board supports up to 1200.
 
I had repeat BSOD on my comp Thursday/Friday. It would be running fine then would BSOD and imediately reboot into BSOD and would cycle like that till I force shut it off. I'd let it sit for 2 minutes and it would boot back up fine inot XP. Then at some point in the next hour or so it would BSOD all over again and enter the cycle...no exceptions on the boot up, safe mode, safe mode networking, last known good configuration, didnt' matter...imediate BSOD.

I though it was drivers initially, after removing all and re-installing i thought i had it beat...then BSOD during the night, woke up to find the comp in the cycle. Figured it was RAM then but passed memtest no issues. Before tearing the whole thing apart I pulled my HDD yesterday morning, it was an 80GB IDE that was few years old, forgot I'd installed it as a temp....switched in a new 500GB seagate, no issues yet and it's been over 24 hours now.

Just my $0.02.
 
yea it's not my HDD, jfen, cuz i bought a new one with a fresh install and i was still gettin the BSODs, thanks though.

Yea Mak, i did what you said, i got up to SP1 and then put my ram back in, and it detects it fine. BUT, a big but, when i run large FFTs in P95 i get a hardware error and my whole comp freezes. So i still think my second 2 slots are bad on my MB. I'm going to try running the memory diagnostic on the highest setting with all 4 gigs and see what happens, and if it doesn't work, i'm gonna try with 2 gigs at a time both different sticks in the first 2 slots 2 separate times. I have a feeling something is still up with my ram....

thanks for the help thus far guys.

*edit* ok so i guess it was just crashing because i had prime95 installed on a partitioned drive and didn't reinstall it, i didn't think it was necessary, just like CPUZ. After reinstalling it seems to be running fine. I did the blend test too, which should test mostly RAM.

Thanks for the help guys, even though i was able to trouble shoot a lot of my own problems, it still helps to have other opinions, so thanks.
 
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