BSOD - Hardware problem?

[moriwenne]

Bad windows install.
Registry problem.

Two causes you point out. I try thinking about those are real possibilities and in doing so I look at my experience with this hardware and software. Fact is my last windows install I had it for like over a year before I had any problems. The new install started showing crashes just days after it was installed. So a bad installation sounds like a weak culprit because I had problems and continued having problems.
The same goes for the registry. Why would 2 different installs be affected? It all points to hardware. My motherboard has been with me for over a year also and if it was causing registry problems it would have shown up sooner.
Again faulty hardware seems to be the problem, but what? Memory is fine. Motherboard, graphics, they either work or they don't know? How can they cause a computer to crash in the afternoon then in the night then only two days after then twice with 5 minutes apart, so random.
Then there's the dump, always blaming tcpip.sys and always blaming the antivirius and firewall.
Really hard to find the ******* is.

I'm thinking of putting some ubuntu on this machine and leave it on at nights to see if it crashes to rule out anything related to windows and to be able to blame the hardware but linux could behave differently and not crash or it simply could be a while before I can cause it to go down.
Oh well.

Mori

 

[eyeCpc]

What I was referring can be best described by what people were seeing on some Dell models when going to install XP's SP3 and the system would crash! Dell provided a work around for seeing the last service pack go on.

And you can't simply rule out a bad install of Windows since problems won't necessarily be on any regular schedule. It will be on and off at just about any time. Besides that you have to look over the present hardware configuration as well.

Like I was mentioning earlier you still could be looking at a hardware fault of some type or even a combination of the two being seen there. Recently following a clean install of Windows here I had to replace a tv tuner card where the substitute make and model failed to see results in Vista.

Another card identical to the original was then ordered to still see problems? No picture while still hearing sound! Finally another fresh copy of Windows saw a working display. It shows you can't be in a rush to rule anything out quite yet.

 

[moriwenne]

I agree, I can't totally rule out these things but this fishing expeditions have to assume that we can at least partially rule out some things otherwise we won't find anything. Just trying to go by the best guess here.
My next best bet is like I said to run a linux install to see if I can crash it. But now for instance my windows is crashing like once a day, very hard to test these things are, very very hard.
We'll see. If I find out anything new I'll report it and if anyone comes up with any bright ideas please go right ahead and share, I appreciate it.

Thanks
Mori

 

[eyeCpc]

Well you already ruled out a few things already with memtest as far as memory. While the board itself may not be seeing any bad caps you may need a fresh battery there if cmos information is being lost. Heads worn or simply going on the OS drive can cause all types of problems regardless of which version of Windows or other OS you are running.