BSOD - Hardware problem?

[moriwenne]

Hi guys. I thought I'd make a post to see if someone would come up with a good idea to point me in the right direction because right now I'm not sure what to do.

So these are the symptoms:

- Been having RANDOM BSOD's (they don't happen with any specific program or behaviour, they vary from 5 minutes to days)
- I had a windows install and used to have bsod then after a while decided to reinstall and all was fine till the crashes started to happen again. Completely new install would point to hardware but it didn't crash right away only after days and by then I had all my hardware and drivers and usual software all up and running.
- I first tried to see if it was related to something specific so browsed, opened office software, listened to music, played games. There was no pattern.
- System crashed just from staying alive during the night with downloads and it crashed after a reboot and opening a few pages.
- I did several virus checks to no avail.
- I have hardware temperature software which i monitored several times and there was never anything out of the ordinary.
- I then ran a memtest for 5 hours with 0 errors.

After all of that i went ahead and read my last minidump and it was giving me a tcpip.sys error and it mentioned the file avg... can't remember correctly but it was a .sys related to the antivirus software avg. So I went ahead and uninstalled avg.
After that waited for my next crash and voila it came, this time the minidump says
DEFAULT_BUCKET_ID: WRONG_SYMBOLS
IMAGE_NAME: aswTdi.SYS

Now this new file is related to avast and this is where I'm at.
I'm thinking, it's pointless to uninstall avast because before it was avg now avast, next time it will be something else and I can't not have an antivirus.
Also I was running my system from drive A and after I reinstalled I put the new windows on a recently bought disk B so I'm not keen to thinking it's a hard drive problem.

So what's left? Cpu problem? Graphics problem? Power supply? It always affects the tcpip.sys. I don't know if the minidumps are any help to telling if it is a hardware problem because they keep mentioning software.

I am baffled. Any help would be very much appreciated.

Cheers
Mori

 

[eyeCpc]

The problem would more likely be memory if it turns out to be from any hardware fault while not so likely.The tcpip.sys file is a Windows core file found in the C:\Windows\system32 folder and may be corrupted or missing explaining the problems seen with both AVG and Avast alike.

One thing you can try right off since this is a primarily Windows related problem if you have the XP cd or 2000 for the older version is have that in the optical drive when running the system file checker utility. The tool included in Windows going back into the 9X-ME family verifies and even replaces any system files found bad or simply not there.

Simply type "sfc /scannow" in at the Start>Run command line to start that up. The memory dump is indicating that as the real problem being seen.

 

[moriwenne]

Thanks for the input eyeCpc, anything that can make some sense out of this is very much appreciated.

Memory - Yes we all like to blame it because it's the biggest culprit of this kind of problems. I 2 blamed it right away but after two 5 hour tests with memtest i thought I'd look somewhere else.

Back when it all started I had gone through scandisks and scannow to check for disk problems but they never revealed anything. I did another one just now just to be sure. Also my old windows install had this problem and after I reinstalled, after some time I started having crashes again so it doesn't look like a corrupt file from that either.

The crashes keep happening and I have no idea what could be causing them. The biggest bet is still on some hardware piece. Must try to replace network card and power supply perhaps, who knows, it might be that.

 

[KSoD]

tcpip.sys would lead me to things like network adapter, network drivers and such things. Also software that accesses the intetnet.

 

[Baez]

Agreed. Try reinstalling your network drivers or chipset drivers if network drivers are not available alone.

 

[eyeCpc]

The "aswTdi.SYS" file you mentioned earlier is the network shield for Avast.
aswtdi.sys - Windows File Information That would explain how the tcpip.sys file is being brought into this there.

One of the latest updates for that program seems to address the problems that come up between the two files. You may want to see all traces of Avast removed as well as reinstalling the network adapter drivers as well as either going back for the latest version of Avast or going with AVG or another program once you manually remove all of Avast's files, folders, even a manual edit of the system registry to find the main key for that program.

 

[DesoShade]

I think it's extremely important that you tell us what Operating system you are using.

WinME is buggy and known for BSOD.
WinXP is usually OK
WinVista can have memory compatibility issues which cause BSOD

Give us more info on your system specs. Windows completely up to date with latest updates?

Also, you say you are running windows from drive A? Drive A is reserved for a floppy drive.... how can you be running from drive A?

 

[KSoD]

That points to them running Windows Vista. In Vista that drive letter is no longer reserved nor is Drive letter B. You can use any and all letters in Windows Vista for your drive letter.

It is curious to know how they got Drive A but it is possible with Vista.

 

[DesoShade]

"That points to them running Windows Vista. In Vista that drive letter is no longer reserved"

Wow. I learned something new. But when you install, doesn't it install to drive letter C by default? I mean, it doesn't really give you a choice during installation that I've ever noticed. Yes it is curious how they installed to A:. Unless he went into computer management and changed it... but then again, you can't change the letter of the boot partition can you? Man I'm still confused haha. Very curious indeed.

 

[eyeCpc]

What moriwenne was referring to there wasn't Drive A but Disk A or #1 being the first hard drive with more then one installed on the system. He just made a simple typo there.

Once you get into running multiple drives and dual/muti booting you will know right off what is being mentioned there. He wasn't saying the drive letter but drive itself was being referred to as "A" drive along with the "B" drive. HD#0 and HD#1 would be a better way to indicate the drives seen there.

In Linux that would be seen more like SDa1 a=first HD 1=partition #1 and so forth.