Win XP reboots, BSOD, Help Please!

[KonaKenny7]

When my roommate asked me to help fix her computer, I said sure. That was four months ago. To this day, I regret this decision, for this computer is possessed. I think I should take it to the lake and "exorcise the demons". My latest and currently most serious problem is this.

The computer has started to shut itself down and go into a continuous reboot cycle. On the hard drive, we originally had XP Home installed, but ran into some virus and these random shutdowns (once every other day or so).
I cleaned off the virus and decided to install XP Pro SP2 after backing up and fully formatting the disk.

Once I reinstalled, which I received no errors while doing, we still had the random shutdowns, only happening more frequently now.

At home one day, I find out the computer had totally crashed (courtesy of my roommate, who thought the files in WinXp/System32/ were just junk taking up space ), so I reformatted the drive once and did full install of Slackware Linux 8.1. After it installed, I reformatted again, then partitioned into 2 sections. Installed Red Hat 7 on first, XP Home on second. Again, no errors during install.

Now, we're getting the random restarts about 3 times a day. When cold booting the system, it will reset about 8 times before getting into Windows, then once or twice after Windows has been running for a few minutes. When I tried booting into Safe Mode or Last Known Good Config, the comp freezes up and I have to force reboot.

I turned off the auto-restart option in XP, now finally getting a couple BSODs to tell me what's going on. Have gotten a couple different versions, listed below.

Any ideas to help would be greatly appreciated.


Things I'm working on:
* Already cleared/refreshed the CMOS
* Haven't updated to latest version vid card driver, but will tonight
* Haven't run Memtest86 yet, but will tonight
* Haven't yet tried changing memory speed from "Optimal" to "Sync" (as seen on previous forum post), but will tonight if mobo has function
* Haven't swapped out any parts yet, but plan to try memory and vid card swap tonight
* Will probably be getting new memory and better (i.e. not complete piece of crap) power supply



ASRock MoboStar X533
Intel Celeron 2.60 Ghz
Stock Intel fan, generic aluminum heatsink
SimpleTech 512 MB DRR266
Nvidia GeForce FX 5200 128MB
Western Digital 80 GB (WD800BB-00CAA1)
Samsung SM-352B CDRW/DVD
MSI TV@nywhere tuner/capture card
ATX case with 1 fan on side window
Okia-420ATX (420W max) power supply
Red Hat 7, Win XP Home SP1 (primary OS)


Misc cooling info pulled from BIOS:
CPU fan running 2896-2909 RPM
CPU temp 45-49 C
Mobo temp 30-32 C




BSOD #1
0x0000007E
PCI.SYS - ADDRESS F853FA97 BASE AT F8535000, DATESTAMP 3D6DD6A6

BSOD #2
0X00000050
PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA, BEGIN MEMORY DUMP

 

[geekster]

I had a bad cdrw drive that caused my comp to reset at boot up .Took me forever to figure it out. You could try unplugging non-essential hardware to see if there is a conflict.

 

[hygor]

have you installed the motherboard chipset drivers? These can really help stabilise a computer (especially things which are controlled by the chipset such as PCI... which seems to be responsible for BSOD #1)

I notice the mobo uses a VIA P4X266E chipset... get the drivers here

win XP http://www.viaarena.com/downloads/drivers/4in1/VIA_4in1_443v.zip

 

[KonaKenny7]

yeah, i already re-installed the drivers for the chipset, thus curing (hopefully) the first screen since i haven't seen it come back yet. I am going to try and get the updated driver for the vid card tonight

 

[KonaKenny7]

I had a bad cdrw drive that caused my comp to reset at boot up .Took me forever to figure it out. You could try unplugging non-essential hardware to see if there is a conflict.

tried swapping the vid card and the cd drive out, still getting problem.

 

[DJ-CHRIS]

I would blame the mobo because its a very low end one. Also check the ram.

 

[1stborn]

I had a similar prob. last year with random reboots and BSODs. i switched ram, got better cooling, replaced ide cables, latest chipset drivers... googled every error msg. man i went nuts, six months nuts. in the end it was the cheap a$$ PSU. oddly enough my mobo at that time was an ASRock as well (M266A). I replaced it w/ the Enermax and all probs stopped... except the addiction to upgrading.

I know this is off topic, but it's my reason for posting. I have a question for you KK7. Just how did you get yer TV@nywhere to work? everytime i pop mine in, i get this "not enough resources" for my existing vid card and everything drops to 4 bit colour. i've 'rtfm' and checked MSI forums. i'm pullin my hair out. pls help.