Random Machine Check Exception 0x9C BSOD

[afrowookie]

Hey all was wondering if anyone is having this problem as well. First my machine is an older one, mainly use it for watching movies and downloading, surfing, etc. Anyhow, recently I have been getting the BSOD Machine Check Exception 0x9C at random times. The only times I have been getting this is when watching a few episodes of shows on Windows Media Player but it either happens from the first 10mins of watching or hours later.

Now I have done some research and some says it may be RAM or my HDD's. I have done tests on my RAM and it was fine, scanned my HDD with scandisk and I think my primary hdd is fine(is there a way to check the last scan results)?

My system specs:
Gigabyte GA-K8U-939
AMD Athlon X2 3800+
WinXP Pro SP3
2GB Ram
ATI 4650 512MB AGP
SB Audigy
WD3200AAKS-0 (primary)
WD2500JD-98H (secondary)

Any suggestions as to what it could be and what I could do to find out what is causing the BSOD, Hardware, Software?

Thanks,
Afrowookie

 

[MindoverMaster]

This behavior occurs because your computer processor detected and reported an unrecoverable hardware error to Windows XP. To do this, the processor used the Machine Check Exception (MCE) feature of Pentium processors or the Machine Check Architecture (MCA) feature of some Pentium Pro processors. The following factors may cause this error message:

site: Stop error message in Windows XP that you may receive: "0x0000009C (0x00000004, 0x00000000, 0xb2000000, 0x00020151)"

 

[KSoD]

Bug Check 0x9C: MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION

After reading what this BSoD code says, i would highly suggest a repair install.

How to Perform a Windows XP Repair Install

 

[afrowookie]

thanks for the reply, i followed the link and it points to the cpu or maybe bus error. does this mean my cpu or my motherboard is going? or do you think that maybe reseating my cpu will help?

thanks for reply mak213, will try that, and since i'm screwing around inside the case i might as well reseat all my components, since it's probably been a couple years. and it doesn't hurt to do it. buy i will give your suggestion a try.

thanks

 

[KSoD]

Reseating hte CPU couldnt hurt. Just make sure to reapply the thermal paste. I would also suggest a good cleaning with some compressed air. Make sure there is no build up of dust in the heat sink fins and such.

 

[afrowookie]

hey again, i reseated the cpu cleaned cpu and heatsink removing old thermal paste and dust, reinstalled both and booted up pc. about 2 mins after loading windows and not doing anything it gave me the MCE error again. so i guess that wasn't it. then i tried your other suggestion and did a windows repair. i left it on for about 10 hours while i was at work. not sure if it gave me the error again. is there anyway i can check if i got an error message around the hours i was at work?

 

[MindoverMaster]

Look in Event Viewer.

 

[afrowookie]

Just an update, seems to be working fine now. After the Windows repair, as far as I know it hasn't given me the BSOD MCE error again. thanks for all who replied. Keep it up.

Thanks

 

[afrowookie]

Ok back again with the same problem. I thought this problem stopped after the windows repair thing. i actually did not get this error again for a few days. but then as i was watching some shows with windows media player 11 today, the video seemed to stop/pause and then gave me the BSOD MCE 0x9c error.

anyone else have any other ideas? i am assuming that since the windows repair didn't work, am i also safe to assume that reinstalling winxp won't fix this either? could it be hardware issue? if it is what could it be?