Software or Hardware

[Lee242]

Couldn't find where to post my Hardware.
My computer started doing a Mem. dump often and then wouldn't go past (Loading Win7) then acme up with a Message saying several lines that went by real fast ending with one that said Will reboot in 25 seconds. You have a software error or you have a hardware error. I formated the hard drive and had the rest checked out at Staples came back everything works. I put win7 back on it worked fine but as soon as it updates or I add a program to it, it goes back to that 25 sec. loop.
Is it Hardware or Software and what should I check next?

ASUS ENGTX465/2DI/1GD5 GeForce GTX 465 (Fermi) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card
Creative 70SB088000004 7.1 Channels 24-bit 96KHz PCI Express 1x Interface PCI Express Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium
ASUS M4A89GTD PRO AM3 AMD 890GX SATA 6Gb/s HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard
AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor
Western Digital Caviar Blue WD6400AAKS 640GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare
ASUS MS Series MS228H Black / Blue 21.5" 2ms(GTG) HDMI Widescreen LED Backlight LCD monitor
CORSAIR XMS 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 Desktop Memory Model CMX6GX3M3A1333C9
Antec 750 W
Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-bit 1-Pack for System Builders - OEM

 

[iPwn]

Oh Windows, how I hate thee...

First off, you never really formatted the harddrive. Most format operations do little to nothing to the data that's on the drive. To be 100% sure that there is absolutely no data left on the drive, you should download and boot a little program called DBAN. See, Windows 7 has a terrible install process. It looks at the drive for existing files even after a so called format. Even though you just formatted it, they are still there and Windows sees the binary equivalents and reuses the faulty files. 'Nuking' a drive and then installing Windows is the only way to be sure that you have clean files.

From there, you should enable the Blue screen of death and logging. Most people think that Windows 7 did away with the BSOD, but it really just hides it now. Right click on My Computer and click properties. On the left, click the "Advanced [...]" link and then there should be a Startup and Recovery settings button. In there, uncheck the "Automatically restart [...]" option. This way, when the BSOD does happen, you will actually see what failed.

After you do that, update the computer completely before installing any third-party software.

Now, if it does fail again, you'll be able to track down what is going wrong. If it does, you can boot into Safe Mode and do a System Restore to a time before it started to fail. This should help identify if it is software related (which it sounds like it is).