Sick of blue screens !

[firthy]

Well as the title says I'm totally cheesed off with them.

Built a cheap computer for a friends father using some used and some new parts. Epox 8K7A mobo, 2200+, 512mb Ddram, 40GB Hard drive and TNT2 M64 graphics cards. It is purely for internet and documents etc. no games at all.

Anyway set it up with Windows XP, Office XP etc. on my monitor and everything works fine in my house. Take it to the blokes house and set it up with his monitor and the computer screws up. Keep getting blue screens and eventually it gets to the point where the computer won't load Windows and keeps rebooting itself.

When you do eventually get into windows it gives the following error message.

C\WINDOWS\Minidump\Mini 061 303-02.dmp
C\DOCUMEN~\Frank\Locals~1\Temp\WER.tmp..dir00\sysd ata xm\

It is always the same error message.

So I take it back home and get it working, reformat to be safe and test everything for a whole morning, no problems. Take it back to the blokes house and bingo same thing again, blue screens and error messages.

Take it home again, reformat, use Windows drivers instead of VIA, Nvidia etc. and again runs for a morning with no problems. Return to the blokes house and bingo same problems.

Fix it again and this time connect it straight to the plug socket with a new lead instead of using his 4 plug adaptor and it runs for about 15 mins but then blue screens, so it's an improvement.

Again fix it and his son takes it to try in his flat and not one problem, so it is definitely a fault at the blokes house.

Only things that are different are the monitor and electricity supply. Can't see the monitor causing these problems so it is either a dodgey electric source or a bloody ghost.

Has anyone got any ideas what the problem is or how I can fix it, apart from the bloke moving house.

Sorry it's been so long winded but I wanted to make sure that I gave all of the facts.

Regards,

Firthy

[jAkUp]

well.. you can try a differenct socket, and maybe you can bring over your monitor to see if that has anything to do with it...
sometimes if you put computers too close to certain monitors.. it can cause problems.. also keep the computer away from magnetic objects and the such.

[digitalwanderer]

Make sure there's no electrical motors in proximity to where his 'puter is too, they can generate some interference.

[Rampant CL]

Dodgy wall socket maybe, take along a shielded extension cable and try it on that.

Sure hope you have a car, must be adding up 2 trips a day.

[zsynth]

Make sure there are no devices that have a motor or compressor running on the same circuit line. If the current is marginal on that line or circuit, and it has, i.e. a refridgerator, air conditioner, etc., in the same line, everytime the unit kicks on, the current draw will be very high, causing a temp power surge that will give you nothing but problems.

[The Baron]

not sure how this works in the UK, but is there a ground wire? my old house didn't have a ground wire, and I could tell all sorts of wonky power problems as a result.

a UPS would fix everything, by the way (automagic line conditioning).

[EciDemon]

As stated before It could be the power lines in the house.

Ive experienced simalar problems before one time.
I was visiting my younger brother and broght my computer.
The problem I got was with my burner actually. I got all kinds of weird errors when i tried to record cds (same errors when I tried test burnings)

It only worked when I connected my computer in my brothers bedroom where he has his own computer.

Error in the kitchen and livingroom. It drove me nuts til i found it working in his bedroom. I did do some more test burns after I assembled my computer in the kitchen again and same errors occured again ... Weird.

And I do not make this up. The only conclution I came up with was bad powerlines in the house.

I did not however get BSOD. But I would imagine that with even worse powersuply the computer would behave very unstable.
Your comp. do need a stable power suply in order for everything to function.

[firthy]

Well, I'm really becoming cheesed off with this now. Supplied a 350W Liebert UPS for him to try and the frigging computer still crashes out at his house so surely that rules out the power source.

I now have had the computer running all evening at my house with his keyboard and mouse and not one crash in 4 hours. But he states that it must be the computer that's faulty, but I know different, it never crashes for me.

On two occassion when it has crashed it is when you click on Microsoft Word, it clicks and goes haywire and when it eventually restarts the Word shortcut has changed to a Windows icon and no longer works until you replace the shorcut from the Word exe. file. I have opened and closed Word about 100 times tonight without a problem.

The only solution left is his old monitor so I will try it at work tomorrow with another monitor for about 12 hours and if there are no problems I will take that monitor with me. Which only leaves the electric supply which is different, and if the UPS can't fix that problem then he's screwed and so am I to the tune of £320 out of pocket.

Regards,

Firthy

[firthy]

Well, I've just about given up on this one. The Epox 8K7A mobo, PC2100 memory, Hard Drive and graphics card are all off an old system that ran flawlessly the only thing that is new is the 2200+ processor.

I have managed to replicate the problem at my house after the computer has been on for about 4 hours. It usually happens when continually opening and closing Word documents, I have tried reformat and clean install again but no difference, the computer just clicks and you get the blue screen.

On restarting Windows it always gives the same error message

C\WINDOWS\Minidump\Mini 061 303-02.dmp
C\DOCUMEN~\Frank\Locals~1\Temp\WER.tmp..dir00\sysd ata xm\

This definitely seems like a memory or CPU problem, but I've tried different memory settings and the CPU is only running at 33c so it's not overheating.

I'm going to try a new processor as a last resort, it's the only thing that I can think of.

Regards,

Firthy

[Rampant CL]

ITS THE RAMMMMM!!!!!!

A friend was ahving completely random windows trouble and it appeared to be the ram. Try it with different ram, and if doesnt work then give up.

[firthy]

Latest upshot is that I have installed an old Duron 800 and the computer works perfectly not even a sign of a crash. This mobo and memory were running with a 2400+ for 6 months with no problems at all so I'm pretty sure it's not either of them. The memory is Cas 2 Nanya which is good quality, I even ran it at Cas 3 in Bios and still crashed.

I tried running Norton Systen Doctor and noticed that when I opened a Word document from the My Documents folder that the CPU usage shot to over 80%, this is when the system used to crash. So everything points to the processor, I know the memory is only running at 100mhz with the Duron but as I said changing memory settings had no effect.

Anyway, I've now RMA'd the CPU so I'll keep you informed.

Regards,

Firthy