BSOD every few months fixed by Checkdisk

  • Thread starter Thread starter JM
  • Start date Start date
J

JM

I've got a client with a Dell desktop, Windows XP Home. Every 3-4 months it
stars to BSOD, which he swears is not precipitated by any specific incident.
He brings it to me and I hook the hard drive up to another machine and run
Checkdisk on it, with the option to repair any problems. After that I put
the hard drive back in the Dell and it runs fine for a while.

While it's here I scan it for viruses and other malware
(adware/spyware/hijackers), and nothing out of the ordinary comes up.

Any suggestions for things to look at? Any idea why this might be
happening?

jm
 
JM said:
I've got a client with a Dell desktop, Windows XP Home. Every 3-4
months it stars to BSOD, which he swears is not precipitated by any
specific incident. He brings it to me and I hook the hard drive up to
another machine and run
Checkdisk on it, with the option to repair any problems. After that I
put the hard drive back in the Dell and it runs fine for a while.

While it's here I scan it for viruses and other malware
(adware/spyware/hijackers), and nothing out of the ordinary comes up.

Any suggestions for things to look at? Any idea why this might be
happening?
Click to expand...

Flaky RAM? Overheating? Have you tested the hard drive with a diagnostic
utility from the drive mftr. (not just Chkdsk)?

http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Hardware_Troubleshooting

Any clues in Event Viewer?
Start>Run>eventvwr.msc [enter]

Malke
 
Firstly, blue screen are a cool feature, which give loads of info. I'd
recomend that you setup that client to take a complete memory dump, which
will grab all the data in the memory when the blue screen occurs. This is
done in KB http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=316450 under - "To Configure
Your Computer for a Complete Memory Dump or for a Kernel Memory Dump".

You can analyse the memory dump using the Windows debugging tools from
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/default.mspx

If you dont fancy doing this, right click on my computer, select properties.
In System Properties & click the Advanced Tab. In this click 'Settings' under
'Startup and recovery'.
Untick 'Automatically restart'.
This means when the blue screen occurs, the user will be able to read the
error message given by the blue screen - make sure this is noted down.
The error codes are explained in the help file which comes with Debugging
tools for windows.
Remember - 75% of blue screens are caused by badly written drivers :)


Thanks,
Rob D
--
Windows XP rocks!


Malke said:
JM said:
I've got a client with a Dell desktop, Windows XP Home. Every 3-4
months it stars to BSOD, which he swears is not precipitated by any
specific incident. He brings it to me and I hook the hard drive up to
another machine and run
Checkdisk on it, with the option to repair any problems. After that I
put the hard drive back in the Dell and it runs fine for a while.

While it's here I scan it for viruses and other malware
(adware/spyware/hijackers), and nothing out of the ordinary comes up.

Any suggestions for things to look at? Any idea why this might be
happening?
Click to expand...

Flaky RAM? Overheating? Have you tested the hard drive with a diagnostic
utility from the drive mftr. (not just Chkdsk)?

http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Hardware_Troubleshooting

Any clues in Event Viewer?
Start>Run>eventvwr.msc [enter]

Malke
--
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
"Don't Panic!"
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User
Click to expand...
 
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