BSOD if I/O heavily pressed

[Jon Davis]

I have a new[-ish] PC I built about four months ago with fresh hardware and
a fresh install of Windows XP, and since it was assembled I've always had
this problem.

Whenever the I/O is heavily pressed--specifically, whenever I use the
DVD-ROMs and hard drives with a lot of hard drive seeking, such as copying
multiple files from both DVD-ROMs to the hard drive at the same time, or
sometimes when I'm defragmenting the hard drive--I will eventually get a
BSOD ("MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION" or something similar, a useless error which
can mean anything from bad memory to hot temperatures to bad drivers).

I'm not sure what to think of this. The CPU temperature readout says that
it's pretty darn cool. Might be the hard drive temperature, but I don't know
what to think of that since the hard drive is spaced out in its own drive
slot with plenty of room to breathe.

The case side fan blows in and not out. Is this correct?

Ideas?

My configuration:

M/B - MSI K8N Neo4 w/ nVidia nForce 4
CPU - AMD Athlon 64 3000+
Memory - 1GB (tests check out)
Hard drive - Western Digital WD3200JD (320GB Serial-ATA)
O/S - Windows XP Pro SP2 (w/ latest nVidia nForce drivers)

Jon

 

[Jon Davis]

M/B - MSI K8N Neo4 w/ nVidia nForce 4

Hard drive - Western Digital WD3200JD (320GB Serial-ATA)
O/S - Windows XP Pro SP2 (w/ latest nVidia nForce drivers)

I have uninstalled the nVidia IDE drivers and will monitor to see if there
further errors. I'll post here if errors continue.

Jon

 

[Michael Hawes]

I have uninstalled the nVidia IDE drivers and will monitor to see if there
further errors. I'll post here if errors continue.

Jon

What PSU/maunufacturer/rating? What video card? How have you tested
memory?
Mike.

 

[DaveW]

My first impression is that you may have an underpowered/unstable power
supply unit. You may want to try installing a more powerful High Quality
(stable) brand of PSU and see if that fixes it.

 

[Jon Davis]

I have uninstalled the nVidia IDE drivers and will monitor to see if there
further errors. I'll post here if errors continue.

Jon

If anyone is watching this thread, uninstalling the nVidia IDE drivers seems
to have solved the problem.

Jon

 

[Michael Hawes]

If anyone is watching this thread, uninstalling the nVidia IDE drivers seems
to have solved the problem.

Jon

The system will work better if you install the latest version of the
driver. If you are using standard Microsoft driver for IDE controller you
will be losing a lot of performance.
Mike.

 

[Jon Davis]

The system will work better if you install the latest version of the

driver. If you are using standard Microsoft driver for IDE controller you
will be losing a lot of performance.
Mike.

I had the latest driver installed all along.

Jon