Hardware Malfunctions

[Tyler]

I've been running Win Xp for about 2 months now and every
so often I run into a problem where I get a blue screen
and it says Hardware Malfunction, your system has halted.
THe thing is, I'm doing nothing at the time. It seems to
be completely random. And recently, whenever I try to
download a file from the internet within 5 seconds I get
the malfunction. It occasionally stops for a week or so,
then it comes back and I get the error once every hour. I
have no idea what I'm doing wrong. This is the second
time I've run Win Xp on my computer. The first time I had
the same problems so I thought to reformat it just to see
if that would fix anything. And It didn't. Any help would
be appreciated.

 

[Bern]

Tyler, the thing abut many hardware malfunctions is that they DON"T require
you to be "doing anything." In fact one hallmark of hardware malfunctions
over software problems is this trait of seeming randomness. You should run
some diagnostics on your machine:

www.memtest86.com (you need a floppy drive)

http://www.sisoftware.co.uk/index.html?dir=dload&location=sware_dl_x86&langx=en&a=
for an advanced diagnostic that tests more than RAM.

http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm A "torture tester" involving the
computations for finding certain prime numbers.

You can download a disk diagnostic from the website of your hard disk
manufacturer. Since the test may be able to alter stored data, read the
instructions carefully before using.

Alternatively, a good computer repair shop can do these same tests for you,
and more besides (power supplies can by flaky, etc.)

 

[Rich Barry]

Tyler, see if you can post the error message here. It could be a
graphics driver. If you have a Nvidia Graphics Card go
here and download a different driver. www.guru3d.com

 

[Durand]

Does the system event viewer show any errors relating to hardware? You may need
to update your drivers, check windows update. If any are available there, update
them, and the rest can be located at the manufacturer's site.

--
Regards,

Durand


| I've been running Win Xp for about 2 months now and every
| so often I run into a problem where I get a blue screen
| and it says Hardware Malfunction, your system has halted.
| THe thing is, I'm doing nothing at the time. It seems to
| be completely random. And recently, whenever I try to
| download a file from the internet within 5 seconds I get
| the malfunction. It occasionally stops for a week or so,
| then it comes back and I get the error once every hour. I
| have no idea what I'm doing wrong. This is the second
| time I've run Win Xp on my computer. The first time I had
| the same problems so I thought to reformat it just to see
| if that would fix anything. And It didn't. Any help would
| be appreciated.

 

[Guest]

I've looked at the Windows help site, and they say that
occasionally there is some numbers and letters there that
relates to the type of malfunction...There's none of
those. It just merely states that there has been a
hardware malfunction and that my system has been
halted...Nothing more...
Now it seems like my explorer.exe isn't
working..Everytime I try to move files around my
harddisk, i get an error message popping up.