Increased crashing and rebooting

[Guest]

We've been having problems for sometime and through checking out various
things, decided that we would just live with them. However, it jumped up a
level today.

For about a year and a half now, there are certain programs that would
randomly crash and reboot the computer. We were getting Microsoft error
messages that it was a hardware problem, but they didn't know what was the
problem. Sometimes the error message said that it was a device error. The
event log always says it's the same thing.

It only happened during gaming: Diablo II, The Sims, The Sims 2, Sim City 4
(reached a point of crashing all the time, but now doesn't.) Diablo II hit a
stage where it would crash during every battle. Now it doesn't. Lately, The
Sims 2 seems to crash about 50 minutes into game play, although it can crash
at any other time, too. Originally, it was just The Sims crashing (this went
on for months without anything else crashing), then Sim City 4, then Sims 2
followed shortly after by Diablo II.

What have we tried? This past month, we figured out the fan in our power
supply was faulty, so we replaced the power supply. The programs didn't crash
for a day or two (it was the first time in many moons that Diablo II hadn't
crashed), but then they resumed crashing. (WHY would that be????? Why have a
few days of everything being just fine, coinciding with this change, when we
hadn't had that in months????)

We have two RAM sticks and decided to try running the computer just on the
newer one (we had bought it because it had started crashing when we had only
the one; buying more RAM sped things up but didn't stop the crashing.) It ran
great for a full week, I believe. I think at that point, my husband decided
to try running the computer on just the old RAM to sort of prove that it was
the old RAM that was the problem. It was fine for a couple of days (so we
started thinking it was just a faulty connection) then crashed. He tried both
in and then just the newer RAM. It still kept crashing. Right now, we have
both RAMs in. (Again, I ask WHY????? Why did it work for a bit, when it
hadn't worked for a bit in who knows how long, but then stop working???)

Upon recommendations from another site and just searching online, I have
done memtest on the RAMs, letting it run through something like 13 runs, and
it didn't find a single error. Our drivers are all updated and everything
says it's working just fine. Except for the fact that it keeps crashing and
rebooting, of course... I've also run some sort of heat detection thing which
checked the heat as being just fine. I've also tried Tuff Test Lite. Nothing
found.

As I said, it was just the gaming, but I was working in Word today and it
crashed and rebooted, giving the same error message in the event log and from
Microsoft (that it's hardware). I've never had it crash for this error in
Word before.

Here is the description of the error:
Error code 1000000a, parameter1 fffe8080, parameter2 00000002, parameter3
00000001, parameter4 806ee2dc. Any hints there on what the problem is?

We are running a roughly 2-3yo Presario 2.133GHz Athlon, 1GB RAM and a 250GB
hard drive.

Something I read online today suggested that it could just be a faulty RAM
connection, that the contacts need to be "shined up". Could this be true? How
would we do this? Are there other possibilities for us to look into?

Please help!

 

[DL]

Likely a HW problem, possibly faulty, or overheating, cpu.

Shining up contacts merely means removing ram and ensuring contacts are
clean, however if it passed memtest this is unlikely to be the problem.

 

[Guest]

How can we know for sure (ideally, while avoiding taking it in somewhere to
be checked out)? And if it is the cpu,

Also, why did we have those miraculous problem-free days right after we
installed a new power supply or when we had just the one RAM in ? Can that
truly be coincidence or is a clue? Dh now thinks that when he reinstalled the
newer RAM alone at one point, it may have been in a different slot. Can slots
go bad?

Dh told me today that he hears the computer making extra noise not long
before it ends up crashing. This happened before we got our new hard drive
and happens now with our new hard drive, so it's not the hard drive that's
the problem.

Any insight would be appreciated.

 

[DL]

Depends what you mean by noises.
Visit hd manu site download test utility and run it on the drive. Its not
impossible that the new drive may be iffy.

It appears you have an intermittant fault which can be extreamly difficult
to pin down, generally it requires a swap out of parts to determine which is
faulty, and only an advanced tech shop would have tools to test the parts.

 

[Guest]

Depends what you mean by noises.

Visit hd manu site download test utility and run it on the drive. Its not
impossible that the new drive may be iffy.

By noise, I mean it just sounds like it's kicking in more, I guess you could
say. Getting all excited. The other drive did the same thing apparently. But
it doesn't do it RIGHT before it crashes, but about a few minutes. It seems
linked with 'bugchecks' logged in the event viewer, but I can't guarantee it.

It appears you have an intermittant fault which can be extreamly difficult
to pin down, generally it requires a swap out of parts to determine which is
faulty, and only an advanced tech shop would have tools to test the parts.

That's what I was afraid of...

 

[DL]

Try the hd manu utility, at least that will reassure you, and its free!
PS you changed the psu, was this a quality unit or a cheapy? a slightly bad
psu can cause all sorts of probs.

 

[Guest]

My dh did the purchasing of the psu. It's a Dynex 350W.