Intermittent BSOD, but now straight crash

[spasmous]

I was away for about 2 weeks and left my computer on. Judging by the
virus check log, on the 30th June my computer crashed out. When I
returned I rebooted and set it up so that it went to the BSOD to give
me an idea what was happening.

In the last 3 days I've had about a dozen crashes. The first few went
to BSOD with various messages (page_fault_in_nonpaged_area,
driver_irql_not_less_or_equal, etc.) I looked up the message but
nothing applies, since the computer was untouched during my absence.

I thought maybe memory was corrupt - I have 3X 512MB slots filled. I've
used each memory block in turn and each time I've experienced a crash,
so I'm not sure about that any more - can all 3 be corrupted?!?

Plus I'm now crashing straight to total death now (black screen,
unresponsive, tho computer-power light still on) rather than BSOD. The
crashes come irregularly - sometimes in 5 mins sometimes in a couple of
hours. They "kind of" correspond with heavy CPU load but not always.

Any suggestions or help appreciated

 

[Michael T]

Any Event Viewer errors - i.e., flagged with a red X?

Any drivers flagged bad in Device Manager?

 

[spasmous]

In event viewer under system there is an Info message that looks odd:

Source: Sentinal
Category: None
Type: Information
Event ID: 1
Description: The description for EventID(1) in Source(Sential) cannot
be found. The local computer may not have the necessary registry
information of message DLL files to display messages from a remote
computer... etc.

In application there are several Errors and Warnings. The most recent
two are warnings from Microsoft Fax (note: I have no fax installed).

Description: Fax Service failed to initialize any assigned fax devices.
No faxes can be sent or received until a fax device is installed.

Description: The outgoing routing rule is not valid because it cannot
find a valid device... etc.

The error is from an ftp server I am running (WARFTP). It's been
running fine for months tho'. The message is:

Error: E [war_error_logger] Exception from line 116 in file
C:\devel\current\war170\igaadb\src\DbConnection.cpp. Database error in
module "DbConnection.... blah blah blah". Data souce name not found and
no default driver specified.


Maybe I'll uninstall WARFTP and see how that goes.

 

[Michael T]

Source: Sentinal
Category: None
Type: Information
Event ID: 1
Description: The description for EventID(1) in Source(Sential) cannot
be found. The local computer may not have the necessary registry
information of message DLL files to display messages from a remote
computer... etc.

The error is from an ftp server I am running (WARFTP). It's been
running fine for months tho'. The message is:

Error: E [war_error_logger] Exception from line 116 in file
C:\devel\current\war170\igaadb\src\DbConnection.cpp. Database error in
module "DbConnection.... blah blah blah". Data souce name not found and
no default driver specified.

Maybe I'll uninstall WARFTP and see how that goes.

Sounds like as good an idea as anything I can come up with. Unfortunately I
am not familiar with Sentinal (or is it Sentinel) or WARFTP, so your choice
is as good as mine - probably better in fact.

Good luck and let us know how it goes.

 

[Michael T]

This error is from an ftp server I am running (WARFTP). It's been
running fine for months though. The message is:

Error: E [war_error_logger] Exception from line 116 in file
C:\devel\current\war170\igaadb\src\DbConnection.cpp. Database error in
module "DbConnection.... blah blah blah". Data souce name not found and
no default driver specified.

Apparently others are seeing a very similar error.
http://support.jgaa.com/index.php?cmd=ShowReport&ID=02672

 

[spasmous]

Thanks for helping - I uninstalled WARFTP, rebooted and lo and
behold... crashed out again! WARFTP is innocent. The only other app
running is AVG antivirus - I've unintalled that now. Will let you know
what happens in an hour or so

This error is from an ftp server I am running (WARFTP). It's been
running fine for months though. The message is:

Error: E [war_error_logger] Exception from line 116 in file
C:\devel\current\war170\igaadb\src\DbConnection.cpp. Database error in
module "DbConnection.... blah blah blah". Data souce name not found and
no default driver specified.

Apparently others are seeing a very similar error.
http://support.jgaa.com/index.php?cmd=ShowReport&ID=02672

 

[Michael T]

Thanks for helping - I uninstalled WARFTP, rebooted and lo and
behold... crashed out again! WARFTP is innocent. The only other app
running is AVG antivirus - I've unintalled that now. Will let you know
what happens in an hour or so

FYI, irregular intervals between crashes can sometimes indicate a hardware
problem - such as power supply, fan, mother board or memory. Since you left
your PC running for about two weeks I wouldn't rule this out. But I sure
hope for your sake this is not the case. Just food for thought (or
indigestion).

 

[spasmous]

Ah... I think so - but not memory, I checked. A colleague says it looks
like a C: drive failure. It's weird, I turned the computer off last
night. First thing this morning, it wouldn't even get to the login
prompt. Then it got there but bailed soon after, then after a few more
tries it would run for a few minutes, then... you get the picture. Ie.
something was warming up.

I've left it off for now and have called in IT help. Hopefully they'll
be able to recover my hard drive contents. BTW, this is the 4th Dell in
2 years (out of 5 purchased) that have died in one way or another. Is
this a record - or typical for Dell???

 

[Michael T]

BTW, this is the 4th Dell in
2 years (out of 5 purchased) that have
died in one way or another. Is
this a record - or typical for Dell???

I've bought two Dells that have been problem free. But a co-worker bought
one a year ago and within the first month the hard drive went bad. Overall I
think these hard drive problems are rare given Dell's success, but I have
not seen and statistics to back that up.