Hi, Ricky.
Hilary's post should give you a good place to start your research. As you
can see, the fix may be very simple (replace your RAM) or very difficult to
diagnose. :>(
My own experience might illustrate how far-out the problem may be sometimes.
My otherwise well-performing system (EPoX 8K3A+/AMD Athlon XP 2000+/single
512 MB DDR SDRAM DIMM) had been giving an occasional BSOD for a year or so.
The Stop codes varied with few repeats; 50 popped up occasionally (pointing
to various memory locations) as did 0E, 0A, 8E and others. This usually
indicates hardware problems, not software, which would typically produce the
same Stop code each time. Then, about a month ago, the BSODs became much
more frequent, almost daily. I opened the case, checked connections and
vacuumed the easy places. I noted that some of the flat ribbon cables to
the drives were severely folded and crimped to make them fit inside the
cramped space; this might have inhibited airflow, but the case and CPU temps
had been well within their limits. But the bending of the ribbon cables
might have resulted in broken wires inside them, out of sight. I popped out
the DIMM and reseated it. No apparent effect.
Then, 10 days ago, my computer refused to reboot! My screen said, in
effect, "This monitor is fine, but I'm getting no signal from the computer."
I decided to replace the DIMM, so I bought a new one from Best Buy. Before
plugging it in, though, I tried the old one just once more. The computer
still wouldn't boot. Worse, there was the smell of burning electronics, so
I quickly turned off the power. When I popped out the DIMM, it was too hot
to handle. Close inspection showed a tiny black spot on one of the gold
"teeth" connectors. When I tried to wipe that off, several other teeth came
off. Then I looked into the case and saw that the DIMM socket had a blister
at the location corresponding to those teeth. My theory is that a "dust
bunny" had somehow made its way to the spot where it could cause a short
circuit there. :>(
I could not plug my new DIMM into the first socket, and I didn't think the
computer would boot without the first socket filled, but I plugged the new
DIMM into the second socket and powered up. The computer booted just fine!
The mainboard has 3 DIMM sockets, so I moved the RAM to the 3rd one to get
it as far as possible from the burned socket, and the computer ran as
before: perfectly, except for the several BSODs each day. That's when I
decided it was time for a new mainboard.
The new 64-bit mainboard and CPU (EPoX 8KDA3+/AMD Athlon 64 3200+) arrived
last Thursday (7/15); I had them installed by Friday morning and haven't
seen a BSOD since! ;<) The mainboard came with several new cables,
including 2 ROUND IDE cables, replacing my old flat ribbon cables. These
improve air flow AND remove the worry about breaks in the old cables. And I
was able to thoroughly vacuum inside the case. It had more dust than normal
because I had been running with some empty backplane slots for months,
letting dust come in through the gaps; I've plugged all of those now. Since
my old and new mobos both boot from the same IBM SCSI HD on an Adaptec host
adapter, I didn't even have to do an in-place upgrade, but I probably will
do that as soon as I get a new WinXP CD-ROM with SP2 integrated (next
month?), just to be sure that my copy of WinXP is properly customized for my
new hardware environment.
Sorry to be long-winded (one of my several faults), but I want to point out
that the problem may be obscure and hard to track down. I'm still not sure
what caused my BSODs; possibilities include cables, connections, RAM, a mobo
gone bad - or just plain old dust bunnies. :>(
Post back after you've narrowed down the possibilities, Ricky, and we'll see
what else we might suggest. If you fix it, post back with the solution,
which might help the next reader with a similar puzzle.
RC
