Help!! Calling all IT gurus BSOD!!!

Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2006 1:51 pm

Hi guys i hope someone can help me with this, as i know we have a few IT technical people in the clan.

I have just built my new system:

AMD FX-60
Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe
2GB Geil Value Ram (from old system, and was working fine before)
Gainward 6600GT 256mb (bought to tie me over until 7900GTX in march)
1 x Hitachi T7k250 250gb (sata II)
580w Tagan 2Force
2 x NEC DVD-RW

All this is housed in a Silverstone temjin J05, with 12cm intake and exhaust, plus the CPU is cooled by a Scythe Ninja with a 12cm Delta fan.

Got latest GFX card drivers

Never overclocked (only built it the other day)

Had speed fan on, and CPU temp usually around 35-42 degrees

Right on to the problem, everything seems fine, can play BF2 use demanding packages like Photoshop, but when i try watch a DVD, PowerDVD just would not work, so tried Windows Media Player 10, but had to download a plugin for it to play.

Downloaded the Nvidia Pure Decoder, and at last i could watch DVDs. However, after about 20-30mins BSOD, arrrrrrgh!!

MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION

and i believe the error code was this:
0x0000009c (0x00000004, 0x8054D5F0, 0xB2000000, 0x00070F0F)

i have a number of suspicions to what this could mean. I am reluctant to think it is the RAM because it isnt that old, and i never had a single problem with it in my old set up.

Anyone got any ideas on what i should do? Anyone work in technical support or owt, please help if you can?

My suspicions:
Could be motherboard drivers, think there is an update available
IDE SW drivers, because the dvd is connected through this
DVD Player Firmware
RAM, could have just gone
DVD software?
Soundcard drivers, heard someone with a similar prob on a forum

Could be owt but someone else who knows more than me might have a better idea, so any help would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers guys sorry for long post, just tried to cover all the angles

Joined: Oct 04, 2005 Posts: 357 Location: Kent

In XP a BSOD is almost always a driver prob - often video but not always - either corrupt install or not certified - XP is not keen on uncertified

if the bsod is reliably repeatable i.e. if you run a dvd, it always happens, then take one stick of ram out at a time cos ive had a faulty ram once straight from the box

dont know if you can run advd from safe mode but that would eliminate a few things esp a video driver prob

its a bitch but try replacing one component at a time for example put an old video card back in

PC's eh - who'd have em

good luck

Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2006 3:37 pm

cheers elgordo

ive been toying with the idea of checking the ram, will do that when i get a chance, would be interesting playing the dvd in safe mode, never thought of that!

Just spoke to www.scan.co.uk tech support an they reck it could be the ide controller, because i have a sata hdd i have plugged my dvds into my primary ide, however because this is ultra DMA it might be causing an issue, so gunna try pluggin them into the secondary ide and hope that fixes it

thanks for your input mate, anymore ideas anyone?

Joined: Aug 08, 2005 Posts: 309 Location: Yorkshire

Aye.

I've checked on the error and the first segment is a hardware report from the CPU to Windows XP. So it would appear to be hardware. However the other thing I did was to check support forums and all intances of this error appear to happen on AMD CPU's on PC's running XP.

There have been no fixes shown in most and the ones that have a fix the affected area is different to yours. Is XP Service Pack 2 and fully patched with MS update??

Joined: Jul 29, 2005 Posts: 428 Location: Weymouth

m8 the nvidia IDE SW drivers are known causes of BSOD with many boards, I had no end of trouble with an A8N-SLi until I removed the nvidia driver and use the microsoft one ....

Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2006 4:54 pm

My XP is fully up to date, soul, ive been readin all day and found lots of issues that others have had, but none are the same as mine.

Think i will try uninstall the SW drivers like you say munter, a lot of the problems ive read about involve them!!

Computers can be so annoying when you dont know for sure what is wrong!

All this response is very well recieved, thanks everyone

Joined: Nov 24, 2005 Posts: 161 Location: Bolton

A wise sage once said to me: - "The joy of having a PC is the ability to fix it when it goes wrong!" - how true, how true!

Good luck with your problem Columbo.

Joined: Jul 01, 2005 Posts: 519 Location: Watching You

hey nice sig columbo

Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2006 11:23 am

Cheers Assassin!!

Think i have fixed it guys, i think it is a problem with either the NF4 chipset or my Asus A8N32 that it is very picky about where you put your IDE cables etc.

The other night when i had the problem i dint have time to crack open the case so dint try this, but i seem to have fixed it by switching the IDE plug on the motherboard. After closer inspection, it was in the secondary controller, which is usually used for CD/DVD. However my HDD is SATA so the Primary controller was empty, and after switching it to that controller it played the DVD seemlessly for hours! Tested it for about 6hours, and no BSOD so far!!

Thankyou lord!! Hope that the dreaded BSOD does not return!!

Thank you everyone for your help with this matter!!!

Joined: Nov 19, 2005 Posts: 57 Location: Cambridge

Yes exactly the solution I would have suggested...

Very Happy

Saracen

Joined: Aug 08, 2005 Posts: 309 Location: Yorkshire

I've always had Asus boards and never had a prob but tbh I have always gone P4 and intel chipset. Just glad you got it sorted out Wink