Loads of problems with a friend's computer

[Aidoscuz]

I built a computer for a friend a few months ago, and he's been having a good few problems with it recently. The worst are the bluescreens he's been getting. They flash up and then disappear again really quickly, so he can't read what they say. They happen mainly when he's listening to music, watching videos or playing games, although he says that they also happen sometimes when the computer's just idle.

He's also getting some other weird problems like webpages not loading properly, games not starting, downloads being corrupted and videos not playing properly.

His spec is:
DFI LanpartyUT NF4 Ultra-D
AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Venice
Arctic Cooling Freezer 64
2x512 GEIL Value PC3200
Asus Radeon X800XL
80GB Maxtor IDE
NEC 3450A
Antec Truepower 2.0 430w

I had a look at the DFI Forums and they seemed to recommend at least a 480 watt PSU for that board, so I swapped out his Antec for my Hiper 580 watt, but that didn't really make any difference.

Anyone got any ideas as to what might be the source of the problems? He's run Memtest on the computer for 12 hours with no problems, and I'll get him to try Prime95 as soon as possible. I know he's probably looking at a complete reinstall of windows, but I'd just like to see if there's any hardware issues or anything I'd need to sort out before doing this.

Thanks in advance

 

[Aidoscuz]

I presume you are using all 4 Motherboard power connectors.

Yep, I've got them all pugged in for him.

Maybe a dicky hard drive? Try installing Speedfan - this picks up the S.M.A.R.T. data from the drive and can show if there's any problems.

Other than that, have you installed all the latest motherboard chipset drivers, Windows updates, etc?

I updated the all the drivers a month or so ago, but I suppose it wouldn't hurt to do them again. That's a good idea with speedfan - I'll give it a try.

Thanks for the advice.

 

[Aidoscuz]

Wow, that's a lot of replies, thanks everyone

maybe worth trying with one memory stick at a time?

I tried this as well, and Memtest gave the all clear, but the computer was still acting up.

I'll try updating the BIOS as well, I think I might wait until I can go over to his house to do it just in case he kills his motherboard . He's not using the Nvidia firewall but he may still have it installed, so I'll get rid of that as well.

I had some problems with my new NF4 board with the Nvidia driver pack - specifically the IDE driver. As I use PATA, the standard MS Ide drivers work best - installing the NF4 drivers casued BSOD's and corruption.

Hmm, sounds interesting, I'll give that a try as well. If I uninstall the Nforce drivers will I have to install all the other bits like audio, ethernet, etc separately? And where can I get the standard Microsoft IDE drivers - I had a look on the MS site but I couldn't find them.

Maybe your friend isn't telling you something... lol

Maybe... He claims not to download anything dodgy on the computer but you can never be sure . I might have to interrogate him more about it...

Looks like this is going to be quite a project. I'll post back when I make any more progress.

 

[Aidoscuz]

Hurray, Problem solved!

At least it seems to be so far. My friend uninstalled the Nvidia Firewall and that seems to have sorted everything out. Sites which previously wouldn't load now work fine, videos are playing and downloads are no longer corrupted. He hasn't got any more BSODs yet as well.

Hopefully everything's fine now. It seems kind of weird though, how could a disabled firewall cause so many problems?

 

[Aidoscuz]

Back again I'm afraid...

My friend's been using the computer a good bit for the last few days and unfortunately he's been getting a good few bluescreens. All the internet issues are gone but it's still crashing. He got Oblivion at the weekend, and that crashes a fair bit, mostly when he's saving or loading or the game's exiting. That sounds suspiciously like it's caused by the IDE driver issue mj3zero mentioned, so I'll get him to uninstall it. When he removes the Nvidia drvier should he just be left with the standard one?

He did get a message after one of the bluescreens though which said "Error caused by a problem in random access memory - run windows tool". He can run memtest fine though so I'm not sure if this is accurate. I'll try the IDE drivers and hopefully that'll clear everything up.

Anyone have any more opinions?

 

[Aidoscuz]

I was thinking of that but I'm probably going to try everything else first. My friend's really lazy when it comes to computers so it'd probably be easier to solve the problem for him rather than get him to send the motherboard back