What causes blue screens?

tommy trouble

tommy trouble

tommy trouble

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Joined
29 Jan 2005
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151
For a while now i've been having some right old problems with my pc, i built it a year ago and it's based on

Abit P35 pro
Q6600
4 Gig 6400 Ram (can't remember the make)
8800GTX BFG OC2
Vista home premium 64Bit

Basically it's totally unclocked but i keep getting blue screens and a problem when i'm gaming where the screen sort of turns off and the only remedy is to turn it off at the plug:( The black screen seems to happen only when i'm playing Eve online with more than one account, i've re installed the game the other day but still getting the same issues. The blue screen just happens randomly although sometimes the problem report points towards my network card or gfx card, could this really cause bsod?

Is there anything you guys know of that i could try? Basically i'm fishing for ideas as to what the problem might be.... Could it be a RAM issue or just a totally crappy OS install?

I'm just not techy enough to be able to fix this myself and i don't want to go through re building the entire machine to have the same happen again...

Thanks in advance

TT
 
Heat. PSU. Graphics card. Motherboard. Memory. Software. Drivers. Game itself.

Any of the above I'm afraid... there are ways to narrow it down though, if you want us to go through them with you.
 
Thanks for the reply Halk, dam i was afrade someone would say that! The entire machine was new when i built it last December, however the only thing that actually gave me issues was the RAM and the BIOS not picking up the V correctly, that was fixed fast enough with help from this very forum:)

Any advice on how to narrow it down would be fantastic thankyou!

TT
 
Ok. First thing get a memtest ISO going - memtest.org.

Boot from CD to it and run it. If it passes come back and post.

If it fails take 1 ram out. Run it with 1 stick, then swap the stick over then run it again.
 
It's not run from DOS... it's run separately of any installed OS. Which is the whole point of isolating particular components, as best as possible.
 
Ok i've run the hcidesign memory test, well it's still running at 180% and it's not picking up any problems what so ever. Sorry Halk i'm not sure i'd understand the results from the Memtest one, but if you think i should do that too then i'll give it a blast.
So whats next? what else can i try to narrow down the problem?
My only worry is that if a program runs and discovers the problem, i imagine it's because it's crashed in which case would the program be able to tell me when i reboot?
 
M$? The OS you meen? I understand it's a right shot in the dark, but i just got to keep trying to get my rig stable, spent a fortune building this so it's hartbreaking when it keeps dying on me
 
Event viewer is your best port of call, note down the time of crash. Open up event viewer and see what it says... it's normally pretty accurate and informative after a google search.
 
I'm getting a similar problem with a fresh build (asus P5Q/E8400/8800gts), it's occasional and a bit random, memtest fine (3hrs), Prime95 stable (8hours). I've put mine down to the WD Sata drive I've used, it's always been noisy and used to force Checkdisks occasionally in my last rig, so sadly, it looks like you can also put the HDD down amongst the long list of possible components that are causing your BSOD/shutdowns.
 
Thanks Glover, i'm unsure about timings tbh, V i've messed with before like i said. The BIOS wouldnt pick up the settings for the ram auto so had to adjust it myself in the BIOS. RAM Seems so cheep these days i kinda hope it is that! I'll swap out the corsair ram from the missus's rig tomorrow and see what happens:)
 
When I did my last upgrade, I had BSOD caused by the JMicro IDE controller on the board. As soon as I disabled it, BSOD went away. All my drives are SATA so I didn't need it fortunately, it was just while I was copying data from my old drives.

It can be caused by pretty much anything though, corrupt or missing system files and corrupt profiles can also cause it. If you can get the error code, it will be much easier to diagnose.
 
Just out of interest, with the info given in the even viewer is there a site which will actually give an idea what it all means? I've got loads of hits in the viewer with a supprising amount of 'Critical errors' but i'm not really understanding what it's telling me.

With some luck i'll come out the other side of this having learned a thing or 2:)
 
You need to search for type "blue screen of death", there will be a list of bsods that have occured and you will get an error code which will help you find out what the problem is.
 
Hmm ok well i'm in 'Event Viewer' Diagnostics-Performance. Is that correct? There are loads of errors but each one i try 'event log online help' MS gives me nothing:( Also i dont see anything that actually says blue screen or anything of the sorts.
Dam this is tricky stuff!
 
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