Computer freezing or blue screening randomly.

[Colenzo]

I have an old AGP motherboard and I had a old geforce 6700 in it. Recently I replaced the videocard in it with a new one. I had thought the computer had been freezing due to the graphics card being messed up but the graphics card would run all day sometimes without the computer crashing. The computer crashes usually once per day at the least and as many times as 4 times a day on some days. I replaced the ram and the videocard and I am at a loss for what the problem could be. I even tried running scandisk on my computer to see if I had a bad sector on my HD but that wasn't the case. Anybody have any idea what could be going on here? I was thinking its either the MOBO the PSU or a hard drive...

[Celestialstrife]

Too much p0rn ;D

[xerodok]

Bad power supply.

[Elizara]

Did you scrub out the old drivers?

...Not doing that caused me to reformat at least once. Also certain vid cards (my last one did this) can lock up/freeze randomly. (The culprits are all ATI cards on the lower end that I know of, just so you know. Namely lower end AGP port cards)

Yeah tho, if you have ruled THAT out it might be bad psu. Or HDD dying. (I had both bad vid card AND hdd dying when I was bsding all the time myself, I figured out after I replaced the hdd recently. It was proly both in my case; the freezes stopped after Computer Renaissance replaced the video card, but the bsd's didn't until my hdd started making The Click Of Doom. Luckily I had enough time to back up!)

[Colenzo]

Ok I will see if I can get a new power supply and see if that fixes anything. Is there a way I check to see if my HD is going bad other than with scandisk?

[Obiron]

What stop error is reported on the blue screen? Googling that can sometimes lead to the culprit, or is sometimes very vague.

If you're running XP, this article from Microsoft details how to read the memory dump files created during the blue screen (you'll need to download the windows debugging tools, the appropriate Symbols for your OS, and have access to an i386 folder, which can be found on the XP installation disk) . If it is a driver issue this will most likely help you pinpoint which driver.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315263

Testing your HD will depend on the manufacturer, they each have different tools they make available. You can usually get those form the manufacturer's website, or you can burn the Ultimate Boot CD to a disk. It has many of those tools, along with a lot of other useful tools. Boot to the CD rather than into Windows to access these tools.

[Elizara]

I HIGHLY recommend WhoCrashed if you can't figure out what that bsd means. That's how I figured out that my ATI card was crashing my system. (Couldn't figure out the other reason for bsds tho until the hdd died. It was some obscure stupid error that I was all what the frick about.)

As for hdds; Who made your hdd? I didn't know my old one was a Deathstar..err...Hitachi Deskstar until after we took it out to throw it in the garbage, tbh. (My fault for not picking out all the parts myself. I got better taste in parts than that really.) All the major manufacturers have free diagnostic programs on their websites somewhere that are more thorough than chkdisk/scandisk. It should be on the manufacturer's website. (You can also find direct links here to all of them.)

I hope that helps. And if there's anything wrong with your hdd at all..BACK UP. NOW.

[Colenzo]

So apparently all this fucking time it was service pack 3... I had reformatted earlier today after replacing the video card, PSU and the ram. My computer was still freezing. I did a fresh install of windows on my PC and didn't update anything. I then just left it alone all day long because I was tired as fuck and wanted to see if it would crash to see if it was my old hard drive that was causing the problem. It turns out that my old hard drive wasn't bad after all. When I got to installing windows updates I got to service pack 3 and the shit started happening again. I then went and googled service pack 3 and found out a shit ton of bad stuff about it.

Apparently service pack 3 on XP fucking tears older AMD machines a new asshole and just makes shit freeze randomly when starting up or blue screens the shit out of you. This is like the first time I have ever had a problem ever with updating windows where it just totally suck dick. Well on the bright side I don't have to worry about my machine dying from a shitty PSU and I fixed my videocard problem?

[Mafai]

So apparently all this fucking time it was service pack 3... I had reformatted earlier today after replacing the video card, PSU and the ram. My computer was still freezing. I did a fresh install of windows on my PC and didn't update anything. I then just left it alone all day long because I was tired as fuck and wanted to see if it would crash to see if it was my old hard drive that was causing the problem. It turns out that my old hard drive wasn't bad after all. When I got to installing windows updates I got to service pack 3 and the shit started happening again. I then went and googled service pack 3 and found out a shit ton of bad stuff about it.

Apparently service pack 3 on XP fucking tears older AMD machines a new asshole and just makes shit freeze randomly when starting up or blue screens the shit out of you. This is like the first time I have ever had a problem ever with updating windows where it just totally suck dick. Well on the bright side I don't have to worry about my machine dying from a shitty PSU and I fixed my videocard problem?

The real question is why would you reformat and reinstall XP when doing a reformat over windows 7 and using a loader to make it able to receive windows updates?

[Colenzo]

I dont own a copy of windows 7 ? When did I say I ever had windows 7? This computer is like almost 6 years old lol. AMD 3700+ etc.

[Mafai]

I dont own a copy of windows 7 ? When did I say I ever had windows 7? This computer is like almost 6 years old lol. AMD 3700+ etc.

Owning hasn't meant anything in years, if ever when it comes to software. If you meet the recommended requirements, I'd recommend torrenting a copy and grabbing a loader to bypass activation.

[Colenzo]

I still don't understand what you're getting at. Why do I need windows 7 exactly? >_>

[Mafai]

I still don't understand what you're getting at. Why do I need windows 7 exactly? >_>

Because if your PC can handle it, its gonna run better. And XP is EOL and not getting anymore windows updates.

[Elizara]

Colenzo: I can understand why you don't. My computer is a AMD 3700+ and I got Service Pack 3 running flawlessly. MS DID release a patch you can install before you install SP3 to can the error. But you have to install it BEFORE service pack 3. Here's the patch.

Every time I reload I make sure to install that patch first, and I've had no problems other than the dying video card and the hdd failure. (Well, it's old, the guy who built the bare bones for me used some cut rate parts, so yeah, it's bound to do that.) And WHY you'd want Windows 7 on a 5-6 year old PC, I agree; WTF would you want to do that when it'd run slow as cold tar after?! (Besides, I'd rather buy that if I ever got around to rebuilding, thank you very much.)

Also FYI; Windows XP SP3 is still supported and still getting updates. I just installed some security patch couple weeks ago. ^^

[Mafai]

I have a file server running windows 7 on a AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3500+ which is even lower end then both of your processors. It also plays FFXI fine, to the point of 2-3 boxing.

XP support may not have ended completely (it will in 2014, which you should have a new PC by then anyway). But they are definitely not updating XP as often as they are for their current mainstream OS. Currently I believe XP is on stage 2 of its 3 stage EOL cycle.

I'm not gonna argue about it, but I think you will be surprised with how well windows 7 runs on your build. I myself was hesitant about changing from XP to 7, but since then I don't regret my decision at all.

Also to add that your 6 year old PC isn't good enough to run it, its min processor requirement is only 1 ghz. Your processors are at least double the minimum requirement.

[Colenzo]

ok ok ill admit it, i hate the look of the new operating systems, there I said it OK?! OK!? GOD!!

[hey]

I run win7 on a 6 year old pc, and have no problems.

Not sure how you could hate win7 though...

[Colenzo]

im just really stuck in my ways lol it would be better probably but I'm gay and I don't feel like downloading it and burning it and reformatting again, all I really need is a PC that runs FFXI :S and its doin it lol

[dannyl]

Win 7 isn't for everyone, its okay Colenzo I understand. One of my machines is still on Windows XP and I don't intend to upgrade it anytime soon. Though win7 is nice in some ways. I don't understand what the hell Mafai was getting at either.... ; ;

With your old machine, its best to leave it at XP, since thats the most stable as can be. You just need to be very careful when updating drivers on anything new because in some cases, XP no longer gets supported. Be sure to keep a backup of all your MOBO drivers handy as well. Glad you got it working again.