Something dead?

C

computermaineack

New Member
Here's the story...

For the past few months, I've had an abnormally high number of BSODs. Today, I was switching my tuner card from a direct feed from the wall to a feed from the cable box, when I got a BSOD. I restarted, and I logged in fine, however, a few minutes later I'd get another BSOD. The BSOD ususally had no information as to the cause of it...sometimes I'd get the "IRQL DRIVER NOT LESS OR EQUAL", other times it would just say nothing. Also things like "nvdisp.exe" would be quoted in the BSOD. This routine of logging in, BSOD, restart, etc, continued. I booted into safe mode (with networking), and I was going to try to update my video drivers (and maybe my RAID drivers). However, then I saw lines flashing on my two monitors (which were on clone, since it was safe mode), then they went on to "search" mode, then they went on to standby. I hit the restart button, at which point I heard a POST code (I don't remember the exact sequence, but there was a long beep first, then a few short beeps, I'm not sure how many). The monitors remained in standby, and in addition I smelled something funky, which leads me to believe that a cap died somewhere. The PSU is good, as the computer is still on...the main suspects are the motherboard and the graphics card.

Computer specs:
Mobo: MSI K8N Neo4-F
CPU: S939 AMD A64 3500+
RAM: 1gb generic dual-channel
Video Card: eVGA 7600GS (with fan)
PSU: Hipro 500W
Harddrives: 2 250gb SATA drives in RAID 0 (RAID controller integrated in mobo)
160gb IDE drive
60gb IDE drive
edit: OS is Windows XP Pro
This computer was built about a year ago. Temps are fine, full load it's about 44ºC. Stock HSF with AS5, CPU only was OCed slightly to about 2.5ghz.


Thanks for the help.

Also, I don't have another PCI or PCI-E video card lying around, and there isn't another computer nearby with a PCI-E slot that I could throw the graphics card into.


EDIT: As always, as soon as I post here, the problem resolves itself. I switched the PSU on and booted up, and the monitors came on right away. The computer booted up as normal, logged in, and no BSOD. I still would like to know what caused the problem in the first place...maybe bad RAM? It's not very high quality in the first place...Kingmax is the brand I think.....
 
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One long and two or more short can also mean memory if constant. The beep code depends on who made the bios itself. Award, AMI, etc. When patching a cable hookup here I simply bypass the box into a vcr and then into the tuner for viewing. Seeing error messages coming up with the driver not equal points at a software problem. But stressing a card with dual monitors?
 
BIOS is Award, I think (I'm 90% sure).

I was connecting to the cable box because when it went from the wall right to the tuner, I didn't get movie channels/digital cable channels, and the quality above channel 13 was crap. I didn't shut down the WinTV application when I unplugged the cable feed from the tuner card (which perhaps I should have), but oh well.

I've been planning a new build for a few months now...I'm going away to camp, India (my brother lives there), and possibly Hawaii (my other brother is moving there Wednesday), and so it wouldn't make sense to buy now when it won't really be used until September. So late this year or early next year I'll probably build a new one (well, more like upgrade this one...I'll buy a new CPU, mobo, and ram, then depending on how much that costs probably a new graphics card). So I suppose it's not a huge deal if this one doesn't last too much longer, but still....
 
You were plugging and unplugging connections with the system up! :eek: ! That's a major goof right there. You would be surprised how fast you can damage something like the tuner card itself. Hardware like this can be touchy at times. The other thing to try now is reseating that and the video card to see that ended up being lifted in the slot. That will sound alarms fast.
 
I made sure the cards were firmly seated in the appropriate sockets as soon as I got the BSODS....it's been all night and the computer has been on without another BSOD, so I guess it's fine...
 
IRQL errors are resource conflicts. Commonly seen in older OSes like windows 9x, but not so much in more modern ones. Perhaps a driver update totally hosed something resource management wise and windows puked. That is not unheard of.

Alot of times, rebooting a system a few times will work the kinks out. I can't tell you how many times I have seen a computer act up, but then after rebooting it like three or four times the problem just simply went away.

I guess if we had to logically justify the PSU as the core of the problem perhaps it was not supplying enough power to something hardware wise which caused a domino effect to a resource conflict (since most BIOS's and OSes are set to auto configure resources, as they should be) and created your problem.

One thing you will come to learn as you work with comptuers more often is that, once you fix something it isn't always important to know exactly why it failed, because sometimes it will be impossible for you tell exactly what did happen. Or it would take you a long time, and your time can be better spent doing other things.
 
I can readily concur on the reboot several times to see... "success at last! yes! :D " especially with sound drivers seeing more problems then video at times. Vista has a regular memory dump without explaination here when going to shutdown or reboot in XP. "things that creep in the night" is the best way to label some problems. You throw a light on and... :confused: "where did it go?"
 
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