Another BSOD TEST

quikwal39

I did the 3 tests (Memory86), SeaTools and Hard Drive Fitness and
all three came up with no errors, etc.

I have not tested the powersupply but I have the multimeter needed.

I never know what to do when I boot into Safe Mode.
I don't know what drivers need to be updated nor what other
things to try. One bsod indicated that a file ntdll.dll was faulty but
I'm afraid to do anything with it.

Spider Solitaire had to shut down as well as IE8 but I don't know how to diagnose this situation.
Stumped
PS I haven't been getting as many bsods today. Don't know why.

quikwal39

Also, I was wondering if the 3 utilities that I mentioned above have any power to correct errors in memory or on the hard drive because since I did these tests, I haven't had one bsod for several hours.
In the meantime, I installed a few more updates and I cannot tell if these updates have any files that eliminate the bsod problem.
I'm frustrated that I have spent so much time on this problem and not knowing much about it. Your website did explain things in a clear manner and I learned a lot about the proper way of diagnosing the bsod and I'm more hopeful now that I have enough skill to get this thing solved.
If all else fails, I have another drive with XP on it and it will only take me
2 seconds to get rid of window 7 forever.
Thanks for any info.

quikwal39

I spoke too soon. After 3 or 4 hours of no bsod, suddenly bsod! What a bummer! Also I checked cpu temp and it read 37 deg to 40 deg C, no dust
on cpu and tower case is open with cpu fan at 2200 rpm so I don't think temp is the problem. I leave computer on all night and no bsod.

quikwal39

I hate to bore you with more details but I'm so sick of windows 7 bsod, I switched to my other hard drive with xp on it and there is no bsod ever. So I'm guessing I don't have a problem with heat, motherboard, drivers, hardware, software, memory, power supply, etc, etc, etc.
I would still like to find out what caused the bsod in windows 7. Our tech guy installed windows 7 on six emachines and they have never crashed not even once. So what is the most likely culprit on my AMD PRO sempron 3000 goal 3 computer with 1GB RAM, 80GB hard drive. Please tell me what I could do to isolate the bsod culprit. Thank you.

mirage

Did you do memtest86 test? If you did (memory86?) and there were no errors, your memory (RAM) most probably is OK. Try prime95 next. Just unpack it to a folder, run Prime95 -> Options -> torture test -> small fft. Let it run couple of hours. If you get any errors, there can be a problem with your CPU. I assume you are not overclocking your CPU, right?

quikwal39

I ran memtest86 and the Ram passed this test with no error message.
I just ran prime95 and got the results shown below. I don't know what these
results mean but I saw something about (hardware failure). I am planning to substiture two 500 mB ram chips to see what happens. Will let you know.
Thanks for your comments. I never tried to overclock anything (not that advanced). I'm on xp right now but i can still do all these tests.

[Oct 12 16:23] Worker starting
[Oct 12 16:23] Beginning a continuous self-test to check your computer.
[Oct 12 16:23] Please read stress.txt. Choose Test/Stop to end this test.
[Oct 12 16:23] Test 1, 9000 Lucas-Lehmer iterations of M8716289 using AMD K8 type-2 FFT length 448K, Pass1=448, Pass2=1K.
[Oct 12 16:24] FATAL ERROR: Rounding was 0.5, expected less than 0.4
[Oct 12 16:24] Hardware failure detected, consult stress.txt file.
[Oct 12 16:24] Torture Test completed 0 tests in 1 minutes - 1 errors, 0 warnings.
[Oct 12 16:24] Worker stopped.
[Oct 12 16:28] Worker starting
[Oct 12 16:28] Beginning a continuous self-test to check your computer.
[Oct 12 16:28] Please read stress.txt. Choose Test/Stop to end this test.
[Oct 12 16:28] Test 1, 9000 Lucas-Lehmer iterations of M8716289 using AMD K8 type-2 FFT length 448K, Pass1=448, Pass2=1K.
[Oct 12 16:28] FATAL ERROR: Resulting sum was -1.622051780879787e+017, expected: 9362143587992216
[Oct 12 16:28] Hardware failure detected, consult stress.txt file.
[Oct 12 16:28] Torture Test completed 0 tests in 0 minutes - 1 errors, 0 warnings.
[Oct 12 16:28] Worker stopped.

mirage

I don't think replacing memory will fix the problem. Since you are not overclocking, I think either your motherboard (most likely) or your CPU is faulty. You could still try to reset the BIOS to see if this fixes the problem. You can also try increasing the CPU voltage in the BIOS, if this is supported. If you need help with these, please post the model of your motherboard and CPU.

quikwal39

I bought this amd sempron 3000 goal3 mobo and put it in my tower.
windows xp runs without any problems. It's only windows 7 that caused me all this grief. I will try to increase cpu voltage if possible. I have reset bios
to default if that's what you mean. I would have tried a bios flash if that was available but I wouldn't know where to find such a thing that i would trust.
SiS761GX Northbridge chipset ATA133 Palit 8400GS 512 PCI-E video card (just
bought). No yellow exclamation marks in device manager.

mirage

Your problem is with the hardware; CPU is unstable. Windows 7 is more demanding on the hardware than Windows XP. That is why you observe BSOD quickly in Windows 7. Running any demanding application (just like Prime95 you have used) will also cause either application crash or BSOD in Windows XP. This needs to be fixed otherwise it can cause harddisk corruption at some point and make system unbootable.

If you need further help, get CPUZ, unpack into a folder and run. Please post screenshots of CPU, Mainboard, and Memory tabs where the relevant information are shown.

quikwal39

http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=1431080

I hope this link shows the results of the cpu test
Thank you so much for all your information. If nothing else I'm gaining a lot of knowledge.
Walter

mirage

The link works. But I can not get information about the brand/model of your motherboard. In any case, with a chipset like SIS 761 and DDR1 memory, I think your motherboard is dying. I doubt you will be able to stabilize your CPU with that board. My recommendation would be finding a replacement socket 754 motherboard on Ebay or replacing the motherboard, CPU, and RAM depending on your budget.

quikwal39

I bought the mobo from NCIX in burnaby bc canada about 3 years ago. I forget why but I guessing the original mobo died. The Sempron was only about $52.00 so I wasn't too worried if I fried it by mistake but when it actually worked I was pleasantly surprised. As long as I stick to XP, the mobo does not give any bsods except twice in two years the screen went totally black and I could not boot to windows. I took out the RAM cleaned the slots with alcohol and toothbrush as suggested by my local geek and everything worked again for more than a year.
Since I have a Vista machine and this sempron is just my backup computer, I'll just plod along and down the road I might pick up a used windows 7 machine which hopefully never had one bsod.
But I do thank you for all the comments and suggestions. I found your website to be more understandable than many that I have stumbled onto.
Perhaps my Kingston KVR 333/512 DDR mem (2 of them) isn't fast enough to run windows 7. If there are minimum mobo requirements to run windows 7 maybe my mobo just isn't up to snuff. Not to worry. We gave it the old college try. Thanks again
Walter

mirage

You could also try reseating the CPU heatsink with fresh thermal interface. Since the crashes are happening randomly, I don't think heat is the problem. But just to be sure since this is easy.