zero2

Up until two weeks ago, everything was working fine, then, the next thing that happens is that my computer freezes. No problem, that really something that rarely happens, so I decide to restart, after awhile, I get a BSOD, telling me to disable any new hardware or go into safe mode and do something or the other. If this the 1st time you seen this message...yada yada yada....do yada yada yada yada.

So I reset my computer, and the error reporting message appears and says that it just recovered from a fatal error.

The error code is the following:
C:\WINDOWS\Minidump\Mini111303-01.dmp
C:\DOCUME~1\xxxxx~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\WER3.tmp.dir00\sysdata.xml

The processor temp. is 66c and case temp is 33c.

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Edit: Nevermind:

typhus

Sometimes if your powersupply isn't powerful enough it will cause your system to over heat. I had that problem, but after I bought a 500w powersupply, my problems disappeared.

sailor

Make sure the heatsink didnt come unseated? 66c is definitely on the warm side. Also make sure the heatsink isnt clogged with dust.

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zero2

Im thinking about a upgrading, since this problem has been a reoccuring problem.

When I edited the previous post, I had just opened the cpu fan, and found a thick blanket of dust, I removed it. I then proceeded to vacuum out the entire case, and I thought that this would solve the problem, but it hasn't. In idle the computer works fine, which previously it hadn't, but if I actually use it to surf, or play games, it freezes or it returns the same BSOD and same error within maybe 15 min. of usage.

cyrnel

Could be a memory problem or simple overheating.

How are you reading the temperatures? BIOS or temp monitor software? If the latter, what's the cpu's idle temp vs its temp before crashing? 66c is hot for anything but a mobile processor. Very hot if it's just idling.

You're sure the procesor fan is operating? No squealing? Try not to touch it. The oils attract dust & accelerate failure.

A simple caveman test is to direct a small room-fan into the open case & try again. If it works longer you know the problem is temperature related.

Did you remove the heatsink/fan when you cleaned? If you did you should clean the remnants off & reapply thermal compound. If you added more it could be too thick to conduct properly.

Also, careful about using an ungrounded vacuum. Don't touch anything with it, especially if powered. Very easy to cause ESD damage which ends up causing time-consuming intermittent failures. Boo.

Questions, questions. Just pointing out things I'd be watching.

zero2

Q1: I was using the Bios to check the temperture. This reading is pretty consistent with what Motherboard Monitor gave me during an idle state.

Q2: Fan is working, no squealing, and I only touched it when I was cleaning out the dust, while the computer was off.

Q3: I turned on my AC, and it works ok, except that I didn't test it out for very long.

Q4: I didn't remove the heatsink, but removed only the cpu fan, which was held together by four screws. I didn't remove the heatsink, since I didn't have any extra thermal paste .

Q5: The whole vacuum thing wasn't probably the smartest thing to do, in retrospect, but the vacuum never touched any of the parts, plus the vacuum nozle was plastic, I don't know if that makes a difference, but I thought I would add that.

Update:
I had it running continously for two days, however, the monitor was turned off, and it was sitting in idle. I even had it where I could listen to music, without it BSOD-ing. But when I try to do the heavy stuff, such as web surfing for 15 minutes, it just reverts back to the BSOD.

I even switched my video card, to a less powerful one, that doesn't require direct power from the powersupply, and the situation remains unchanged.

I may check if it is possible that the memory is causing this, and let you know if this solves the problem.

cyrnel

Is this a laptop? What's the processor? 66c is hot for just sitting there.

Want to install MBM again? Keep it going and watch the temp while you work it to a BSOD. I hope things besides surfing would do it too: office, pshop, etc., or we might be attacking in the wrong direction? Come on, you're enjoying it now, right?

zero2

I didn't get a chance to check the memory, but I'll check it, today. Also this is a desktop.

skaven

66C is pretty warm, but well within the operating specs of most processors (most are rated at up to 90C without failing, though I'd be squeamish about anything above 70C). I'd certainly try to get the temp down and see if that helps, but don't forget that bad memory or a bad motherboard (or even a bad NIC) can cause equal amounts of system stability as a hot CPU.

Rawb

I'd recommend a memory test (you will see this is a common theme on my posts). With RAM being so cheap nowdays, it tends to go through less QA than a lot of the other parts on the computer.

I just bought 2x512MB of ram for my system, and plugged it in, everything seemed to be going okay, but then it started crashing. My workstation that had gotten uptimes of over 45 days was not able to stay alive past two hours. So, I reseated the ram, and ran a full run of memtest+, everything came through. Booted up, and within half an hour, it froze again. Rebooted and immediately reran memtest+, errors showed up.

So go grab memtest+ at www.memtest.org (it's an upgrade from memtest86) put your case in it's standard location (with the case on and everything), and let it run overnight. If you get even one error, it is one error to many.

zero2

I just found this issue at the below link:

http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/cont...pic/15697/?o=0

An Im going to give this solution a try:
http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/cont...c/15697/?o=120

Im also going to take cyrnel & Rawb's advice about testing the memory.

I was just about to give up, but then my Notebook, started getting this same error, and am I thinking what the h3ll. The problem for the Notebook started after Media Player 10 crashed during an installation, but I don't think there is any correlation between the two.

nukeu666

i had the same problem...it got fixed when i got a higher wattage smps

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zero2

The previous idea about clearing the pagefile & minidump, didn't work.

After it didn't work, I decided to remove one stick of memory, and I then started windows, started windows media player, and played some music, ran bsplayer and had it run a movie, started quicktime, and had it doing something else. After 5 min. I got a stop code: Page_Fault_In_Nonpaged_Area 0x50, I looked it up, and found out that the error had to do with the memory. So then turned everything off, and removed that memory and replaced with the other. Restarted windows, reran all the applications like I did before, and after 5 min. I got a different error code: Driver_Irql_Not_Less_Or_Equal 0xD1, then restarted, and windows wouldn't start up instead I got a new error Stop code 0x8E.

I then ran memtest, because I couldn't believe that both memory modules were screwed up, but I couldn't figure out what I was looking at, I just saw some numbers wizzing by real fast, after a long time of waiting and for the most part being impatient, I stopped test 2 from finishing since it was just sitting there at 4% forever, and checked the results, I noticed that some tests were marked failed.

I then decided to attempt to format and reinstall xp, but was unable to since it would crash during the format process. So in the end I just replaced the memory, and did a reformat and reinstalled xp for good measure, and now it's working.

For the laptop, I just reformatted and reinstalled windows, and the problem went away, I didn't even have to change the memory, which is kind of unsettling, because it makes me wonder why I got the same mindump error in the first place.

Anyhow everything works, and thanks for everyone's help.