Ok, this time I have a very bad problem I need fixed ASAP. I got a BSoD yesterday while playing G-mod. I have had many BSoDs before while playing the game, sound loop crashes, and some other problems with the driver. SO I update my drivers nearly a month ago and I now play in window mode. Still I get random sound loop crashes, BSoDs, crashes do to some form of DX9 error/driver error, and on some occasions artifacts. Now I have a BIG problem. That last BSoD made it so now that the second I get to the windows load screen (the one with the moving bar) and move onto the window which is supposed to be the loading window where you see a blinking underscore symbol in the top left blinking. When it gets here I do not see the _ and after about 10 to 15 seconds it reboots. So at first I thought it was the GFX card, but when I tried to boot without it I get the same problem. Now I tried a different HDD that had XP PRO on it but it gets to a screen with an IBM logo and OS/2 WARP on it with a blue dotted background. After about 5 to 10 seconds it reboots. When I try to boot into Safe Mode with the second HDD it gives me an error stating that I cannot start windows as it has not been activated and that I need to start windows in normal mode again before retrying Safe Mode. After trying what it suggests I get the same error. After all that I ran a CHKDSK from a boot CD and after it was done I still have the error. Baffled I tried my Linux 20Gb drives. These also failed. The Ubuntu drive gave me an error dealing with X windows right after load (sucks to be me) and my Red Hat drive is just corrupt. So, my question here is: How, for the love of god, do I fix this and boot back into my main HDD and whats the next thing I should look for to try and fix my problem?
I'd say RAM. When there's heavy usage on your computer (gaming), it was probably accessing parts of the RAM that are faulty causing the machine to crash. And RAM is known to act weird when it's faulty. Works fine sometimes, other times it doesn't work at all. Easiest way to try it is swapping out sticks and try booting, if you only have one stick, run memtest on it.
I was thinking RAM being the culprit because the sticks never heat up after the BSoD so IDK they might be both dead and if that is the case then I will just wait for X-mas when I get a ram upgrade.
While you're checking the ram (I'd suggest UBCD and run memtest), check the cpu heatsink is mounted correctly. If it is, it should be quite warm to the touch. O/T - Speaking of which, I plugged the cpu fan in the wrong way round and didn't notice that the fan wasn't starting up. After touching the heatsink and nearly leaving a permanent fingermark on it, I quickly sussed what was up! I thought, 'fudge it' and plugged the fan in correctly and the fan didn't half make a noise. It had managed to get to nearly 80c in bios (a 2.2ghz Cel-D). Seems fine now though.
If you have 2 sticks of RAM, then try taking booting with only 1 in. I have a similar problem when my computer would freeze whenever I played Oblivion, and that turned out to be the RAM. If it is faulty, the manufacturer should replace it - that way you get new RAM and whatever you get for Christmas
It's just some cheap Corsair Value select DDR2 667 RAM and I might replace it. But I have had memory errors and bad sectors in the past. Yeah the heatsink I remounted yesterday and I still got the problem so no luck there =( I will try to replace the RAM and see weither or not both sticks of RAM are bad or not, if they are then I will just wait for the X-mas sticks seeing as newegg is dropping prices like flies.
