E said:
http://members.localnet.com/~eddie180/Misc/Mini031508-01.dmp
I built a computer for a relative that has an occasional blue screen and
memory dump. I changed out the video card and RAM about a year ago. She
still had an occasional blue screen. I then changed out the power
supply. The PC worked fine for a few months, until yesterday morning it
blue screened again. It seems that it can blue screen at any time, no
matter what task is being performed. She tolerated it until the last two
recent episodes, when after it blue screened, the system would not boot.
Just a black screen and no POST. When I brought it home, and hooked it
up to my monitor, keyboard etc... it came on with no problem. I've never
had it long enough to duplicate the blue screen.
Here is a list of components:
ASUS P4P800SE 865PE/ICH5 motherboard.
Nvidia video card
1024MB of name brand memory listed as compatible with the board
Antec 500W Basiq PSU
Also it has in it PCI cards from her previous Dell computer such as...
A Lucent chip set soft modem
Sound Blaster 5.1
three port firewire card
I can lose these PCI cards from the old Dell, since she is on DSL, the
Asus board has onboard sound, and who needs firewire.
Here is a link to the minidump file created by the latest blue screen...
http://members.localnet.com/~eddie180/Misc/Mini031508-01.dmp
I may try on my own to read the minidump by following the directions
given here...
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315263
Thanks in advance
Eddie
I have a copy of Debugdiag from Microsoft here. One problem I have
with this tool, is it is too heavyweight for the job. It consists of
a client and a server task. My typical usage pattern, is install it,
read a dump with it, then uninstall it, which is not very practical.
I don't like to leave it installed. If the part that does dump analysis
was separate, at least I'd like that a little better.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...41-c458-46f1-b24d-f60151d875a3&displaylang=en
I followed your KB article, and I did find a copy of "dumpchk" on my
Win2K CD. It was in support, and was inside a CAB file. I needed
to copy the dumpchk.exe and msdis110.dll into a folder, along with
your dump file. I used a DOS window, to run it, and redirected the
output to a text file.
Now, I don't know if it is really telling the truth or not. I suppose
if I install debugdiag again, I could find out.
*******
Filename . . . . . . .Mini031508-01.dmp
Signature. . . . . . .PAGE
ValidDump. . . . . . .DUMP
MajorVersion . . . . .free system
MinorVersion . . . . .2600
DirectoryTableBase . .0x00039000
PfnDataBase. . . . . .0x80566e48
PsLoadedModuleList . .0x805624a0
PsActiveProcessHead. .0x80568558
MachineImageType . . .i386
NumberProcessors . . .2
BugCheckCode . . . . .0x1000007f
BugCheckParameter1 . .0x00000008
BugCheckParameter2 . .0xf7abfd70
BugCheckParameter3 . .0x00000000
BugCheckParameter4 . .0x00000000
ExceptionCode. . . . .0x80000003
ExceptionFlags . . . .0x00000000
ExceptionAddress . . .0x00000000
*******
When I look here -
http://aumha.org/a/stop.htm
I get this -
0x1000007F: UNEXPECTED_KERNEL_MODE_TRAP_M
and that is why I don't trust the result.
OK, I tried Debugdiag, and this is what was returned.
"DebugDiag failed to locate the PEB (Process Environment Block)
in Mini031508-01.dmp, and as a result, debug analysis for this
dump may be incomplete or inaccurate."
So maybe it is an actual kernel problem.
Years and years ago, I used to do a lot of problem debugging
on proprietary computers we used to build from scratch. My
experience is, if it doesn't "crash once a day", it isn't
possible to make good progress on fixing it. So if the
problem is so infrequent as to be non-reproducible in
a reasonable interval, then changing the hardware config
may be the best thing for it. You may not get enough
crashes, to figure it out.
You can run a copy of Prime95, and this may help you determine
if the motherboard/CPU/RAM has a load dependent problem. When you
start this, and it offers to "Join GIMPS?", say No and choose
the Torture Test instead. When the custom dialog comes up, it
will offer to test some amount of memory (for me, it wants to
test 760MB or so). You can turn that number down a bit, if
you want to do a few other things on the machine at the same
time as the test is running.
http://www.mersenne.org/gimps/p95v255a.zip
Once the custom dialog is set up, start it running. On a P4
with Hyperthreading, the program should start two test threads.
For bad memory, or a processor with problems, the program can
detect an error in 10 seconds. (That is for a system overclocked
into unstable territory.) It will run for hours on a conservatively
set up system. The program won't tell you what is broken, but it
will be something in the CPU-Northbridge-Memory area of the
motherboard.
The longer it runs error free, the "better" your system is. I've
run it for 16 hours on my old P3 system. But never waited that
long on more modern systems. When you're done, there are "stop" and
"exit" options in the left-most menu.
You can also run something like memtest86+ from memtest.org, but
considering the infrequent errors, memtest86+ is too meek to
really kick the wheels off the computer. Prime95 does a better
job of that.
Sometimes, when memory has a low measurable error rate, a
little extra Vdimm in the BIOS can improve the error performance
of the memory. (I use 2.7V on my 2.5V DDR memory, and any memory
should be able to take that much. Winbond BH-5, if memory
serves, could take 3.3V applied to it, to give an extreme
example of voltage boost. But they don't make that memory
any more.)
Alternately, you can adjust the timings in the BIOS, and
loosen them a bit. Say you had 2.5-3-3-6 memory, you could
try 3-4-4-8 and see what happens. If you made such an adjustment
in the BIOS, your first test would be to use memtest86+, as
a quick check that you didn't mis-adjust anything. You don't
want to boot Windows, if memory is messed up badly.
Otherwise, your instinct, of removing the add-in cards and
simplifying the setup, may be a next step. But as long as
the crash rate of the box is low, it'll be a bugger to find.
You can also do a quick visual check for bad caps (bulging
tops or leaking electrolyte from the aluminum cylinders),
but that isn't likely to be the problem. But since a
visual check is fast and cheap, it is worth a look.
http://www.badcaps.net/images/caps/kt7/image004.png
Paul