Blue Screen of Death

Garick

Alright, I need some help if possible... I'm running windows XP SP 2 amd athlon computer. My computer has always been a little bumpy, but ran fine 99% of the time for the past year. Then out of the blue when connecting my mp3 player to switch out a song, it BSoD'd me and proceeded to restart the computer. from there, it would go up until the windows loading screen and give another BSoD preventing me from even loading in safe mode. (continuous restart crash loop)

Now... very occasionally it will let me in (i'm using the time I have now before it crashes to type this)

If I don't use any USB related device, it will give me a random amount of time before another blue screen (I have ran a full AVG virus check, spybot, memtest, sfc /scannow and usbready) all stating everything is perfectly fine)

Device manager reports everything as fine.

The blue screen error seems to be pretty random as it changes every time, from nv4 mini, to 0x000000D1 *or just about any other letter combo, it changes* I have tried to update any and all drivers I can think of. (I can't touch the usb though, going anywhere near it will crash me and im locked out of my computer until it decides to be nice and let me back in for an hour or 2.)

I'm pretty stumped to be honest. if you guys can think of anything, or need more information that I forgot. please let me know.

(tried turning off the USB completely from the bios, still crashes)

MoSiAc

Ok you said you aren't using any usb device and getting a little bit of time, you said you've updated every driver you can think of, but I just want to be nit picky and ask if you happened to uninstall all drivers for usb devices completely?

Also have you did searches for your mp3 player against other usb devices for conflicts and fixes? That might turn something up.

A list of the usb devices you have and use on a regular basis could help too.

Garick

Alright, I have several USB devices showing up in the device manager, but, trying to uninstall them or the drivers results in a crash.

Thinking about it, my mouse is USB and is working right now, however, it seems any other use is completely prohibited (i've tried connecting an external HD, a mem chip, and the mp3 in all different usb slots, they all cause the crash. *not at connection, but apon opening the folder*

edit: list from device manager
USB Mass Storage Device
USB Root Hub (5x)
VIA Rev 5 or later USB Universal Host Controller (4x)
VIA USB Enchanced Host Controller

TetraNitroCubane

In my experience, this technique has been a godsend. It'll take some effort on your part, I think, since you'll actually have to use the computer to do it:

http://www.memecode.com/docs/minidump.php

This will let you analyze the minidump information that XP can be set to generate on crash. It will list the faulting modules a bit more clearly than the bluescreen itself will, and you can start to look for patterns in what's causing the errors to narrow it down.

Note that if the faulting module randomly jumps around, that it's very likely a memory problem! I mean that. I fought with a system for months, refusing to believe that the RAM was bad because memtest never gave me an error even once. But when I changed the memory out for new stuff, the BSoDs stopped. Remember: Memtest can only confirm a problem exists, it can't confirm that a problem doesn't exist.

Anyhow, this is just my experience, so YMMV.

Edit: Oh, and I'll just throw out there that memory triggered BSoDs can have startling regularity sometimes. When I was having mine, it almost always was triggered by NOD32 doing a system scan. I thought NOD was the culprit because of this, and it cost me a lot of time wasted.

Garick

ok... a bit more information after playing around with the computer for a bit... i had an old empty drive so I thought i'd change out my drives and put xp on the old one and see if it still crashed.

it was fine for the inital part, but right after the reset to do the real install part, it went back into the boot/crash reload sequence it had been doing for me with the other HD... I would assume that means it can't be anything related to drivers/corrupted files/what have you- now since its doing it off a clean HD correct?

As far as the memory goes, i have 2 chips, I tried taking them out one at a time, and switching after a crash. either they are both broken, or they are fine.