help with diagnosis

Hi-

I used DocMem overnight, no errors. Today and yesterday Iv'e been using knoppix, and just a couple minutes ago i went back to windows. I 2 sudden IE crashes, and 2 sudden windows restarts. It actually gave me a crash report this time, it said it was caused by a device driver!!! So, I didnt mount any drives with knoppix, and I am going to go to all the manufactuer sites i can to look for updates that arent on the windows site. I have a feeling its the video driver, but who knows.

Sound cards and modems are also favourite culprits.

Please keep us informed..............you might try to get it running stable on windows first?......windows drivers and *nix are frequently an issue?

Cheers

I'll bet dollars to donuts that your memory is crap..

Quote:

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For example cheap RAM is frequently a problem

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nihil said this before, and I commented that you should try crucial memory.
regardless of the memory testing good with docmemory, if it's cheap memory or the fault is in the lower area of memory, you'll have all sorts of wierd problems. no sense in beating a dead dog over this.. you wanna fix it, you'll have to do something beyond staring at it. That means cough up some bucks, buy some good memory.

Nihil- Integrated sound and no modem.

sumdumguy- I'm gonna order some memory pretty soon. I'm on a college budget so its hard to suck it up and buy some. That mean's no pop-tarts for around a month.

2 bsod's today, im posting it up here then looking it up at microsoft afterwards.

Thanks for the help YALL

Soda

[edit] I looked up cmuda.sys and page fault in non paged area, cmuda is the integrated sound driver, and page fault in non paged area is about memory. Went to the SOYO site, downloaded the newest driver, and I'm about to place an order for some crucial memory. One question, for 512 mbs, whats a better choice, 2 sticks or 1 or doesnt matter?

could knoppix have used the integrated sound and messed around with some kind of settings that would carry over to windows and give me problems?[/b]

Edit numero 2

Does integrated sound in the Mobo have its own memory? could THAT memory be hopped up on goofballs? That would mean a new Mobo right?

Hi Soda,

AFAIK most onboard sound uses system memory. I have (personally) never encountered a problem with onboard sound, other than conflicts with the video card............check the IRQs (interrupt requests) and see if they are sharing..........see if you can manually reallocate to a vacant slot. You are getting a BSOD (used to be GPFs :D ) that appears to be related to sound and memory, so SDG could be absolutely correct with faulty memory...........but it could be a conflict?

If you have a spare PCI slot, you could always get a cheap soundcard and disable the onboard sound............that would save having to buy a new MoBo, if your sound chip has gone AWOL.

And Crucial memory ROCKS!!!...............I particularly like it for upgrading ex-commercial branded boxes...........just feed the details into their "memory selector" and you get a guaranteed solution :)

Good luck and keep us informed...........I have gotten the smell of blood on this one :p

Cheers

Heres an update... Today the CPU fan started grinding, but it stopped after a minute. I think it was just some built up dust or something.

Anyways....

It got me thinking... is the processor overheating?? I remember the first time this started happening was when I started installing games.... So i installed a heat monitor...

74 degrees celsius, on a p4 2.4 ghz 800 FSB

I talked to a friend, and he said asked me if I used the thermal grease. Ashamed, I told him I didn't. I didn't think it was necessary.... for some reason.

Anyways, im picking up some soon. I think this might be the cause of all the weird behavior. I thought a cpu fan and 2 case fans would be enough... guess not.

Hi Soda,

ooops! :) Yes, the thermal compound makes the contact between the processor and the heatsink. If this is not a good contact, the heatsink and fan don't do their job properly.

Don't get the cheap white goo.........pay the extra few dollars for silver, it is about 20x (2000%) more thermally efficient.

Cheers

I was told that the silver is somewhat dangerous... :confused:... because it conducts electricity differently? Any special precautions I should take?

the arctic silver thermal grease shouldn't be dangerous it's heat conductive properties are high. not electrically.. anyway.. you certainly wouldn't want to get any stuff on any pins. but AFAIK, you shouldn't have to worry..

74 degrees celsius.. yikes.. you should be able to get it down 20 degrees.. get a good fan and don't forget to get good memory too.. is your budget bigger now ?

Yeah I got a job as a webmaster... I hope to pick up some crucial memory soon... although this whole heat thing was totally overlooked on my end. Its running 74.. and when it goes to 75, I can tell programs lock up a bit... I think. could just be me, who knows.