BSOD even after clean boot

[ell]

Hi, I have a compaq sr5510f tower thats giving me headaches here. It had plenty of viruses which a I removed by putting the drive in another pc, because none of my boot discs would boot without a bsod. It booted fine then from that dell after the clean up. I put the drive back in the compaq, still getting bsod in normal boot, I can get into safe more sporadically, but can't seem to find the driver or thing thats causing the bsod, everything looks fine except there was a ton of extra network adapters, I disabled them and updated the nvida ethernet and video ones. bsod messages are driver and memory related. I replaced one bad stick of ram and ran full hardware diagnostics on everything. I even bsod from vista cds and booting hirens. I finally got it going long enough now to run chkdsk from a vista cd, but I don't think thats going to help. There no bios of video driver updates on hp site either. I have pulled the cmos, set default modes in bios too. I set msconfig for a clean boot too, still bsod. What am I missing here? bios virus? hidden partition? but that wouldn't explain why it works in a dell??

 

[SAG]

Did you say it got a BSoD while booting Hirens?
Or did you use Hirens to boot the local disk and got the BSod?

 

[ell]

Did you say it got a BSoD while booting Hirens?
Or did you use Hirens to boot the local disk and got the BSod?

it booted to hirens, loaded mini xp, then tried to do a registry restore, bsod. I'm really suspecting a driver issue put I can't pin it down, I see the kid had a couple driver installers on the desktop, the restore points are 6 mos old so not much good. I need a good tool update drivers offline

 

[ComputerRepairTech]

Yes tell us about that hirens bsod, when exactly does it bsod. Edit: Oh, but you met the bsod in hirens mini xp? I suspect not driver related.

Also tell us about this replacing of one bad stick of ram, did you try it with just one stick, the one you know is good?

 

[ell]

Yes tell us about that hirens bsod, when exactly does it bsod.

Also tell us about this replacing of one bad stick of ram, did you try it with just one stick, the one you know is good?

I couldn't even get video when I got it, thats how I determined the bad stick, I swapped one of mine then ran full diagnostics. I haven't checked the virtual memory setting, this thing only has 2 gb and I see they were big time gamers.

 

[ComputerRepairTech]

but are you saying there was only one stick of ram in the computer and you swapped it out?

If there were more sticks to take them out and leave the one good stick you have.

 

[ell]

but are you saying there was only one stick of ram in the computer and you swapped it out?

If there were more sticks to take them out and leave the one good stick you have.

There were 2 sticks in it, 1 gb each, could not get video, removed the one bad stick, put in one of mine, video came on, then ran full diagnostic checks, no errors.

 

[ohio_grad_06]

Try the one stick you know is good and try with that alone perhaps there are errors your tools aren't picking up. Also if you have a spare hard drive you might try to unhook the old drive and install windows to the spare just to see if things clear up. Have you run any diagnostics on the drive? If not boot up partition magic and run gsmart control on that drive short test is about 2 mins, just in case.

 

[ell]

Try the one stick you know is good and try with that alone perhaps there are errors your tools aren't picking up. Also if you have a spare hard drive you might try to unhook the old drive and install windows to the spare just to see if things clear up. Have you run any diagnostics on the drive? If not boot up partition magic and run gsmart control on that drive short test is about 2 mins, just in case.

I ran full system scans on memory, cpu ,hd, dvd, mobo and stress test, took a couple hours, I have checked and rechecked the memory, reinserted, rescanned it, weird.

 

[angry_geek]

Did you try a different psu?

 

[ell]

Did you try a different psu?

nope, good thought, I finally got chkdsk to run from a vista dvd though, its 90% completed.

 

[ell]

Did you try a different psu?[/QU

good ps bsod too, ok I just did another boot nd now I have

mediashield ROM BIOS 9.83
copyright 2007 nvdidia corp

detecting arrays....


wtf???? original bios said ver 5.27

 

[Larry Sabo]

Sure sounds like a hardware problem to me because you said it bsod's running from a Vista CD. Have you checked MB caps and CMOS battery voltage (PC unplugged)? Does if run a Linux live CD reliably?

 

[ell]

Sure sounds like a hardware problem to me because you said it bsod's running from a Vista CD. Have you checked MB caps and CMOS battery voltage (PC unplugged)? Does if run a Linux live CD reliably?

yes it does, I just can't find it though, I used several boot discs so its got me worried, caps look good, everthing looks clean, I'm suspecting a mobo issue somewhere. called the customer got the ok to nuke and pave, fingers crossed

 

[ell]

Sure sounds like a hardware problem to me because you said it bsod's running from a Vista CD. Have you checked MB caps and CMOS battery voltage (PC unplugged)? Does if run a Linux live CD reliably?

linux froze, I don't know how to check cmos battery voltage, you mean a bad cmos battery could cause bsod? I put in another hd to try and do a clean install bsod, I ran a hour stress test boot disc off dvd on cpu, ram, hd, dvd, video and it passed, agh, then I put in one of my hd and tried to install vista, bsod must be a short under my radar, I guess I'm going to end up with just my diagnostic fee on this one, they don't even want data recovery. I hate that when I spend hours on something like this!

 

[NYJimbo]

I replaced one bad stick of ram and ran full hardware diagnostics on everything.

Replace ALL the ram with known good ram and see what happens.

 

[ell]

Replace ALL the ram with known good ram and see what happens.

yup did that, i was sure that was it

 

[LifelineIT]

I suspect the ram SLOT to be the issue. I see this error often. My procedure looks like this:

Pull all ram. Label sticks and slots. Stick 1 in slot one, boot and try. Stick 1 in slot 2, boot and try. Stick 2 in slot 1, boot and try. Stick 2 in slot 2, boot and try. That's when memtest isn't helpful, which it often isn't when a stick isn't totally thrashed.

 

[ell]

I suspect the ram SLOT to be the issue. I see this error often. My procedure looks like this:

Pull all ram. Label sticks and slots. Stick 1 in slot one, boot and try. Stick 1 in slot 2, boot and try. Stick 2 in slot 1, boot and try. Stick 2 in slot 2, boot and try. That's when memtest isn't helpful, which it often isn't when a stick isn't totally thrashed.

shes picking it up tomorrow, I did swap them around quite a bit, but didn't label them thats a good idea, I think I'll go put in 1 stick off my running my bench pc, if its the ram i will be soooo mad at myself!!!

 

[Larry Sabo]

linux froze, I don't know how to check cmos battery voltage, you mean a bad cmos battery could cause bsod?

You would need a multimeter for that. Easier to just put in a new CMOS battery, but I like to know just what the battery voltage is. If it's much below 3.0 volts, it can be an issue. A digital multimeter is cheap, and worth having. Dead batteries can cause all kinds of weird behaviour.