Hello all,
This is my problem. I am working on my mothers computer. She has been reporting problems for the last few days that she'd be working and then around her mouse cursor there would be pixelation and then it would lock up. I went over to check it out and it started blue screening once in windows then it progressed to blue screening during boot. I went to reinstall windows and right when it gets to "Starting Windows" (in the installation after loading all drivers and copying files) it blue screens. I've had a variety of error messages during blue screen such as IRQ_NOT_LESS_THAN and numbered combinations etc. SO I removed all cards and I've tried several different memory sticks that are known good in there. Still the same various BSOD's. I ran Doctor Memory from a disk which makes one loop and tells me PASS on everything then freezes, this occurs on all the memory even the known good ones. The power supply is new and I'm about to test the hard drive right now, I was just wondering if this mess are symptoms of a bad motherboard. The board is 1-2 years old. My thoughts are that either the memory sockets are in a state of malfunction (which may be why the memory test program freezes) or the entire board is on the way out as all hardware has been verified good. If it is a bad mobo, does anyone think it will take the CPU or the memory down with it?
Here are the specs.
MB: ECS K7VMM
CPU: Athlon 1700
Memory: Various sticks of 256
OS: Windows XP
Thanks everyone for you time.
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Could be, though I'd start with a few other things...
1. update video and audio drivers.
2. update all MS update downloads.
3. update bios + motherboard drivers.
4. make sure all boards are seated well, all power + other cabling is well connected. Unplug, pull, and reconnect everything once if needed.
5. If above all fails, you can try pulling secondary boards one by one. Modem, audio, etc.
d
Here is a course of action that has worked pretty well in situations similar to yours. It very well could be the motherboard, but this is worth a try.
(1) Use a boot disk and FDISK the drive and create a new partition
(2) format the drive with the WinXP CD (NTFS preferably)
??? Has it locked up yet ???
(3) start the installation
??? Has it locked up yet ???
(4) update all BIOS and MTB drivers
If you can reinstall and there are no problems it is a windows/bios incompatability issue!
~DrJ
Well, I ran the memory test and both sticks came back with no errors. The initial problem was I could NOT run the windows install cd because after installing all the drivers it would go to start the actual installation and crash. Every time I tried safe more or ANY mode, it would crash. It was crashing so much that the only thing I could do was turn on the computer and then crash as soon as anything happened. It was a problem that got progressively worse. Even with nothing but 1 stick of memory and the HD and CD rom installed, it would crash. The crashes were very reminiscent of bad memory. My theory was either the sockets for the memory or the trails leading up to it went bad. Anytime anything went to address memory it would crash. This crashing problem went from once in a blue moon to every boot within about 1-2 days. BUT, I went and bought a new mother after everything else tested and worked fine and I'm happy to say that the computer has been running cool and smoothe for just over 48 hours now. The HD was formatted with ntfs which meant that I had very little ability to get to the hard drive and run the "sfc /scannow" and when I would try to install recovery console, crash. It was a fun few days there, but I appreciate the help.
Thanks!
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by: CallandorPosted on 2004-05-07 at 14:16:11ID: 11018562
It does sound like a bad motherboard, but try out the memory diagnostic program at www.memtest86.com as well, just in case, because those are also symptoms of bad RAM or bad Windows drivers (IRQ_NOT_LESS_THAN). If the memory passes the tests, especially if the RAM works in another machine, try fixing the drivers. You can run "sfc /scannow", or do a complete repair install: http://www.dougknox.com/xp
If none of these things work, I'd be inclined to think it's the motherboard. The cpu and memory should be ok.