Strangely I've been noticing that bouncing mouse pointer as a sign of infection.

Will it run long enough to scan it for a virus and root kit?

Have you tried running memtest &/or booting a live cd. Other things to check are overheating (dust/loose hsf), and hdd issue(s).

Yes. But only to the first one. But not since this particular BSOD starting happening. I ran memtest overnight which was fine. I might try that again though, even though changing the memory settings fixed it.

 

Temps are fine in the BIOS.

Might be worth doing a format/reinstall. I mean it could be RAM (or pretty much any other component really). But it also sounds like windows has fucked itself over at least a bit which is complicating things.

Did you install manufacturer's drivers for stuff rather than just the ones windows update supplies? I've had all sorts of problems relying on the WU drivers.

I'd do a fresh install, install all drivers from manufacturer's sites then see how it goes. If it's still BSODing then you can be reasonably sure it's something physical.

I was sat waiting for Windows Update to install some drivers yesterday on the new XP installs.....turns out one was the ethernet driver

 

I (fail)

 

:((

Just burn a memtest86+ CD and see if it brings up anything.

It wasn't jumping around the whole screen, just moving around a little with the flashing which I think was the screen/graphics card/something buggering up instead of software. I've never seen anything like it.

 

I jsut tried running MSSE and had a /different/ BSOD, something to do with memory_management. Last night I had a irql_not_less_or_equal.

 

Something's not right.

I don't really want to reinstall if I can help it. Maybe I could run a live CD of Ubuntu or something to see how that works out.

 

I'm pretty sure I installed all the drivers off the CD and graphics ones from AMD's site. WU may have updated some though, I can't remember.

:D

Does sound like dodgy memory.

Ant: :'D

Here's my flashing screen from last night. Looks liek a recording of a CRT but what you can see in the vid is exactly what was happening. I was walking past the room and the whole bedroom was flashing blue.

That's significantly fucked. Graphics card maybe then? Could be the RAM on that giving all these memory errors rather than the system RAM.

Very strange that was, and the only time it's done anything like that. Had no problem in games when it's been using the grpahics card, only when it's been sitting on the desktop but could be the graphiocsa card.

 

Can the i5 be used with a single stick of RAM? I could try that first, swapping between the two and then replace the graphics card with my old ATI one which I assume woyuld just work with the current AMD drivers installed.

Yeah should work fine with one stick (as far as I know).

The IRQ_NOT_LESS_EQUAL error is normally graphics card drivers related, start by installing the most up to date drivers, and if you still get the same problem then try the driver disk that came with the card and wait until the current latest drivers are updated before trying them again!

Also, check the timings on the RAM are set correctly, I have 1333MHz Corsair XMS3 in my big i7 box and that defaults to the wrong timings so I have to set them manually to get a nice stable configuration, I think from memory they were 9-9-9-24-2T

I haven't had much of a chance to look at things yet, been away to Tenby last weekend and up to London the rest of the week til yesterday. I had hoped I'd come home to a lovely stable computer but had a BSOD while booting, dxgkrnl.sys, couldn#t get it to boot for more than a minute or so with various BSODs, usbstor.sys, and others I can#t remember.

 

I haven't changed anything and it's gone from crashing while booting/every minute to being stable since this afternoon so I have no idea what's going on. The next time it crashes I'll have a fiddle with the RAM/graphics to see if I can find the problem.

RAM failures can be very difficult to spot, sometimes only repeated Memetest passes might spot'em. Have you done a long Memtest yet?

Depends what you call a long test. I did leave it for about 12 hours the first time. Not done one since though.

Hm ok, not likely then... Try a few of these stress tests, something must give eventually:
http://www.tested.com/news/how-to-stress-test-your-hardware-and-keep-your-pc-stable/762/

 

edit: from what you're saying, I would (for now) blame the power supply or the graphics card. But heck, it could be anything...

Could be the power supply, especially as I made my own cables to get the graphics and P8 connector going from spare molex connectors. Dunno. It's been fine since yesterday afternoon now so sometimes it's rock solid then sometimes it won't boot at all.

 

Actually one thing I did change was moving the main ATX power cable away from the RAM wotsits but I don't know if I did that before or after it started running well yesterday. Could have been causing some interference touching the chips?