Random reboots some help please!!

D

Daveogg

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Hi Guys

I really need some help. I have a friend in NZ who has recently bought a 2nd hand PC. He is getting random reboots / BSOD. I have had a look at the minidump files with windgr - and saved the debugged text files. My best guess is faulty ram as every error is different. Is anyone here an expert on these things who i could pass these debug text files on to to have a look and confim my thoughts?

I think we have ruled out heat and PSU as i have had a look and all the temps are fine and the voltage rails look stable.

Cheers
dave
 
Thanks for the input guys.

Yup the obvious thing to do is swap the Ram and see if that fixes the problem. Only problem is i am here and the PC is in New Zealand, with Jordan (11 yrs old), doing what i am telling him over skype, and me trying to debug via vnc!! We did manage to reinstall WinXP and open the box to reseat the RAM but still the occasional (2-3 times per day) BSOD.

I had a look at the mobo manual and the installed ram is not on the "qualified vendor list" in reality does this matter??

Since the PC is still under warantee i think we should try and get the RAM swapped out. Not too sure how much luck we will get, can you believe the name of the shop is "SuperCheap PC"
 
I like building PCs with two sticks for this reason, the user or tech can remove one and see if the problem persists, also these days it's nice to have PCs running in dual
 
Dragon, it has two sticks of 512, but its a dual core amd processor (AM2 socket). Can i still remove one stick to see if that fixes it?
 
Check the caps first. If the capacitors are leaking, toss the board.
 
Any details on the BSOD?

Run a memtest, burn-in/benchmark program and the Seagate seatools HDD diag prog (with the IDE interface check). Also check for CPU heat (BIOS is nice for that) and rusting/bubbled components (mostly the caps). A power supply could also be a nasty issue, but not uncommon. Try running whatever soft tests you can, else take the machine a repair/service place where they'll prolly have the parts/equipment to test propperly.

[There's nothing more frustrating to a techie than someone saying there's an error and not saying what the error was] *gets out LART*
 
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