My PC has been crashing for NO reason whatsoever. Yesterday it got two blue screens (both while using firefox), and then finally a good, long session. Today, it crashed while I was watching an offline video file. Blue screen and PHYSICAL MEMORY ERROR. However, when I turned the PC on again, it wouldn't go past the first startup screen (the one with boot options, etc) I tried to select an alternate boot. The keys didn't respond. After a few of these boots I found out that whatever is causing this disables keyboard input after about a second of the screen being up, so rapidly hitting a shortcut key will allow that start option to boot. Dad thinks it's the processor but also thinks that my games might be viruses. (dad doesn't understand that I'm not downloading windows EXECUTABLES and I sure as hell ain't running mario.exe) I'm currently scanning my entire computer with an HP/PC doctor boot disk for errors, and I'm typing this from dad's laptop. If the PC doctor scan produces nothing (which it most likely will) do any of you know anything I can do to save my PC? System reset is a last resort since I have tons of non-backed-up data and no HD to back it up atm (though I MAY get one if my system is indeed doomed.) Thanks for any help. Personuser
it sounds like you have a bad ram stick. Take them all out except one and test them one at a time. Memtest 86+ will help. When you find the bad stick, replace it.
hmm, this is probably it. my computer has 3gb of ram, so I'm guessing it's probably has three 1gb sticks? Running memtest now. I'll post a screen here once it's finished.
Most likely. You need to test each stick individually, it's very difficult to determine which stick is bad from memory addresses.
My PC is pretty old too, so it's possible ALL of my sticks have gone bad - I'm runing a test on all right now, and when I get a chance to open up my PC and test the sticks seperately, I will. Also, my model is a 2006 HP m8200n media center PC Vista HomePrem 32-bit 500gb HD 3gb RAM (though I've already said this) So yeah...I'l be testing.
oh, allright. Also, I found THIS thread: http://www.sevenforums.com/crashes-debugging/99195-hp-media-center-m8200n-bsod-please-help.html the guy has the same PC as me, and seemingly the same errors, and they tested the memtest and everything with no results, then someone said symantec (AKA Norton AV) causes the error. And that I should uninstall it immediately. Is this true? And if so, how am I gonna get my PC to boot so I CAN uninstall it? I have a real norton AV install disk if that helps. EDIT: Finished memtool: pass complete, no errors, press esc to exit. That's on all 3. I'll see if I can do a system restore. EDIT2:System starts booting after memtest, will uninstall norton and get other AV.
I wouldnt like to say, but norton is a piece of shit so I would be uninstalling it anyway. It's useless at detecting virii and slows the computer down massively.
Ya, dad got it cause he thinks it's still the best. Anyway, got rid of that and no BSODs yet Installed microsoft security essentials instead, it's free and is seems to work better already (for whatever reason avast! freaks out my modem and doesn't give me a net connection, and AVG...well, AVG is ok, but it made my CPU really slow when I had it on.) Thanks for help.
