serious pc issues, couple of questions for the geeks..

[Tiger]

hi, im having serious problems with my pc. i am getting a bout 20 blue screens and restarts a day and sometimes it wont even go to the desktop at all, cant do anything on the god dam thing!

im pretty sure its hardware related but i cant source what it is. ive got it stripped down to the bare minimum right now ie. the only thing thats connected is an ide hard drive (which vista is installed), graphics card, ram and the cpu and case fans.

im just wondering if this could be a power issue. b4 i was running the following on a 400watt supply:

p4 3.0
1 gig ram (2 512 kingston)
ati radeon 9800 pro
2 pioneer dvd burners
1 20 gig ide drive and
1 250 gig sata drive
usb card reader
bluetooth dongle for my mouse
usb stick for my wireless
usb keyboard

is this 400 watts enough to run all that do you think? ive also just bought a usb external drive but not really used it since having all these problems.

as mentioned above im running vista ultimate, i built the pc myself 2 years ago and its used to run fine but i cant remember if this all started when i installed vista or installed the sata hard drive...

any help really appreciated as this is doing my box right in now

thanks

Tony

 

[ViolentJ]

Lack of power shouldn't give you blue screens. You'd just see random restarts and the like.

Have you tried a fresh Vista install? Next thing I'd look at would be your memory i.e. trying another stick.

 

[Tiger]

im due to even just go back to xp and do a fresh install even tho i like vista.

i tried each stick of ram on their own and i still had the problem but that was when everything was still connected. right now the blue screen and restarts arnt happening with what ive got connected at the moment so until it does the ram must be fine im thinking.

i think ill just need to wait all day and night and if i dont get the blue screen ill need to start connecting everything individually until it starts goin tits up again, if it isnt a power issue im pretty sure its the ram or the sata drive

 

[StevieP]

Fresh install with a bare min system would prob be your best bet, try one hard drive then the other etc. When ur system is up and running update all your drivers etc but be careful on what you install and in which order, if you get bsod's then you can at least use system restore to roll-back your drivers.

Always helps to do a fresh install every now and again, Windows has a habit of screwing itself over.

Make sure your disks are defragged and I would prob run the disk defragger thing and a full scandisk in safe mode too.

Also check your system for virus' or trojans etc, sometimes they have a nice habit of manifesting themselves into your system and causing crashes/restarts, a lot of the time when I never thought it would be a virus/trojan it usually has turned out to be something like that that makes Windows unhappy.

Good luck!

 

[H182]

What error does the bluescreen give? usually indicates the problem.

 

[Tiger]

its totally out of control now! i had the bare min running and got a diff blue screen with the following info this time:

stop:0x00000116(0x8577d510,ox8a119a44,0x00000000,0x00000002

atikmdag.sys-address 8a119a44 base at 8aoffooo,datestamp,4681c4c7

i googled the atikmdag.sys and found out that vista has unsolvable issues with some ati graphics cards, i updated to the latest catalyst and driver anyway then the pc was just running like a bag of s**t.

i want to get back to xp but now my keyboard wont work at the startup screen for some ridiculous reason! so i cant boot from the xp disk in order to format the system drive and put xp on it, im due to launch the thing out the window, totally raging!

 

[Maxx]

I say its a combination of Vista and an old system spec myself

 

[Tiger]

yep, i just want back to xp now but as i said for some daft reason my keyboard wont work in the startup process, if its not 1 thing its another!

 

[StevieP]

Does your keyboard work in the BIOS?

edit: is it a USB keyboard?

 

[Tiger]

managed to get xp back on eventually, guess what... running sweet as a nut! hoorah