BSOD and self reboot - need tips

[Remyx]

Hi,

I have been chasing an issue with my home rig and could use some advice on the best approach.

My computer has been acting up for a while. Under XP SP3, the system (OS) was fairly stable, yet experienced application crashes often. Mainly IE8 and Firefox would crash while loading certain web pages.
I recently replaced the HDD and installed Win 7 64bit. Nothing else has changed hardware wise.
The system works well, IE8 doesn't crash anymore. Howvere the whole system blue screened a few times and rebooted itself.
The mini dump files don't show anything useful, and I can't figure out what's wrong.
To make matter worse, this only occurs once in a while and is not easily reproducable.

I ran Memtest86, came up clean with no issue reported.

Could you give me some tips on the next steps to track down and isolate the issue.

Here are the speacs of the system:
Abit IP35-E Mobo, latest Bios
E8400 Wolfdale CPU, C0 stepping, stock clock
2 x PC2-6400 A-Data 1GB Dimms
2 x PC2-6400 OCZ 1GB Dimms
GeForce 9800GT
750W Cooler Master Real Power Pro


Thank you,
Remy

 

[jameswhite1979]

Hi, on the BSOD you should recieve a STOP code (something line 0x00000007e) find this and Google it - will really help point you in the direction (I expect memory, might be cos its mixed timings or something - try running with just 1GB then switch over to other if still BSOD)

Also go to Control Panel > Administrative tools > Event Viewer look through the logs just before the BSOD see if there is a common change each time (tip - you can filter to just find the unexpected reboots)

 

[Remyx]

Thanks for the tips, will do.
I was thinking about the mixed memory timing as a possible issue. Will remove 2GB and keep it running as is for a little bit.