Friend has serios BSoD problem

[Freze]

My friend(which is somewhat more tech savy than the average joe)'s Dell has been giving him Blue Screens Of Death regularly. He has 3 Dells, one for him(and his wife), and two for his two daughters (one each). His first daughter left for school (to study at a school in france, and live with her grandparents temporarily) about 1 year ago. Because of this, her PC wasn't used much, exept for his occational experiments with linux when she had left. Now she finnished school and came back home for a year before going to collage. Because of this he needed to reinstal Windows, and he used the official recovery disk that came with the PC.

Now, at first he couldn't even manage to install Windows because of the BSoDs, but then he updated the BIOS which delayed the BSoDs for every 10-20 Minutes to 1:30-2 hours. We tried different configurations with the RAM, different RAM altogether, Different HDDs, reinstalled windows multiple times, different GFX cards and Sound cards, including the integrated graphics and motherboard sound and even switched Optical drives. We ran memtest86+, no errors. The only thing we found was that the BSoD was most likely to appear when watching a DVD. We dont have any more ideas!

Any help would be apreciated!

 

[stogez]

Maybe a device conflict somewhere? I had a problem with my comp rebooting when watching DVD but found out that it was the program I was using. But I guess you have a different problem altogether.
I'm sure some of the more experienced people can come up with better ideas lol.

 

[Atheus]

We tried different configurations with the RAM, different RAM altogether, Different HDDs, reinstalled windows multiple times, different GFX cards and Sound cards, including the integrated graphics and motherboard sound and even switched Optical drives.

Looks like the only things left to try are the power supply and motherboard.

 

[Freze]

well, the cpu is has also stayed but I don't think that is possible, is it? Can the Power supply do anything of this sort? I thought that it isn't connected to the actual system in anything other than providing the power. Is it possible that its a problem with PSU stability or something like that? The problem with these Dells is that they are BTX, so motherboard swiching is quite hard (by that I mean finding one)

 

[wanderer27]

Was the Computer plugged in even though it wasn't being used?

I've had Lightning take out a PSU on a System that was just plugged in and not actually on/in use.

Another thing you may want him to check is if all the special Drivers/updates have been installed for the MB chips (LAN, VIA, NV, or whatever). On my wife's old Compaq the Quick Restore didn't have these in the load on the CD so it had to be done manually - I actually had to dig them up online too.

 

[Freze]

We didn't look for all the drivers but his other 2 PCs are identical, so he uses the same CDs, and he never had a problem with that. The PC was unplugged most of the time, and I know he is ultra safety paranoid, he unplugs his PC when not in use, has router with WPA and everything enabled, but still disables wireless every time he is not at home... he has many things that he does to protect his investments and he is quite good at it. He still has a working PC from 1991 which is perfectly usable and once you get over the fact that the software on it is old, it works as good as new!

The computer is still working though, its just the BSoDs that create problems!

 

[Freze]

I just talked to my friend and he told me that he also had this problem with one of the OTHER PCs which is identical to this one! The only difference is that the other one can go for a week and then BSoD and this one can only do around 2 hours!

 

[John]

Post the true Stop Error codes instead of "BSOD" and we can go from there.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: Freze
My friend(which is somewhat more tech savy than the average joe)'s Dell has been giving him Blue Screens Of Death regularly. He has 3 Dells, one for him(and his wife), and two for his two daughters (one each). His first daughter left for school (to study at a school in france, and live with her grandparents temporarily) about 1 year ago. Because of this, her PC wasn't used much, exept for his occational experiments with linux when she had left. Now she finnished school and came back home for a year before going to collage. Because of this he needed to reinstal Windows, and he used the official recovery disk that came with the PC.

Now, at first he couldn't even manage to install Windows because of the BSoDs, but then he updated the BIOS which delayed the BSoDs for every 10-20 Minutes to 1:30-2 hours. We tried different configurations with the RAM, different RAM altogether, Different HDDs, reinstalled windows multiple times, different GFX cards and Sound cards, including the integrated graphics and motherboard sound and even switched Optical drives. We ran memtest86+, no errors. The only thing we found was that the BSoD was most likely to appear when watching a DVD. We dont have any more ideas!

Any help would be apreciated!

Read my bluescreen guide (see my .sig), install the debugger, debug the memory dump(s), and you'll probably find your culprit in just a few minutes.