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The classic BSOD problem. Cant seem to find a cause, or a cure!

R

rkarsk

Member
Hey guys,

About 3-4 days ago i started experiencing the dreaded blue screen of death while both starting my computer and while gaming. It also happens while doing things like browsing the internet, but this happens far less often. Coincidentally, i started getting these after i installed the voice chat program, 'Ventrilo'. However, i have used this program several times before on this computer and everything went fine.

The first thing I did was a system restore to the day before the bluescreens started happening. Didnt help.

The bluescreens had the following errors:

PFN_LIST_CORRUPT
nv4disp.dll

For the PFN list one, I read up a little and found that it had to do with my memory and page file. So I ran memtest, only to find no errors in my hardware. My ram is not overclocked at all. I was also concerned that the hardrive holding my pagefile had not enough space, and so instead of keeping my pagefile at its normal 1.5gb size, i set it to 'system allocated'.

I know the nv4disp has something to do with my video card drivers, so I installed the latest version.

And for good measure, I updated my sound card's drivers.

None of the things which i did have helped remedy my problem.

Here are my system specs:

Asus A8N-E Motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 3000+
nVidia GeForce 6600GT (PCI-E)
2x 512 OCZ Performance
2x SATA 80GB (WD and Seagate)
Creative Soundblaster Audigy LS
Good quality 400w PSU (forgot name)

Any help would be greatly appreciated!
 
did u check for viruses??

How long since ur last reformat.. "or u can check with a diff HD"

Is ur CPU overclocked?

check ur memory timings, because the mobo auto detect can sometimes change for "NO APPRENT REASON" "AT ALL" So put those in manually, I've had mobos that detect what was suppose to be 2225 at 3448. U'd think that might runn, but that varies with the memory.
 
Thanks for your reply.

I scanned my computer and found no viruses.

The last time i reformatted was around december of last year. I'd like to avoid reformatting if possible.

The timings for my ram and cpu are default and correct.

Anything else I could do?
 
Thanks again for the help guys, but even after uninstalling all my video drivers, and my codecs (even going as far as to temporarily remove my video card from the hardware list, so it would autodetect upon startup), nothing has fixed the problem.

I am getting some different bluescreens now, including good ol' IRQL_DRIVER_LESS_OR_NOT_EQUAL (not sure if it said exactly that), and some other random dll's.

Im just going to go ahead and reformat before i waste any more time trying to fix the problem.

Again, thanks for the help, its unfortunate that i was not able to fix this 🙁
 
UPDATE:

After reformatting my PC and reinstalling windows, i was greeted with the familiar face of PFN_LIST_CORRUPT

This was on the first session windows after reinstalling it. It also corrupted pci.sys which prompted me to format and reinstall yet again.

What could be the problem!?
 
Try pulling out a stick of ram and seeing if you get the same errors, then swap (assuming you have 2 sticks). I've seen a similar problem happen on a friends computer after formatting and reinstall. I think we went through 5 reinstalls before concluding it was the ram.

Good luck
 
Also try swapping the hds, and make the other one the boot drive. How have you determined it is not a heat issue? Heat can affect many things: northbridge chipset, vid card, psu, etc..
 
Originally posted by: rkarsk
UPDATE:

After reformatting my PC and reinstalling windows, i was greeted with the familiar face of PFN_LIST_CORRUPT

This was on the first session windows after reinstalling it. It also corrupted pci.sys which prompted me to format and reinstall yet again.

What could be the problem!?
Click to expand...

If this happens with a bare XP installation (XP + SP2 and no aftermarket drivers at all) then you have a hardware problem.

If this happens with a bare XP installation, but you've installed drivers, it's possible it's one of them.

Do you have minidumps in c:\windows\minidumps? Reading this will point a finger to the problem.
 
The other day I installed the latest 9x.xx NVIDIA drivers and I got the same pci.sys problem. Destroyed my whole install. Damn NVIDIA. :| Expanding the pci.sys from the cd on \i386 and placing it back in %SYSTEMROOT%\system32\drivers\ did not fix the problem. You can never trust those errors. Pci.sys is probably just fine. I never got a BSOD. Just one regular reboot, and then boom, pci.sys is corrupted at bootup.

Yes, this was a fresh install too. Fresh install -> ASUS CD chipset drivers (SMBus/Ethernet, not IDE) -> kX drivers -> NVIDIA 91.31 -> reboot -> pci.sys corrupt. Maybe it was a bad idea not to reboot between driver installs but I didn't think it made a difference.

ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe
NVIDIA nForce 4 SLI MCP
eVGA GeForce 7800GT
Windows XP Professional 32-bit SP2

I'm pretty sure it started with the 90 series drivers. I know 91.31 makes this happen. 84.xx is still fine on my system.
 
Next time, just boot into safe mode and remove the nvidia drivers. If you can't even get that far, just go into the recovery console and copy vga.sys on top of nvidia.sys (nv_vid.sys or whatever their video driver is), if you believe that to be the problem. Then uninstall the nVidia drivers, put the old ones back, or whathaveyou.

Last known good should've fixed this, if you did _not_ have prior nVidia drivers installed.

 
Thanks for the response.

Safe mode didn't work either. I just reinstalled at that point. Would VGA mode do the same thing as telling nvidia.sys not to load?

I don't believe the sys file is actually being loaded. In safe mode it displays the drivers as they're loaded, and it just says pci.sys is corrupt and there is never any list of loaded drivers so I assume XP is crapping out even before it starts loading drivers.
 
I hadn't tried it. I was in a hurry to get a working Windows installation. Later tonight I guess I'll try and upgrade (from 84.xx to 91.xx) and hope nothing bad happens. If it does happen again I'll debug it further.
 
I finally got around to installing the latest 91.xx and I didn't have any problems upgrading from 84.xx. Maybe it only happens on clean installs, or maybe I just did something odd the first XP install (too few reboots)? :shrug;
 
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