The saga continues....help!

[algae]

Here is a brief summary of my problems today:
Win XP Pro was acting unstable so I tried a repair. The repair wouldn?t run without the "sub-component COM+ raised an exception while processing....". message. I eventually took the main hd out and slaved it to my main pc so I could save the important data. While I did this I ran a WD diagnostic on the drive to see if it was ok and it checked out good.
On my next attempt at installing the os, I got a ?low on virtual memory? error and again the install became unstable. I took out one of the 256 mb memory sticks
and went to the store and bought new RAM as the disk was formatting. This time the install completed and all seemed to be fine. I added the new RAM and the pc snapped into action. I installed a few programs and ran into an occasional ?installer error? but otherwise it was ok. When I got to installing my wireless USB network adapter the system got unstable again.
I once again went back to scratch and installed, this time with everything but essential peripherals connected. I remembered that during the last installation, plug and play did not install my soundcard so I thought that maybe this bugginess was related to that.
This time almost all the way through the install I got this error:
? ntfs.sys page_fault_in_nonpaged_area??
It seems that I get some sort of blue screen no matter what.
I pretty much out of ideas and I?d appreciate any insight.

Thanks
Gary

 

[FlyingPenguin]

It sounds like overall your system is very unstable.

Are you overclocking? If so set the clock speed to normal.

Set all your BIOS settings to the "Safe" defaults.

You sure the CPU isn't overheating? Make sure the HSF is firmly seated. Check the CPU temperature in BIOS. It should NOT be over 65 C.

Problems like this are usually bad memory. Run a memory tester like MEMTEST86.

If the memory checks out then the next suspect would be power supply. Do you have a digital multimeter? Check the 5 volt and 12 volt bus voltages (you can check them on a spare hard drive power connector). Voltages should be within 5%.

Trouble is even with a meter, you might not see a problem if it's a rail intermittently fluctuating under load.

If you have a spare known good PSU you might want to swap it out.

Hope this helps...

 

[algae]

Have never overclocked this system. Bios is at default settings except for boot order. Not sure about the CPU heat though.
I've run Memtest and it has checked out ok. Also you will note that it now has new memory in it anyway. I haven't thought about the PSU yet either. However I'll systematically check it all eventually.

Thanks
G.

 

[algae]

Here are the system temps, etc. CPU 53C / 127F , System Temp 37C, CPU Fan speed 4963, System Fan Speed 3970, Power Fan speed 0.
What do you think of that Power fan speed??

G.

 

[mechBgon]

Ummm... hardware specs in detail? PSU brand & model too.

 

[mechBgon]

Also, did you scan the drive for viruses using a current-generation antivirus software and up-to-date definitions, while you had it in your system?

 

[FlyingPenguin]

You probably don't have the PSU fan connected to a sensor. Just eyeball it and make sure it's spinning. If it's not, that may have toasted the PSU.

As Mech mentioned, it could be a virus (doubtful - it really smells liek a hardware issue). I assume you deleted all partitions on the drive before re-installing windows? If not, do so. It's possible (although they're rare) that you have a boot sector virus. If so, pop the drive into another system as a spare, and do a virus scan on the drive. All modern virus scanners check the boot sectors.

 

[algae]

Yes I deleted the partitions on the drive..several times by now However I will eyeball the fans when I get home.
I ran a WD diagnostic when I had the drive in my other computer but I didn't scan for viruses. I will give that a go also.


G.

 

[algae]

Mech no I didn't but I will.


G.

 

[earthman]

You may have a bad hard drive cable or a poor connection, if you keep getting file errors alot.