XP Hardware malfunction

[twentworth]

I posted about my problem a few days ago, and didn't receive much response, so here goes again.

I'm getting blue screen "hardware malfunction" errors in XP Pro. It appears to only happen when I am getting data over the network - either from another network computer or from the internet. By swapping out components and system restoring to previous restore points, I have determined that the problem is not: 1/ the NIC, 2/ the video card, 3/ the memory, 4/ any of my other peripherals, 5/ cables or 6/ drivers.

I created a partition on my drive and installed Win98SE. I do not have this problem with Win98.

I ran XP RC2 for several months with few problems. I recently reinstalled RC2 in the other partition and I'm now getting the same problems I have with the official release version.

My question is this: is there something other than the network card that would cause these hardware malfunctions when I am having network activity? Also, why don't I have the problem with Win98? If it's really a hardware problem, it would seem that it would show itself in both OS's.

My computer is a Dell XPS-B 866, 256 megs, geforce 256, 30gb drive.

Thanks for any help.

 

[MichaelD]

Hello there. You already know that this should be in "Operating Systems" or at least "Software." But, I'll try to assist anyway. 🙂

I know that XP is NT-based; same "kernel" or whatever it's called as NT and W2K. I have the same probs that you do w/my setup. I have two boxes, both running W2K, SP2, connected thru a router. Whenever I try to transfer any file(s) bigger than about 2mb (that's approximate), my main rig locks-up. From what I've been told and what I've figured out on my own, it's an IRQ conflict, or something close to that.

Even though I have multiple HDs in my main rig, I can transfer b/t them all effortlessly, no matter how big the transfer. I've transferred almost a Gigabyte of info (all my UT maps) between my main HD (Raid 0 array, actually) and my backup HD, which is in the same physical box, w/no probs. Interestingly, the Highpoint raid controller shares the same IRQ (11) as my backup HD; but there are no ill side effects.

However, the NIC in my main box shares an IRQ (again, 11) w/the Highpoint controller, and I get hard-locks when tryign to transfer large files over the network. I can game (UT/Q3A) over the network w/no probs, but file transferrs give me probs. There is no fix...unfortunately. Good luck though. And if anyone DOES know of a fix, please let me know!

 

[twentworth]

Thanks for the reply. I'm not sure I have the same problem as you. For example, I crash whenever I try to play a game over the net, but it doesn't crash if played locally. In any event, one more item I forgot to mention: my system won't shut down properly. This started when the hardware malfunctions started. When I do a shut down, it just restarts. I don't know if it's related, but there it is.