XP constantly crashes

Hi guys, been a while since I've logged on here (17 months ago!).

My HP nc8430 keeps crashing ever since I did a clean system restore a week ago. In the past 18 hours its crashed three times in the exact same manner each time - the system would freeze up and instantly restart itself. The only applications running are iTunes, uTorrent, Google Chrome and PowerPoint. I have all the latest updates (SP3) and have conducted virus and adware scans to no avail. What is causing XP to crash all the time?

Cheers.

 

Likely driver related.

Navigate to the Control Panel in Windows XP by left-clicking on Start, followed by Settings and then choosing Control Panel. In the Control Panel window, open System. In the System Properties window, click on the Advanced tab.
Locate the Startup and Recovery area and click on the Settings button. In the Startup and Recovery window, locate and uncheck the check box next to Automatically restart. Click OK in the Startup and Recovery window. Click OK in the System Properties window.

Next time your computer crashes you will get a lovel blue screen of death with a message on it that says STOP: ?????????????????????????

Report back what ?????????????????????????? is

 

Most likely, one of those four apps; follow gerryf19's advice if it happens again. Also, look through your event logs to see if anything got logged at the time of the crash.

 

Hmmm it seems like uTorrent is the culprit since I didn't leave it running yesterday and experienced no crashes. But before I carried out the system restore I had no problems with crashing at all.

Anyway here is a screenshot of my events log:


Thanks for the advice, guys, much appreciated.

 

double click the SYSTEM ERROR messages and post the results.

the b57w2k warnings are interesting...network card issues--what are those. I also see that windows update failed...what is the content of that. The rest of the errors are less worrisome for the moment

 

I managed to take a picture of the latest BSOD (do these only appear if you have turned off automatic restarts?)
http://i43.tinypic.com/fler9j.jpg
At the time I only had Google Chrome and iTunes open, no torrent applications were running. Any ideas?

Thanks for the help so far.

 

Try look into this article to help you find out what is actually causing the crash.

 

Yes, they occur when automatic restarts is turned off....it actually occurs when it is on, it just occurs quickly and restarts

I'd bet money it is a network card driver

When you installed, where did you get the drivers from? Original CD? Loaded with Windows install? Manufacturer website?

Did you visit windows update and install hardware updates as well as critical updates?

 

The drivers are from the recovery discs if that is what you are referring to.

Arghhhh I thought I had solved this when I downloaded the latest Net Framework 3.5 update but XP still crashes albeit in a different manner. The system crashes less often now (twice since I downloaded that particular update) but rather than going to a BSOD, the system freezes, I can hear the hard drive and fan go stationary and any sound will be looping over and over.

Here is a screenshot of the event log after the latest crash (about 15 mins ago):


I've never had my notebook crash so often ever before

 

We're barking up the wrong tree...that is a page fault in a non-paged area error and it is almost always related to physically bad hardware--particularly memory.

Have you added RAM, or anything with RAM.

Have you removed ram for any reason and put it back in (you might re-seat the ram). Did you add any hardware at all?

 

you have any usb devices plugged in ? try unplugging them , if it still crashes , memory might be the problem

 

I haven't added or altered the RAM for ages - last time I did anything with RAM was to put another 1GB in and that was about 2 years ago. I upgraded the hard drive over 18 months ago and thats been it.

Just my mouse.

Again thanks for the advice, I'll inspect my RAM modules but nothing to my knowledge has changed on the hardware front.

Its probably worth pointing out at this point that when I upgraded my HDD (to a Seagate) a long time back, I've experienced periodic black screens of death on start up which are inescapable. These BSOD tended to happen every few weeks or months and only occur when booting from cold. The only way (I know of) to rectify this is to do a complete system restore. I haven't experienced such frequent crashing until now however.

Really appreciate the help guys

 

that error is typically ram related, but there is ram in more than just yourmemory sticks--I worry it may be the ram on your video card, or on your cpu

I would begin by removing one stick of ram at a time and seeing if the BSOD goes away

 

I took out a stick of RAM about 2 days ago and haven't experience a BSOD, yet. It seems pretty weird to me for a RAM stick to go faulty all of sudden. I'll report back in a few days if everything goes well

 

Yes, I know. It doesn't make sense for a stick of ram to suddenly go bad. That is fairly rare, but does happen. Perhaps it was not seated well? The other possibility is something has changed on your computer so that ram that was previously unused, but bad, is suddenly come into use due to some new software being used.

 

Possible ram issue as many mentioned above, or just a simple hardware clean up (vacuuming, new thermal paste)

cheers ...

 

Thought I'd post an update.

I've switched out and swapped my different RAM modules and it appears that it was indeed a dodgy stick as I haven't had a crash for days now. Having been on just 1GB of RAM has definitely made my system less smoother

Cheers guys, thanks for all the help.

 

if you want to make sure, you may check the memory with Memtest: http://www.memtest.org/

 

memtest is not 100 percent accurate. I've had sticks test 100 percent OK but still cause problems as I move them form machine to machine

 

ARGHHHHH!

Just as soon as I thought my system was in the all clear, it crashed not too long after my last post here I therefore think its some kind of process conflict (if that's correct description) that's causing my system to crash. Unfortunately, after having read (googling 'bad pool caller') what I need to go through to determine the culprit its probably better if I just went a through a clean system restore

I miss the days of a trouble free XP system

 

well, if you have another hint on a freeware app testing memory, which is more reliable than memtest, please share it - to be honest i don't know about any. if there is anything really accurate, i'll gladly change my mind in my next recommendations