Borked computer

[Iason Ouabache]

Ok, here's a quick run down of what is happening to my home computer:

Computer boots up fine. Runs ok for an indeterminate amount of time (it has varied from 10 minutes to 4 hours). At some random point there is a *click* sound coming from the general vacinity of my hard drive. The computer then locks up and I get a BSOD that has a vague message about "MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION". I am assuming that it is caused by a faulty hard drive but I'd like to see some second opinions about it.

(Yes, I have everything important backed up on external hard drives and I know about temporarily booting from a USB drive or CD. It is still booting just long enough for me to maybe download a couple of helpful files or back up anything else that needs to be saved.)

[Requia ☣]

There should be an error code on the blue screen of death, it'll be in the format 0x00000XX (occaisionally there will be one or three characters that aren't zeros instead of two).

Gimme that code, there are a few different ones that go with machine check exception.  I also need any thing else with the same 0xbunch of crap formula.

Also, What hardware vendor made the machine?  (IE, Dell, Toshiba, Gateway)

And what version of windows.

[Requia ☣]

Scratch what I said above for a minute, I finally remembered how to get into the MSDN bug check list.  The bad news is, this is probably hardware, the good news is, it's probably RAM, which is cheap, requires little skill to replace, and lacks vendor lock in.

Burn this to a CD and boot to it (you know how to burn an ISO right?  I have no idea how with windows): http://www.memtest.org/download/4.10/memtest86+-4.10.iso.zip to confirm it.

[Iason Ouabache]

RAM would be a lot cheaper to fix then hard drive, I think. I'll see if I can boot that ISO from my USB drive. If it is the memory though why did the hard drive make the clicking sound?

[Requia ☣]

Bad instruction sent to the drive could cause it.  You might also be hearing the dump (windows saved a bunch of stuff to the drive that some diagnostic programs can get to).  Hmm, rarely memory problems will cause drive error codes, I suppose its not unreasonable to assume that its possible the reverse could be true, even if I've never seen it.

There are possibilities other than that though, it's rare but the CPU or system board could be failing, those are hard to test for, so If memory passes look up how hard drive tests are done by your vendor, or barring that, pull the drive out, and figure out the manufacturer to run a test on it.  The manufacturer will have testing tools on its website.

[Iason Ouabache]

Just got an "mbr error" when I booted it a few minutes ago. I'll try to put the memtest on a DVD if I can keep it running long enough to burn.

[Requia ☣]

Wait, you got an MBR error, rebooted, and it turned on?

[Iason Ouabache]

Yes. that is exactly what happened. Don't ask me how.


Also couldn't get the memtest to work because of a line A20 error. I used CPU Burn-In instead and didn't get any error messages.

[Requia ☣]

Well, MBR points at the drive, thorough hard drive tests are all vendor specific though.

[Requia ☣]

Could also be drive corruption instead of a hardware failure (unlikely given an intermittent MBR error though), if you can boot to the windows CD (did your vendor even give you one?) and get to the console chkdsk /r will check for corruption (and fix it, mostly).

If its the drive you may be able to increase the time between BSODs by reducing the number of programs running (assuming you're in page file, which seems likely given the blue screen code).

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Ick, good chance its the drive MBR + Click + BSOD = Probably bad sectors on a drive... What brand of drive is it?

[Iason Ouabache]

Ick, good chance its the drive MBR + Click + BSOD = Probably bad sectors on a drive... What brand of drive is it?

It's a 4 year old Gateway, so I'm not too upset if I have to completely replace the hard drive.

It's this model: http://www1.dealtime.com/xPF-Gateway_Gateway_GM5045E_AMD_Athlon_64_X2_3800_Dual_Core_2GHz_1GB_DDR_250GB_HDD_DVDRW_DL_DVD_R

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Ick, good chance its the drive MBR + Click + BSOD = Probably bad sectors on a drive... What brand of drive is it?

It's a 4 year old Gateway, so I'm not too upset if I have to completely replace the hard drive.

It's this model: http://www1.dealtime.com/xPF-Gateway_Gateway_GM5045E_AMD_Athlon_64_X2_3800_Dual_Core_2GHz_1GB_DDR_250GB_HDD_DVDRW_DL_DVD_R

That doesn't help... the drive manufacturer will have tools that can tell you if the drive is beyond repair, but they're vendor specific. So you'll need to know if you need the Western Digital or Seagate or Intel or VENDOR NAME HERE tool.

[Iason Ouabache]

Ok. Next time it freezes I'll open it up to see who the manufacturer is.

[Triple Zero]

Hey if this somewhat reliably happens after about 10 minutes or so, try this:

a) boot from USB, play around for 10 minutes, see if it happens

b) disconnect the harddisk (one of the plugs in it is the power plug, that should be enough), then boot from USB, play around for 10 minutes, see if it happens

if it happens in option b, it was not your harddisk. if it doesn't happen in option b, it was probably your harddisk.

process of elimination FTW

srsly, that's what I would do.