no doubt this is a common problem but...

[david shearer]

Hi everyone,

Having a little trouble for a few weeks and can't seem to work it out.

currently running:

AMD Athlon XP 1900
512 Mb ram
Windows XP (with service pack 2, most recent one)
Until today, Norton anti Virus 2003

Problem:

I seem to be getting the "blue screen of death" everytime anythinig major is running EG a large game or audio program.
What happens is that the computer will go black, then the blue screen will come up with a message saying its doing a file dump. Sometimes it reccomends removing antivirus programs or back programs, other times it say to diable bios caching/shadowing programs. I have reset the bios to normal settings, removed norton, increased virtual memory and installed the service pack but all to no avail.

Can anyone help me, as its starting to P*** me off.

many thanks
Dave

[Zxian]

The Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) is most often caused by a hardware problem. If there is a software problem it will more likely cause a freeze or an explorer crash, not a BSOD.

One of the easiest things that you can try is to change the memory sticks. If you've got more than one, try running only one at a time. Also, try putting them into different RAM slots. If the problem only occurs when you've got a particular chip or RAM in a particular slot, then you've tracked down the problem.

Try this first and see how things go.

Oh, and put Norton back on your system, now.

[david shearer]

Originally Posted by Zxian

The Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) is most often caused by a hardware problem. If there is a software problem it will more likely cause a freeze or an explorer crash, not a BSOD.

One of the easiest things that you can try is to change the memory sticks. If you've got more than one, try running only one at a time. Also, try putting them into different RAM slots. If the problem only occurs when you've got a particular chip or RAM in a particular slot, then you've tracked down the problem.

Try this first and see how things go.

Oh, and put Norton back on your system, now.

thanks, will do,

Dave