Windows 7 Still getting BSOD at start up after so much effort

[parishpete]

Having had so much help from this forum already to kick BSOD's into touch by updating the vast majority of drivers and removing the dodgy hardware and software, my PC still refuses to behave.

The problem is still Kernel Event 41 caused by a bad shutdown or worse. They've occurred at start up on the 6th,7th,12th & 15th Oct.

I can't attach the most recent minidumps, event files and driver list as I appear to have reached my 10Mb upload limit.

any advice welcome, even that which includes the use of a large hammer!!

regards and thanks

Pete

 

[parishpete]

On my machine, powerering the motherboard down guaranteed a BSOD. I can't remember a single instance when it didn't, except just now.

But it is early days!

pete

 

[cybercore]

Pete, is that you yet?

Well fingers crossed, let's hope. : )

 

[parishpete]

That's me when it boots up without error. I haven't even got into why explorer crashes and restarts in a never ending cycle, or why aero stops working, or why desktop manager stops working and so on...

I kinda hope it's all down to RAM.

We'll see what Mr. A-Data says on Monday

I still have an overwhelming urge to ditch RAID and do a clean install. There's nothing better to clear out the crap.

Meanwhile I have a new 2Gb NAS drive to play with. Time for some fun!

regards

pete

 

[parishpete]

:-bdUpdate:

3 boot ups from stone cold including this morning, did everything I can to upset the PC - not a BSOD in sight.

Will give it a few days and if all remains well and If compatible, will swap out the 2 x 2Gb sticks RAM from my other machine. That will identify whether channel B on the board has a problem.

Have googled the VD28000 RAM intensively and it doesn't show up on any UK site. Shouldn't be surprised if that's my problem.

Best wishes

Pete

 

[TorrentG]

Sounds good to me so far. Glad to hear it.

 

[parishpete]

ADATA's UK distributors say the two chips are not compatible with one another. One is UK and the other is not for UK use. They think it must have come from Ebay!

Ran memtest on the UK chip overnight and not surprisingly it passed. Swapped the chips, BSOD, swapped back, no BSOD. Swapped again same results. On it's own the non UK chip gives a BSOD at boot up.

When the UK chip is in, I can do what I like with the PC and it doesn't care!

The chips have 2 year warranty so someone will pay to replace them. I will make certain of that...

The next problem is I don't have any spare power sockets for my NAS drive... I think only I can solve that!)

Regards

Pete

 

[parishpete]

UPDATE

AData state that the two types of chip are compatible (their distributor disagrees) and suggested I try both sticks of RAM in another PC so I checked my other PC to see what's in it and lo & behold there are two sticks of the non-UK RAM in there. That's now running in the bad machine (which is no longer bad!) and it's not giving errors.

I put both chips in the other machine and got a BSOD at startup. I'll to see what AData say now.
My tests prove conclusively that if both sticks are present in either PC and its mother board is powered down, a BSOD occurs every time the computer is started up from cold without exception.
If either mother board is on standby a BSOD occurs about 4 times in 7.

I haven't tried running either PC just on what I believe is the bad chip but I'll wager it will work fine on it's own

Anyone undertand the logic?

regards

Pete

 

[parishpete]

OK guys, final post on the subject

I haven't had a whiff of a BSOD for more than a week. In fact I haven't had any event errors of any significance at all. I've done everything I can to try and upset the PC and it just boots up like goody-two-shoes every time.

The offending RAM chip is on its way to Holland for replacement. I finally persuaded the manufacturer that the two year warrany commenced when the user bought the chip and not, as they implied, from the date of manufacture and therefore out of warranty.

The original Freeagent Pro which was was causing problems has been replaced under warranty by a Freeagent Xtreme. This has been permanently connected to the PC by eSATA for some while and again there is not an error in sight. I can't help but wonder if the RAM chip killed of the FAP in the first place.

I've held off reinstalling everything on a single 1TB disk since everything is behaving. It's an option I'll save for the future.

Thanks to all of you for your valuable help and advice. (if only I'd taken some of it earlier!)

My very best wishes

Pete ^^