Ok i have a new setup / new install and its giving me problems. Origionally nothing was installed aside from the video card, no sound card. I installed the mobo drivers, ran windows update ( legit copy of xp pro) installed ati's 6.3 drivers and it started crashing.

msi k8n neo4 platinum
amd 3700+ athlon 64
sapphire x1800xt
ocz 2gb ( 2 1gb )
antec sonata 2
wd 320gb sata2
sb audigy 2 zs

I have the dmp file but i dont know what to do with it. I turned off auto restart and it still restarts neway. It says the error is a hardware failure but im not sure what to do. I did another complete fresh install and there was no change.

It would origionally crash only when i had the video card drivers installed. i called ati and they figured it was a bad card so i RMA'ed the card and well nothing changed.

Im in tryng to run memtest86 but it wont boot from the cd. I changed the bios to boot from the cd first, i have the right file on the cd i think. Boot from cd comes up then nothing happens???

Here is the error in the event log. Error code 0000009c, parameter1 00000004, parameter 2 80545ff0, parameter 3 f2000010, parameter 400010c0f

I have different ram that i can try. I dont think its the powersource my old one might work ( antec true power 430w ) ?

sorry for the long post but im frustrated and confused at the same time.
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hkerekes, first of all, I have to commend you on an excellent system, great hardware choices all around.

It's not completely clear where you failure is happening, what point in the boot process, sounds like different issues are happening, so you have to check some stuff.

There's a few things I'd check before stressing too much. Start with the easy stuff:

• Can you access BIOS? If you can't, it's not a driver issue, obviously. I assume you can since you said you changed the bios, but double check.
  
• If you can get into the bios, make sure to TURN OFF the onboard sound. If it is on, turn it off, and restart. If you are very lucky this will take care of the problem.
  
• If this doesn't take care of the problem, can you start in windows safe mode [F8 key on boot]. If you cannot start in windows safe mode, it's probably not the ati driver causing the issue.
  
• If you cannot boot into the memtest livecd, there is a more deep level problem. This is where I'd look first. Make sure you burned it correctly, and have done the md5 checksum on the cd iso. If you still can't boot off the livecd, there is definitely a problem.

You need to isolate the exact place where it's failing, pre windows load, which means it has nothing to do with windows or drivers, or post windows load.

If you can't even boot into a livecd, that's not very encouraging, and it suggests a hardware failure somewhere.

Did you use something decent to burn the livecd? Make sure to test it on another box, if it boots up, that's not a good sign, if it doesn't, it just means you didn't burn it right.

If you have two sticks of memory, take one out, and try each one in turn, although often bad memory will cause a mobo beep on boot. If you cannot boot into the memtest livecd with either stick of memory, pull out all your extra pci cards, leave only the ati, then try again.

Obviously, be very careful when handling memory etc, always hold it by its edges, never touch the contacts, ground yourself, at least by touching the computer case, which should be turned 'OFF' using the power switch in back of the case. This leaves the grounding but turns off the power. Let the case power off completely before messing with any components inside, it takes 30-60 seconds before it's totally powered down after unplugging/turning off case power switch.

If you can now boot, it's one of those, which would be relatively good news for you.

If you have an old video card, which you probably don't, since that msi board uses pci express video cards, you could double check. If you have a pci video card, which you probably don't, you could test with that.

If you strip everything down and still can't boot into memtest, you have to start looking at stuff like mobo damage, ram damage, video card damage. Or a bad cdrom connection, of course. Make sure your memtest cd is good by booting another computer with it. If it's good, and you still can't boot into it on your box, you have problems I'd say.

Other questions are:

• Did you always use a good surge protector on the box?
  
• Ideally, are you using a battery backup unit instead of a surge protector? Any power spikes can toast your box, or dirty power, and some surge protectors just can't handle some dirty electricity.
  
• Was the stuff working more or less, then it stopped? That suggests something getting shorted out by not grounding yourself adequately while working on the box, though I'd say that's a worst case scenario, but it can and does happen.

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i can access the bios.
onboard sound is off
it would crash in safe mode

now with the memtest issue.... i d/l memtest86 i extracted the iso file to the desktop and then burned that folder to the cd. I changed the bios to boot from cd first ( i know it boots from a cd thats how i installed windows) Booting from cd would show up pause for a second and then windows would boot. i tried everything. Tried the windows memtest , tried older versions too.

Now its not crashing atm so i cant test nething. I noticed that if i clear the cmos with the sw1 button ( i didnt change anything in the bois aside from boot sequence) it stops crashing for a day or so. I did that a few days ago and it was fine so i figured that something got changed and well i fixed it so i installed my Sound card and it started crashing again just like when i installed the video card the first time. So i cleared the cmos and well its not crashing now.
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hkerekes, if you're using the built in windows xp cd burner, no comment, that's not something I'd even consider using.

Crashing in safe mode is a bad sign, it strongly points to some kind of hardware problems.

Anyway, since you can start, and have booted from a cd, that's not the issue, that's just not burning the iso right, so let's ignore that.

What I would recommend is using the msi software that does the bios update automatically, it's a desktop application. Update your msi bios, and see if that fixes the issues.

Currently your box sounds extremely unstable, you shouldn't need to be doing anything of what you're doing, I know that mobo, I've dealt with it a lot, and it's rock solid if everything is working correctly.

If you can't install a new card without having to reset the bios there is something majorly wrong, a bios update may fix it. While you're at it, update the ati video card bios if they support that feature, nvidia cards do, don't know about ati, I wouldn't buy ati personally.

If you've updated the mobo bios and the problem still persists, it gets a lot harder to figure out, not fun.

However, there are some other ways to test it, get a real cd burning program, I've seen CDBurnerXP Pro recommended as a good free one. Whatever you do, don't use windows xp to burn your isos, then download a good linux livecd, I like kanotix, but knoppix is good too if you just want to test your hardware. Download the iso, burn as Disk At Once, and see if your trouble persists.

Note, linux livecds run out of ram, so they aren't installing themselves onto your box. They are however a great way to debug and test issues.

Check your event view for red flag error messages. Windows xp event viewer is found in 'administrative tools' => 'event viewer' or 'computer management' => event viewer' => 'system'. Any red flagged event in the system events is a serious problem which is almost certainly directly related to your issues.
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i used the msi live update i did that soon as windows came up on the install before i did anythign else

i didnt use the xp burnign software. I used nero 7 i think on the other computer i dont have any non vital software installed on this computer.

I tried the 6.3 , 6.2 drivers, and the omega drivers. All the same.
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hkerekes, you're doing everything right by the sounds of it, I'll assume that you didn't fry out any electronic parts by handling them wrong since it sounds like you know what you're doing.

But try pulling out the memory and replacing it with known good stick, just to see. Shouldn't matter, but if you burned the iso with nero, you shouldn't be having any issues booting from the iso.

Try downloading the kanotix livecd, burn it Disk At Once [that's very important], and see if you can boot off of it. If you can't, something is quite wrong. Although it may or may not have issues with your ati drivers, if it's 2005-4 release, it should work fine.

If you can use it and nothing crashes, and if windows event viewer shows red flag system error codes, it's something in windows itself I'd guess, driver corruption, something, hard to say.

In a way, it's kind of sad that you've done all the easy stuff more or less right, since that makes it more likely that the problem is not easy to figure out, sorry to say.

could be a bad mobo, just slightly bad, it's very difficult to know, check on the windows event viewer red flags, those will give meaningful but obscure error messages, with numbers and locations, sometimes it's enough to figure out the issue.
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Here is the error in the event log. Error code 0000009c, parameter1 00000004, parameter 2 80545ff0, parameter 3 f2000010, parameter 400010c0f


i have that error multiple times. Windows says its a hardware failure ( that led me to believe the x1800xt was the problem but no luck)

ill try to dl the kanotix live cd
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That's not the correct format, event ids have a number, an event source, and a description. The stuff you're listing is just some output, what you need to know is the actual event id number and source.

However, it's very likely that you do in fact have a hardware problem, everything points to that, and nothing points away from it.

It's possible that you got another bad ati card, it could be a bad batch, it's hard to say.

It's also possible it's a mobo issue. I'd definitely test memtest, I think the kanotix livecd comes with memtest as an option, you'd see it in the grub boot loader I think.
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error, 1/1/2004 ( date's wrong /shrug i set it ), 12:41 ,system error, category 102, event 1003 User n/a



Error code 0000009c, parameter1 00000004, parameter 2 80545ff0, parameter 3 f2000010, parameter 400010c0f




0000: 74737953 45206d65 726f7272 72452020
0010: 20726f72 65646f63 30303120 63303030
0020: 50202035 6d617261 72657465 30302073
0030: 30303030 202c3030 30303030 32303030
0040: 3030202c 30303030 202c3130 34353038
0050: 33303833
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The specific parameters actually also provide meaningful information, that's unusual, the main thing is this:

event id number: 1003
event source: system

With that information, we jump over to the fantastic windows error code debugging site eventid.net, and get this:


You might ask why I use eventid.net and not the microsoft site to get this information? It's simple, the microsoft site sucks, they will often not admit that bugs exist, or they will pretend that bugs that were not fixed are in fact fixed.

So it's either a driver conflict or a hardware issue. As I suspected. Using the kanotix livecd, and surfing around it in it for a while, especially if you can recreate the windows crash condition, will show you right away if it's a hardware or a driver issue. My guess is hardware.

However, linux also tends to be more robust than windows in cases like this, so it may actually run even with some hardware issues.

If I were to guess, I'd guess it's the ati card, you'd be surprised to know how many times a bad component has been replaced with another bad component, I had a string of defective video cards, bad fans, all failed after about 1 year. That's just the fan, but it goes to show a new card is not necessarily a good card.

To get the exact stuff, we need to track down this:


Unfortunately, at that point it gets hard to find the exact Microsoft error page, the microsoft technet.com site totally sucks, and its search never works. To get the actual link you have to be an eventid.net member, which I should be, but I'm not currently.

I hit a dead end at the MS site, which is usually the case in my experience, it's a terrible website for real tech stuff.
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