This is the 5th time it has come up now, in as many days.
PC is running win xp pro, service pack 3, has 3gb ram 300gb hdd, and all drivers are up to date, it has Avast anti virus, zone alarm firewall.
Any information for me any one on this please.

Does this happen when watching videos?

http://www.wiki-errors.com/wiki-errors.php?wiki=0x0000008e

pc was on, i went to make a coffee come back and blue screen is on

am assuming it went wrong then, because the windows disc i used to install windows was meant for a dell pc, i changed the code to my own code, but if i delete the dell folder of hdd pc will not boot up.

What's the graphics card and do you have the latest drivers from ati/nvidia?

How is the inside of the case? Dust free etc? Try turning the machine off and taking the ram out and reseating it.

Looks like some hardware issue - try reseating your PC cards and checking usb connections etc.

grpahics car, Nvidia Geforce 8500GT, latest driver (Geforce 280.26 driver, Version 280.26 WHQL
release date 9/8/2011)
The case is clean inside dust free, I took out ram and blew any dust out and put back in.

There's good airflow inside the case etc?

The most common cause for watchdog.sys related bsod's seems to be leftover drivers and registry files from partially removed applications. Have you removed any software recently?

Try running checkdisk, do this by going start > run > cmd and then typing chkdsk /f in the black window that comes up and hitting 'y' when prompted to run checkdisk at next reboot.

Could be RAM or graphics card, or maybe neither. Eliminate one thing at a time, take all the ram out leaving just one, see how it goes, if it does it again, swap the stick thats in for another, and again, etc.

For the GFX card you will either need to get another one to swap with to test or use the onboard graphics card if it has one.

Also make sure there is plenty of airflow through the case.

all ready ran chk disc, no problems.
i have removed no programs, it is a clean install.
Tower is well ventalated

Have a look at the heatsink, it sounds to me as if the CPU is getting hot under load.

If the paste between the heatsink and CPU is "fluid" or slightly tacky then you "should" be okay, if it looks like a powder, is solid or even not there then it needs to be cleaned and replaced with a good quality thermal transfer paste.

I understand you run a computer repair store, Doc?

Kinda confused as to why you wouldn't just have him run coretemp/realtemp for a couple hours instead of disturbing his thermal paste? Especially when paste takes months to cure..

I do, and that is one of the reasons why I try and help where I can.

The reason I suggest checking and possibly replacing the paste is that the machine appears to be failing under load, and if this has happened several times in the past few days it would (in my opinion) be a relatively simple task rather than risk damaging the CPU by placing stress upon it running checks when it is not stable for a suitable period.

The curing time for thermal transfer as I'm sure you are aware, can vary, and the thr-grease of course will always remain flexible unlike the silver paste. However despite this with a machine that is failing in such a short period I didn't feel that the 1-3deg drop after curing would have much of an effect for an average user, although of course if records were kept he should see a slight decrease after around 200hrs of hot/cold cycles.

I wasn't having a go mate, I was honestly curious (just mentioning incase you took my post the wrong way). Applying paste correctly is confusing for most people. I didn't mean he should be stress testing, just passively monitoring the temperature to see if he's rocking 90 degress idle etc

my pc has a temp gauge on front, and its allways in red, has been for years, i tryed watching vid on youtube today again and got blue screen of death yet again

What temp is it hitting?

Run coretemp and tell us what you get. http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/

It's okay I didn't take it as a dig

STOP 0x8E usually means your memory is fooked. Download Memtest86+ from www.memtest.org, follow the instructions to make the boot floppy or CD and run it overnight. Any failures means bad CPU (unlikely) or bad memory (likely).

My experience is the opposite. The white paste dries out and turns to powder, the silver stays pliable.

More memory diagnostics: CLICKY

attached

Well it's not a temperature problem going from those temps. I'd go with what Mike said and run the memory next.