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