Freeze ups, reboots & BSODs - oh my!

Okay, for the past month or so, my PC has been, well... not a happy camper.

I'll be happily surfing the net or playing GTA VC (not putting a huge load on the system at all) when it'll just restart for no apparent reason.

But I have auto-reboot on errors disabled.

Another thing I should mention is the monitor stays on standby after the reboot most of the time.
So I'm forced to do a cold boot to get things running again.

Other times, the system will just freeze up, even if there's nothing running - idle at the desktop, playing a game or surfing the net - it makes no difference.

I've just reformatted and reinstalled XP and SP2.
I've got all the latest drivers and flashed the BIOS.
I've run memtest86 through multiple passes (using standard tests) and the RAM came up clean, but I'm not entirely convinced.

So, after much troubleshooting, I'm fairly sure it's not a software issue, so my prime suspects are, in order:

RAM
MOBO
GFX card

I've only seen a couple of BSODs, and both times they were very corrupted.
Here's an example
After much hunting around, I found it says

PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA

Stop: 0X00000050

And the file that threw the error is called win32k.sys

I've googled the above info and found this on the MS knowledge base: KB329293

I tried to follow the directions KB329293 provided, but this damned comp can't even make it into safe mode - the driver list scrolls up the screen, then it just freezes - every time!

System specs
AMD Athlon XP 2200+
512MB DDR
Jetway V266B Mobo
Gigabyte ATI Radeon 9200SE

If you need more info, just ask.

Any opinions advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Post a list of your processes just incase its in there (taskmanager)

ok, im just curious about something. when you go into the bios,or even windows, what year does it say it is? mine used to do a similar (not entirely similar) but similar thing, and my clock year was being changed by something, i have never found the cause tho. It would just happen randomly. I thought it was my mobo (asus p4c800-e deluxe) but aint figured it out yet. :( im just hoping to find someone like me, and maybe get it figured out.

D00d thats exactly what I keep getting, I would really like to know too.

@ 15% - I'm at college at the mo, but I'll post the processes list when I get home in a couple of hours.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mïcrösöül°V³

ok, im just curious about something. when you go into the bios,or even windows, what year does it say it is? mine used to do a similar (not entirely similar) but similar thing, and my clock year was being changed by something, i have never found the cause tho. It would just happen randomly. I thought it was my mobo (asus p4c800-e deluxe) but aint figured it out yet. :( im just hoping to find someone like me, and maybe get it figured out.

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Glad you asked, because I'd forgotten about this until you mentioned it.
Before I flashed the BIOS to the latest version, there was a couple of times when I got a CRC error in Cmos during post.
The BIOS had reset itself to default settings and the date went back to 1/1/2003.
Another odd thing in POST is that I have 512MB RAM, but POST reports 524MB.

Do you have a soundcard or other cards?

Quote:

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Another odd thing in POST is that I have 512MB RAM, but POST reports 524MB.

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Don't worry about that. That is a non issue.

power supply?

maybe your system isnt getting enough power, just a guess tho

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Virtualbody1234

Do you have a soundcard or other cards?

Don't worry about that. That is a non issue.

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Only card with it's own RAM is the GFX card (128MB)

Sound is on the mobo. I suspected that wasn't part of the problem, but thought I should add it for completeness. Thanks for the confirmation, VB.
Every little bit helps.

Only other cards are a NIC and a 56K winmodem.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by twister

power supply?

maybe your system isnt getting enough power, just a guess tho

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Hmmm... hadn't thought of that. Will look into it.
My PSU is just a humble 350W jobby that came with the case.

Well of all things mentioned so far in this thread, I think it's the mobo. That isn't a very good mobo. Have you tried installing the chipset drivers? I think that is a VIA chipset.

It could be the powersupply. If you have another one then test that first.