Need help diagnosing hardware problems

[David.Seth2]

My moms pc is an Asus pundit-r bare bones pc. Recently, it started restarting randomly by itself (with no bsod screen). Took out her hd, put it in mine, Ran virus software, found nothing. But it got worse by the day and finally got to a point where it would restart every time it was loading xp. So I just figured I should format and reinstall windows. I did that, but now it just locks up when loading xp and gives me the bsod saying Machine_check_exception ... stop: 0x0000009c .... I looked that up online, and most of what I found is that it is indeed some sort of hardware issue. So my question is: Is there a way to pinpoint what is causing it? (mother board, cpu, memory, power suply, etc). I would appreciate any help.

 

[JFry]

Is it possibly overheating? Check to see if the fans are caked with dust or not working at all. Barring that my next suspect would be the power supply. Swap in a known good one if you can. Is BIOS accessible and stable?

 

[David.Seth2]

yeah I get into the bios just fine (though Im not to familiar with bios functions so I tend to not mess with anything in there), and the fan is dust free. I don't have a spare power supply to test it with.

 

[giant384]

I use Eurosoft PC Check to figure out my problems, it test each piece of hardware in your computer with the exception of the power supply of course.
Its a pricey piece of software $299.99(made a copy from my office), but it works.

 

[David.Seth2]

thanks i'll have to keep that in mind (though that is a lot of money for a pc that is 5 or 6 years old)

 

[VirusType2]

Thanks to a tip from Asus (forum moderator), I have found a solution to random restarting by removing the RAM and cleaning dust from the connector and RAM itself, using a can of compressed air. Maybe that will work for you. It's worked for me twice, so it's always the first thing I suspect now.

The error code should point to the faulty hardware.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Check_Exception

Some of the main hardware problems that cause MCEs include:

* System bus errors (error communicating between the processor and the motherboard).
* Memory errors that may include parity / Error correction code (ECC) problems. Error checking ensures that data is stored correctly in the RAM; if information is corrupted, then random errors occur.
* Cache errors in the processor; the cache stores important data and code. If this is corrupted, errors often occur.

[edit] Causes

Normal causes for MCE errors include overheating and/or incorrect hardware installation. Some specific manually induced causes could include:

* Overclocking (naturally increases heat output)
* Poorly fitted heatsink/computer fans (the same problem can happen with excessive dust in the CPU fan)
* An overloaded internal or external power supply, which can be fixed by upgrading.

Computer software can also cause errors in this way (normally by corrupting data they are reading or writing). For example:

* Software performing read or write operations to non-existent memory regions which leads to confusion for the processor and/or the system bus.

Oh I see. I'm not sure. Nevertheless, I would clean and reseat the RAM first of all, since it's fairly easy to do. You could also try re-seating any PCI cards as well.

You may also suspect any programs installed since this restarting problem first started - if you can recall that far back.

 

[David.Seth2]

nothing was installed. its my moms pc and she only uses it for bejeweled and looking up news. There are no pci cards (its one of those bare bone mini computers... on board audio, video, and ethernet). but i will try the memory. nothing to lose i suppose. but id actually rather her get a newer pc.

 

[Damic]

Any update on this?