[RandomTiger]

Currently Im experiencing a lot of crashes.
I've got two installs of XP on my machine and it seems to be effecting both so that suggests a hardware problem.

It seems to happen a lot when Im playing Far Cry, but I've checked and nothing is getting too hot.

Also it happens a fair bit when Im just listening to music and web browsing?

Any idea of how to narrow it down?

[kasperl]

faulty mem or HD if you ask me,

2 partitions or two HD's?

[RandomTiger]

2 Harddiscs, one split into two partions

[kasperl]

are the OS's both on one HD or has each HD an OS?

[Taristin]

You think that's annoying? Try getting explorer to crash and restart whenever you click on a movie or music file, when explorer tries to 'preview' it. Meh. Bad codecs, methinks...

[Ferret]

A lot of the time, random crashes can be directed to a faulty motherboard.
Really though, it could be anything.

Best thing to do to narrow it down, is to try taking out all of your cards one by one and see if it still happens. (Replace the video card with a cheaper one or borrow another from a friend.)
Do the same for the Ram.

Try disconnecting one of the hard drives, the list goes on. Just run trial and eror test on all of your hardware bits.

[RandomTiger]

Is there any way to test memory, I only have one stick and dont have access to more?

[Bobboau]

you have tryed reformat/reinstall, right?
if you do be sure to keep a copy of your wpa.jbl (I think that's the file)

[RandomTiger]

Im just about to start a reinstall.
Whats wpa.jbl?

[Liberator]

The reg number generated at install by XP, methinks.

[Martinus]

Originally posted by RandomTiger
Is there any way to test memory, I only have one stick and dont have access to more?

[color=66ff00]memtest86: http://www.memtest86.com/

Runs fairly thorough tests on your RAM.
[/color]

[Bobboau]

it'll save you some hastle

[RandomTiger]

I'll give it a shot, thanks.

[Arc]

Originally posted by RandomTiger
Whats wpa.jbl?

It's \windows\system32\wpa.dbl It's where the windows product activation stuff is held - back it up, reinstall, copy it back in and XP will be activated without having to go through any activation steps again.

You could try running chkdsk with the 'scan for bad sectors' option. I did that and found UT2k3's engine.dll was sitting on a bad block, which explained why it crashed everytime I ran it.

[Bobboau]

not only will it save you from haveing to activate XP it will allow you to reinstall as many times you want to (on only the one computer, it's all hardware specific crap) otherwise you'll only beable to reinstall likely once before it'll say you'r over the limit.

and it is dbl, don't know why I said jbl, maybe becase they make good speakers

[Grey Wolf]

There's a 180 day wait between activations. I know this from experience.

As an outside chance, try rebooting without a CD-ROM in the drive. I had a rather odd problem with that once....

[RandomTiger]

Memory checks out as OK.
Next step, reinstall OS

[RandomTiger]

I think I've found the problem.
My power supply isnt high enough.
Damn thing is running out!

[Martinus]

Originally posted by Grey Wolf 2009
There's a 180 day wait between activations. I know this from experience.

[color=66ff00]If I paid for that piece of junk OS there's no way in hell that I'm going to abide by that. Protecting the consumer! Hah!
[/color]

[J3Vr6]

I was just gonna suggest the power supply.  There's a good website that shows you how to pick the right one for you... Lemme find it...

http://www.jscustompcs.com/power_supply/

Just fill in the blanks and it will tell you the MINIMUM you need for a power supply.  Remember, you should only be running 30%-70% of it's power load at any given time.

Here's a link on some advice on picking one:

http://forum.msi.com.tw/thread.php?threadid=31880&sid=