Frequent BSOD After Reinstalling Windows XP

[rpn453]

My main hard drive (40GB) died a couple of months ago on my 5 year old Dell 8300, so I reinstalled XP on my 160GB spare drive that I previously only used for storing movies and music. I did have some files on the 160GB hard drive when I installed XP. Now, I get the blue error screen at least once a week. I don't remember that happening to me even once in the previous 5 years. It still boots up and runs perfectly until it crashes. The crashes always happen when I do something like starting a program or turning on the printer, but it doesn't happen in any repeatable way. CPU is typically operating at 1% or less and I have nothing running in the background. The only driver that came with the computer that I haven't reinstalled is some SATA driver that I needed to put on a 3.5" floppy to use. I did that but I have no idea what to even do with it.

Any ideas on why this is happening or some basic things I may have done wrong or overlooked during the install to cause this? Should I have started with a blank hard drive?

 

[OVERKILL]

You should have, yes, but that shouldn't cause this.

Disable the reboot on error feature then note down what it says on the blue screen. Post it here. I will take a look at it and see if I can be of help.

 

[ZZman]

Make sure you have updated all the driver's etc on the computer.

 

[SamSpade]

Run Memtest to see if you have problems with your physical RAM. I always do it before a full install and saved me hours debugging and chasing BSOD errors.

 

[tmorris1]

You may also want to try swapping out Hard Drive cables.

 

[rpn453]

BSOD when bringing the computer out of standby today. It has now happened a couple times when coming out of standby, so that's the first pattern I've noticed. Here's what it said:

STOP: c000021a {Fatal System Error}
The Windows Logon Process system process terminated unexpectedly with a status of 0xc0000005 (0x00000000 0x00000000).
The system has been shut down.

Thanks for all the input. I'll start trying your suggestions if this information doesn't lead me to anything more specific.

 

[OVERKILL]

Does it have the most recent updates for starters? SP3?

 

[rpn453]

Yep, it's fully Windows-updated and has SP3.

I just went through my drivers and found updates for my display adapter, an HID, my network adapter, my sound card, and one of my USB controllers.

 

[ZZman]

Try setting your bios settings to "default". Or update the bios.

 

[rpn453]

I don't know how to set the bios to default or update the bios.

My SATA Primary and Secondary drives are "OFF" and "unknown". Is that normal?

 

[OVERKILL]

In the BIOS?

 

[ZZman]

This might help:

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/g...030A68F27287D8D

or once into Bios look for a restore defaults or similar wording.

 

[JustinH]

Did you put the data on its own partition, then clobber the main partition before you installed?

If you have an older installation disc, you might want to make a custom install disc (bartPE, etc), and slipstream all the drivers and service packs onto it..

That usually takes care of driver issues.

 

[rpn453]

Originally Posted By: OVERK1LL
In the BIOS?


Yep, in the BIOS.

 

[freeze12]

If You find the problem is with the Dell installation disc You have let me know as I can send You out a "Dell Win XP Pro serv. PK2" installation disc good for use on any computer.

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: rpn453
Originally Posted By: OVERK1LL
In the BIOS?


Yep, in the BIOS.


Is the HDD PATA by chance then?

 

[rpn453]

Originally Posted By: OVERK1LL
Is the HDD PATA by chance then?


Yes. I just learned that after looking up pictures of the different cables!

Originally Posted By: ZZman
This might help:

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/g...030A68F27287D8D

or once into Bios look for a restore defaults or similar wording.


Thanks for the link. I still couldn't find anything to restore defaults and I dead-ended on that Dell support site. It wanted me to run ocadiagnostic which Microsoft says I already have yet it seems to not exist on my computer. It did give me some background info on the C000021A error though.

Originally Posted By: JustinH
Did you put the data on its own partition, then clobber the main partition before you installed?

If you have an older installation disc, you might want to make a custom install disc (bartPE, etc), and slipstream all the drivers and service packs onto it..

That usually takes care of driver issues.


No. I don't know anything about partitioning. Should I be doing something with that? I will create an updated backup disc though. Are you saying it's better to use a program other than just Windows for making the disc?

I'll just leave my computer as-is until I get another BSOD to see if the driver updates did anything. Fixing this problem almost seems like more work than just leaving it, as it only takes about 30 seconds for a restart and I never have anything critical running that isn't frequently saved. Still, I do like to have the things I use working properly!

 

[kc8adu]

look for bulging or leaking capacitors.common in these boxes.
check for spyware.i had a machine that came in that would bsod coming out of standby with a similar error.it was infected with vundo.
try removing sp3.its a bit buggy and seems to slow down many machines i have put it on.
the memtest tip is good too.

 

[rpn453]

I think the problem has been solved. I noticed a cut in the insulation of the PATA cable, so I swapped it out and haven't had a BSOD in the last two months since I did that. I must have damaged it when swapping hard drives.

 

[PandaBear]

My bet would be a wrong driver or buggy driver that you just used. This happens to me once (a NIC driver with overflow problem when using bit torrent and have a connection limit overflow issue) and a friend of mine (who replaced the computer but bring the network card over from the "dead" old PC).

Triple check the drivers you use.