Program has stopped working...hardware related?

[cutlassvillager]

My HTPC has been acting up lately and it makes me wonder if it is some kind of hardware problem.

Yesterday I was watching a flash video (off of Xfinty's website) when the flash player crashed. I closed Chrome and restarted the computer just because it hadn't been restarted for a while. When it started back up it gave the errors for Windows Explorer and the ATI Catalyst Control Center: "This program has stopped working." Aero was also disabled at this point. I thought it could have been some update that caused it, so I opened system restore and reverted to the last known good setup. That made matters even worse where upon restart it would go into an auto-recovery mode.

I booted from my Windows 7 install thumb drive to try to repair it. It reported it could not repair it. I reinstalled Windows 7. Everything seemed to go well and I got Windows 7 up to date. I installed OpenOffice and now when I try to open that it says "This Program has stopped working!" My first reaction was that the hard drive is going out, but Speccy and HD Tune both report the S.M.A.R.T status as good.

The setup is only about a month old to me. I bought the PC off of Microcenter's website. Shortly after that I added an Ati Radeon 5450 and 3x2GB RAM modules (to add to the 1 2GB module already in there) and didn't have any problems up until now.

Anyone have any advice what I should do/test next?

It should also be noted that everytime I tried to install the ATI Catalyst Control Center it would BSOD at the point where it says "detecting hardware." This seems to be a reported problem. It did this when I first installed the card and again when I tried to install the ATI software the second time I reinstalled Windows. The first time I was finally able to get the Catalyst software to install after removing the card and messing with some drivers, but the second time I just installed the drivers manually thru Device Manager and didn't bother installing the Control Center. I don't think it's a video problem but I figured the more information the better.

 

[Kuato]

I've had Flash Player crash a couple times while using Chrome also, but it has always started right back up and I haven't had any of the other issues you mentioned.

This is an old HP laptop (early 2008) running Vista.

 

[cutlassvillager]

It used to always start back up for me (and probably would have again) but I just figured I mind as well restart it.

 

[LeakySeals]

Have you tried disabling hardware acceleration in Flash? (Hover over flash object-->right click-->Settings-->Display-->uncheck "enable hardware acceleration"-->close)

 

[Mopar618]

I would start by ruling some areas out, such as the hard drive for the time being. You stated that you didn't believe that it was a video-related issue, but did these problems occur before you put the aftermarket RAM and video card in?

Are you sure 8 GB of RAM are compatible with that motherboard?

You also mentioned that it was bringing up the BSOD; is it rebooting from time to time on its own as well? I ask because there is a manual way to tell your computer not to bring up the BSOD or reboot when Windows detects a hardware error. Instead of trying to boot back up or anything, it will send you to a black screen with a lot of information, and a code that looks like this:

x00000000 (some random numbers added in)

If you can catch that screen, you can take that specific code, look it up, and it should pinpoint what is throwing the code. I can't recall how to specifically do it again at the moment (I had to do this years ago when I had installed some "incompatible" RAM), I'd have to do some research into it again if you were interested.

 

[Rand]

its probably the new security stuff in flash.

mine has crashed more in last month than last 5 years.

 

[cutlassvillager]

Originally Posted By: Mopar618
I would start by ruling some areas out, such as the hard drive for the time being. You stated that you didn't believe that it was a video-related issue, but did these problems occur before you put the aftermarket RAM and video card in?

Are you sure 8 GB of RAM are compatible with that motherboard?


So you think I should try installing W7 on another hard drive and run it from there? These problems did not occur before the aftermarket RAM and video card. The video card was installed the same day I got the computer and the extra RAM was installed a few weeks after. I've had the 8GB in there for about 2 weeks.

The motherboard is supposed to support 8GB RAM max.

Originally Posted By: Mopar618

You also mentioned that it was bringing up the BSOD; is it rebooting from time to time on its own as well? I ask because there is a manual way to tell your computer not to bring up the BSOD or reboot when Windows detects a hardware error. Instead of trying to boot back up or anything, it will send you to a black screen with a lot of information, and a code that looks like this:

x00000000 (some random numbers added in)

If you can catch that screen, you can take that specific code, look it up, and it should pinpoint what is throwing the code. I can't recall how to specifically do it again at the moment (I had to do this years ago when I had installed some "incompatible" RAM), I'd have to do some research into it again if you were interested.


It was not restarting on it's own, although that does remind me that it did blue screen randomly before all the problems occurred. I didn't catch the codes though. I can get it to blue screen like clockwork just by running the ATI Catalyst install software - this "random" time it happened is the only time it has happened outside of trying to install the ATI software. I can get the codes when it blue screens installing the ATI software. The video card was $10 after MIR, so I am tempted to just get an NVIDIA equivalent that won't BSOD when installing the software.

The computer seems to be running well after the fresh install of Windows except for OpenOffice refusing to work. All of the software (Chome, Microsoft Security essentials, etc) work fine. I am just concerned because of what happened before/the fact that OpenOffice worked fine before. I just got done watching some videos off of HBOGO without a problem. Should I just remove the extra 6GB of RAM and the video card and try uninstaling/reinstalling OpenOffice and go from there?

 

[Mopar618]

Quote:
So you think I should try installing W7 on another hard drive and run it from there? These problems did not occur before the aftermarket RAM and video card. The video card was installed the same day I got the computer and the extra RAM was installed a few weeks after. I've had the 8GB in there for about 2 weeks.

The motherboard is supposed to support 8GB RAM max.

It was not restarting on it's own, although that does remind me that it did blue screen randomly before all the problems occurred. I didn't catch the codes though. I can get it to blue screen like clockwork just by running the ATI Catalyst install software - this "random" time it happened is the only time it has happened outside of trying to install the ATI software. I can get the codes when it blue screens installing the ATI software. The video card was $10 after MIR, so I am tempted to just get an NVIDIA equivalent that won't BSOD when installing the software.

The computer seems to be running well after the fresh install of Windows except for OpenOffice refusing to work. All of the software (Chome, Microsoft Security essentials, etc) work fine. I am just concerned because of what happened before/the fact that OpenOffice worked fine before. I just got done watching some videos off of HBOGO without a problem. Should I just remove the extra 6GB of RAM and the video card and try uninstaling/reinstalling OpenOffice and go from there?



I would begin by seeing if you can throw the BSOD to grab the codes and look into them. If it's general information or can refer to many different things, then start pulling out the hardware that was recently installed if you can not pinpoint the issue. Don't pull both at the same time however.

For example, if you remove the RAM and continue running the computer as-is and it works fine, then maybe it was the RAM. Vice versa with the video card (if you do have the stock one that came with the computer).

If you end up removing both and the issue still continues, then you would need to move on to other ideas. I'm only recommending this because hardware changes can be very odd with computers sometimes, as the "incompatible" RAM issue I mentioned I had earlier. My brother had the exact same model desktop as mine, same motherboard and all other specifications, and somehow the RAM sticks he gave me did not work with my desktop. Never would have in a million years thought it would've been incompatible, but I had to manually find the codes to realize that it was the RAM.

I hope this is a good starting point at least.

 

[KrisZ]

Just like with car problem diagnostics don't assume what is the problem and start throwing parts at it, diagnose it.
Everybody is afraid of BSOD, but they provide great info at what's wrong. Get the code and then do your research. It could be a bad/incompatible video card, a bad stick of RAM or something else. But I would suspect the parts that got changed first.

 

[Rand]

make sure you arent using beta ATI drivers, try with 1 stick of ram.

 

[cutlassvillager]

Thanks for the advice everyone. It has been working great since the clean install of Windows (other than OpenOffice not working). I will give your advice a try once(if) it acts up again. I also forgot to mention the RAM timing is different on the 6 gigs I added versus the 2GB chip already in there (5-5-5 vs 6-6-6).

 

[rjundi]

Not sure if this was Chrome only and flash.

However I found Chrome has its own version of flash and also adobe has another. Mine was crashing and hanging the browser. The fix was to disable Chrome's own flash plug-in version and just use the other. Basically you are getting conflicts if you have both plug-ins enabled.

Reloading windows may have removed the offending one.