Fatal errors

I installed Vista and it ran fine for about the first 3 weeks. Last week, i
started to get fatal errors in games that I was playing. It would constantly
say 'the memory could not be read'. This weekend, I moved my computer to LAN
with my friends and I started blue screening with the 'PFN bsod'. Before you
guys suggest that it is memory related, I would like to mention that on the
day I received Vista, I also received 2 new sticks of 2 gb ram total. So I
highly doubt it's that.

I'd also like to mention that about a month ago, I was having rapid blue
screen, fatal errors, random errors but at a much higher frequency than I am
now. I formatted many, many times before coming to the Windows boards and
discovering that it might be a dust problem. I alleviated the problem
temporarily by removing a thick layer of dust between the CPU and the fan -
this brought the temperature down from 68C to 35C in my computer.

Now that some of the problems have returned, I'm not sure what to do. Any
suggestions to get rid of these blue screens/fatal errors?

Eric wrote:
> I installed Vista and it ran fine for about the first 3 weeks. Last week, i
> started to get fatal errors in games that I was playing. It would constantly
> say 'the memory could not be read'. This weekend, I moved my computer to LAN
> with my friends and I started blue screening with the 'PFN bsod'. Before you
> guys suggest that it is memory related, I would like to mention that on the
> day I received Vista, I also received 2 new sticks of 2 gb ram total. So I
> highly doubt it's that.
>
> I'd also like to mention that about a month ago, I was having rapid blue
> screen, fatal errors, random errors but at a much higher frequency than I am
> now. I formatted many, many times before coming to the Windows boards and
> discovering that it might be a dust problem. I alleviated the problem
> temporarily by removing a thick layer of dust between the CPU and the fan -
> this brought the temperature down from 68C to 35C in my computer.
>
> Now that some of the problems have returned, I'm not sure what to do. Any
> suggestions to get rid of these blue screens/fatal errors?

From your description of the situation, I would say that these are
definitely hardware problems and are unlikely to be caused by software
(Vista). I would not assume anything about the health of the RAM or
other hardware. Allowing "a thick layer of dust" to build up between the
processor and the fan on the heatsink may have damaged it. There's no
way to tell for sure without looking at the machine and running some
diagnostics.

http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/...ardware_Tshoot

Standard caveat: Testing hardware failures often involves swapping out
suspected parts with known-good parts. If you can't do the testing
yourself and/or are uncomfortable opening your computer, take the
machine to a professional computer repair shop (not your local
equivalent of BigStoreUSA). Have all your data backed up before you take
the machine into a shop.


Malke
--
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
"Don't Panic!"
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User