PCTech Forums

Hey all.. not sure what forum I should put this in, but I'll try here first:)

PROBLEM: blue screening at random times, but usually at least every 20 min or so.. sometimes more.

SYSTEM:
Gigabyte GA-7VT600 Mobo
Athlon 2000+ XP CPU
512 mb DDR Ram
GeForce FX 5200 128mb DDR vid card
40 gig hdd
Win ME
cd drive
floppy drive

Ok, First off, most of the parts in my PC are new, I upgraded not long ago (month)
First off when playing Battlfield, I was starting to run REAL sluggishly, so after some thought, I decided a format of my hdd would clear up any rubbish I had on my system. A re-install of all my software, put a few games back on, and I was still having the same problem. D/Ling free mem showed that after starting BF1942 (and other games) I was usually left with about 10 mb ram to run them with, but running free mem brought back my ram and the ran fine. No problem. Then I started getting blue screens pretty often, and for no apparent reason, Thinking I just may have got a bad win install ( has happened before) I formatted again, only to have the same thing happen the next time.
So I installed as little as possible, namely win ME and my vid card drivers only and am still getting the blue screens, although not quite as often, but still way too often. Thinking it may be bad ram, I cheked both my 256mb sticks.. same problem with both. Bought 1 new stick, same problem (even after yet another format and clean install)
still had Free mem installed and sometimes I am getting a warning screen saying my system resourses are dangerously low (even 5 min after start up) but free mem still reports over 75% of my ram as being free.

So far it has been very frustrating, and I have gotten no-where after trying 2 diff vid cards, numerous formats, 3 different RAM sticks, updated drivers, etc.
I have noticed that the blue screen error is the same each time it comes up, and this I wrote down and asked microsoft about.. week later no reply from them. Anyone have any ideas whats up here? Could it be the mobo itself, or the cpu, or maybe the hdd??
Would it help if I posted the windows blue screen error I get?

Thanks to all who offer help (in advance)

Yes we would need the exact error message you are receiving.

ERROR: OE: 0028:FF06C20C

0028:C001EE91 in VxD Ndis (01) +
0000760D called from
0028:C023F58B in VxD VMM(0C) +
0000058B

Ok, according to that PC Doctor here is my 4 problems

Invalid ActiveX \Com file: C:\windows\system\disktool.dll

Invalid ActiveX \Com SubSection file: C:\windows\system\disktool.dll

Invalid Application Path C:\windows\system\mspaint.exe

Invalid Microsoft Shared File c:\Program files\Accessories\pcximp32.flt

those are the 4 errors.
now for another question..
A: MSpaint is on the pc, in accessories file. B: It has just been installed.. how'd it lose the top 2 files?
C: how do I fix it without paying the PC Doctor 7 day use thingy? Re-install and hope it works?
D: would those really be my problems.. maybe a bluescreen, but causing a mem leak in games/ games to run slow?

no ideas anyone?
Would installing win ME over the top of my original install fix it?
It didn't seem to first time I tried, but I guess you never know..

The first thing i would do is ditch Win ME.I find 98,or if you want to spend the money,XP to be much better operating systems.Everyone i know with win me has had nagging problems,especially low system resource errors.Im sure some of the other guys here can tell you why your getting the errors that your getting,i cannot.My personal advice is to get a different OS.

Hmm.. I heard somewhere XP wasn't compatible with a lot of games?

BTW, Microsoft fianlly did reply to me. The say from the error code, it is probably a hardware error.. possibly a slightly defective Vid card, so I'm going to see if I can get hold of a friends card and swap that in, see if it works better.

Right, it seems as if it is my network card, so I bought a new one, removed old software and installed new card, installed new software.
No change, pc is still blue screening.
Installed and ran Norton Utilities, which found all those VxD errors and fixed them, after that I still got a blue screen, but with the same begginging error code, but not showing where the error was.
Error was just
ERROR: OE: 0028:FF06C20C

tried a few other things and then I finally decided to switch the PCI slot the card was located in. That was 2 days ago, and SO FAR no blue screens, so hopefully my problem was a bad PCI slot:)

Thanks to all who replied and gave advice, it was much appreciated:)