Anyone Got Any Ideas - Constant Crashing on Xi Computer

[mwhite]

I bought a dual Xeon with 1.5 Mb of RAM and a decent Nvidia card running a 21 Dell CRT monitor on Windows 2000 from Xi Computer in 2005.

 

From day 1 the computer has had problems. Initially it would just 'crash' when modeling in SU and then also working in Adobe. It appeared about 50% of the time that the video signal cut out since the monitor would go into sleep mode but the cooling fans would still be screaming away. The other 50% of the time the monitor would go blank and the computer would reboot. I lived with this for a while figuring it would resolve itself once I upgraded SU or upgraded the video drivers.

 

After a while it got so that SU would crash every couple of minutes. I decided then to start pulling/swapping memory to see if that was the problem since I had bad memory on another computer from another vendor. This did not help and I know the computer cannot be overheating since it has 8 fans and crashes even when I'm not rendering.

 

Xi suggested running MEMTEST which I did. The computer never even got throught the first stage of tests before it crashed.

 

I waited a bit (vacation other job) and then in order to get a rendering out and out of desperation I bought a cheap Nvidia card at Staples one night. All of a sudden things worked fine. I figured the original Nvidia card was bad.

 

Now after several months the computer is crashing, hanging and rebooting again non stop regardless of application with the video card from Staples that seemed to work fine.

 

I typically get a blue screen with:

 

STOP 0x00000024

NTSF_FILE_SYSTEM

Address Stuff and ntoskrnl.exe

 

Run CHKDSK /F which I did and it did not show any problems.

 

or after rebooting several times I can get a blue screen with:

 

STOP: 0x00000002

BAD_POOL_CALLER

 

Beginning Dump of Physical Memory

 

I called Xi yet again and now the service tech suggests I start pulling CPU's out in order to see if that helps and checking the data cable to the hard drive which I did before.

 

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what they think I should try next or do. I do not want to start pulling CPU's out. Summary below.

 

1. It crashes now regardless of application (sometimes it reboots repeatedly after sitting for a few minutes after start up and not even launching an application)

 

2. 2 different video cards now appear to have no effect (although I did get about 3-4 months of low usage without any problems)

 

3. The MEMTEST failed - I do not know if that points to a definite batch of bad memory but the computer failed on both the 2 half gig sticks as well as the 2 256 Mb sticks.

 

4. Sometimes when the monitor dies but the fans are still running (and presumably the rest of the computer) I kill it by turning of the backup power supply. When I fire up the backup power supply the computer comes back on automatically with out hitting its start button. Xi tech says he has seen this before on Xeons.

 

5. With the current blue screens sometimes I don't even get to see them for a half second before the computer starts rebooting over and over again.

 

Any help would be appreciated as I'm getting tired of this and I'm not very happy with Xi support. I paid $3,600 for the piece of crap and I would like to get some work done instead of trouble shooting problems.

 

Thanks in advance for any comments.

[gfa2]

I'm definitely no computer expert, but it really sounds like bad memory to me. I had a cheap computer years ago that was very flaky, once I put some decent RAM in there it really started to perform better. RAM is pretty inexpensive...it's worth a shot. But don't just buy the cheapest that you can find...you'll be back in the same boat.

[alfienoakes]

Have a look thru this:

 

http://www.geekstogo.com/forum/Windows-XP-Blue-Screen-Death-STOP-Codes-t43519.html

 

Also, just google your error codes.. there are a lot of pages on this stuff..