Sudden BSODs

About a month or so back my PC got infected with a nasty pen drive virus. I removed it and even disabled the autoplay feature after that. But somehow, my computer kept getting slower. It wasn't the biggest problem since I had already taken most of my backups since I already planned on formatting and reinstalling Windows.

So, a several days earlier I finally did a fresh reinstallation. And my computer is fast again.
But one problem keeps bugging me. This problem probably existed even months before the pen drive virus incident, but it became more apparent when my computer became slower.

The problem is that during certain activities my PC suddenly crashes and displays a BSOD(Blue Screen of Death) message. I will note down the message next time if it's necessary.

The activities that tend to cause it are
1>Copying a very large file from one partition to another.
2>Trying to defragment.
3>Running CCleaner to erase when a very big file is in the recycle bin.
4>Too many processes ,etc

Formatting hasn't eliminated the problem.

I want some opinions on what could be causing it! Could it be some HDD problem,since most of these activities seem to be putting a big load on the HDD?Is there something I can do to figure out properly or be sure of the exact problem?.

 

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I think the amount of evidence you provided is far above the average user complaint ticket, good job. I also think you've diagnosed your own problem, it looks like your hard-drive might be going. Early stages of hard-drive can be signaled by BSOD.

 

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Thanks.
So you too think that it's the hard drive!
Well, I tried to defragment in the safe-mode and this time I was successful. This makes me rethink if it's really the HDD.

Say, if I change the OS hard drive, will my genuine windows validity be lost?

I heard that you can only validate genuine windows in one PC. Does that mean the motherboard, processor, or the hard disk?

 

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Might be worth running memory tests on the installed RAM.

A bad RMA stick could also accomplish what you're describing, as those activities you describe would fill the RAM up to the point it hit the bad ram sectors and crashed. Thus in safe mode with far less running, a defrag would complete.

Also, whatever you HD, download a drive testing tool from Seagate or WD(or etc) and run a test on your HD. If it's failing you'll know for sure after a test.

 

I had to replace my hard drive. It didn't affect Windows validity.

 

From my experince I believe that the Windows validity is tied to the mac address of the computer meaning the motherboard is the part that will give you a hard time to change.

I also am in the hard drive problem camp. However, I would also ask if the hard drive is close to being filled. This can also cause some of the problems that you described.

 

It is also tied to the hardware configuration of the system. I believe there is a limit to the number of hardware configuration changes that can be made to the system. I can't remember what that number is but if you've made 3 or 4 changes, it might be something to check out.

 

Doesn't Windows activation just depend on the product key?

 

Depends on the Windows you have installed. They don't all have the same activate requirements. In most cases the product key will be enough and if you require a special activate step, you will usually have 30 days before it will quite working. It gives you time to call MS and work out the details of keeping your system working. If you need to do this it will tell you during the install.

 

Yeah. I had to call MS to get a reinstall OKed after a hard drive failure and system crash/rebuild, but they did it without further grief.

 

Thanks for all the replies.

To be honest, it will better if it's RAM, since I already planned on improving my small RAM size with a larger one. And it's a bit cheaper too.
How do you run a memory test?
Should I try and reinsert the stick?
Are there special softwares available?

Well, mine is Western Digital Cavier.
I downloaded some HD testing tools. But I will try them later as some of them look complicated or risky without total backups.
First I want to test the RAM.

Ah, that's good news!

But isn't the MAC address on the NIC card? If one doesn't use an inbuilt one, then it has nothing to do with the motherboard.

Well it's close, but not THAT close to being full.
The larger partition is slightly more than 80% full, overall it's around 65% full. Is that enough to cause problems?

 

DNA100

I had a similar problem with an old system and many BSOD's and I spent months trying to fix it. Many times I'd make a change or install an updated driver and it would stay good just long enough to make me think I'd fixed it. Finally it died and I found a problem with the mother board. So rather than keep throwing money and time down the drain I went out and bought a new machine for about $1000.

Not having to worry about the computer all the time made it really worth it.

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Can you post the content of one of the BSODs?

 

I think so as well, it didn't initially popout to me but those processes are relatively memory intensive. Large file copies stretch virtual memory, defrags hold large chunks in mem, not sure what CC cleaner does internally, and too many processes is tough to isolate to an issue.

I also haven't historically trusted most hard-drive testers, it might be my Linux experience which influences this though. KDE's drive failure detection at times flags false positives and doesn't flag failures, perhaps Windows has the benefit of more driver support.

 

Mentioning Linux however does bring up one point, If he runs a live disc version of a linux distro, it will run from RAM. He can then go about trying to "overload" it with processes to see if it suffers a hardware failure (proving RAM if it does).

Harddrives are often awkward to catch out straight away, mainly because most drives now have a prefetch chipset that attempts to act as a buffer for data accessing. Sometimes the faults aren't visible because this prefetch method manages to self-fix any delayed read-writes etc.

You might want to check to see if your hard-drive is flashable, as some have firmware updates to deal with such problems.