Blue screen of death - HELP!

[Mad_Cow20]

My brother called me last night and has the blue screen of death, will not let him into his PC at all. I told him to email me the problem so I can post it here to see if anyone can help. Here it is:

AMD 64 3200+
3 GB Corsair PC3200 XMS Ram (2 1GB, 2 512)
ASUS A8N Motherboard
ATI Radeon 128 MB
Windows XP Media

Problem

Computer has sat idle for about 5 days. As soon as I turned it on about 5 minutes after logging into windows I received a BSOD 0x0000007E and it says that it is dumping physical memory. After about 5 reboots and disabling everything through msconfig, I attempted to run Windows ASR with the XP CD. Tried again and received the BSOD. I then attempted to run a reinstall of window (without formatting) and when it said there was 34 minutes left the computer put up the BSOD. I have not tried to reformat and reinstall because I have some stuff on the hard drive that I want to save. I do have another hard drive on the machine that is partitioned into two. I am concerned that the problem is not a windows issue but rather a hardware issue.

 

[CompTIA_Rep]

If the system in unstable during a windows installation (recovery install), then it is most likely a hardware issue. I recomend downloading memtest as that would be the first place to start (bad memory)

 

[Mad_Cow20]

If the system in unstable during a windows installation (recovery install), then it is most likely a hardware issue. I recomend downloading memtest as that would be the first place to start (bad memory)

I dont think he will be able to run this considering that everytime he boots the computer he gets the blue screen after 5 seconds...

 

[xciter]

Try to unplug everything that is not nesesery for the PC to run, and on each boot ad a thing, so you can see when the error occurs.

 

[cutthroat]

Memtest86 runs from DOS, you need to put it on a bootable floppy or flash drive.

 

[CompTIA_Rep]

Correct. If the BSOD occurs regardless of windows being loaded (I.e. BIOS)... well then there is a hardware issue no question.

If the OP can not run a memory test, then the next step would be removing one memory stick at a time.

 

[double_helix]

Thought all blue-screens were software related problems and red-screens were hardware related. Has this changed??

Thought about just removing one set of the RAM: either the 2x1024 or the 2x512

 

[CompTIA_Rep]

No. there are windows BSOD, and hardware BSODs.

 

[chedrz]

Did you boot into safe mode when you ran msconfig? And did you disable all the unnecessary services, or just programs? Try disabling all the services (make sure you check the "Hide All Microsoft Services" box before you disable all the others) and then rebooting. If you don't bsod, you have a program or driver that's causing the system to blue screen.

 

[GenericName]

Was it plugged into surge protector? Might of fried a part

 

[PCKid777]

Recommendations: Take out ALL but ONE stick of RAM; try seeing if BSOD disappears after trying each stick individually. If that doesn't solve it....then I would say the MB failed or your PSU is failing. Check to make sure that there are no leaking/exploded capacitors on the MB.