What is this error?

[Dreadbeard]

A fatal hardware error has occurred.

Component: AMD Northbridge
Error Source: Machine Check Exception
Error Type: HyperTransport Watchdog Timeout Error
Processor ID: 0

The details view of this entry contains further information.

So the details to when this happend are, i was trying to boot starmdae offline ship veiwer, and it wouldnt load my ships, i left it whilst i went to have dinner, and came back to find it hadent loaded, i moved the mouse slightly and all of a sudden restart out of absulutly no where, didnt even shut down, just restarted on the spot, it went down and my keyboard lost power, my moniter said no signal, and then it booted back up.

win7
msi gtx 550 ti cyclone ii oc
4 gb ram
2 150gb hdd's
amd phenom II x4 3ghz 945
2 case fans
and a dvd writer

I also have this red light on the front of my pc, it's not usualy there, sometimes it's solid red light, but other times it flashes

 

[Tradesman1]

What DRAM do you have - if running 1600 sticks, may need to drop them to 1333, knowing the mobo would help - does it have the latest BIOS?

 

[Dreadbeard]

I haven't A clue what most of that meant, my mobo is a Foxconn a76gmv.

It's now done it twice, the be I posted here, and a second be tonight.

 

[Tradesman1]

Talking about your RAM - the memory DIMMs in your motherboard -

 

[Dreadbeard]

DDR3 1333Mhz,
That's pretty basicly all I know of my ram, it's 4 gb of that

 

[Tradesman1]

Trying going into the BIOS and raising the NB voltage + 0.04 from it's current value

 

[Dreadbeard]

What can this achieve?, I only ask as I'd like to know what this all does haha.

And this crash isn't a regular thing, it's done it twice in the last week, but considering what I've seen of the error, it maybe a hardware fault, so ill continue with what you recommend.

 

[Tradesman1]

That will help stabilize your DRAM when under heavy use, many AMD systems need multiple voltage adjustments depnding on the CPU and DRAM combo

 

[Dreadbeard]

Aah, well ill do this ASAP, I also just done a clean install of windows 7 because stupidly I used ccleaner to clear registry files and it slowed the pc down, and after the install it haven't seemd to delet anything off my main drive, and it won't recognise my gpu properly.

 

[Tradesman1]

May need to reload the GPU driver

 

[Dreadbeard]

It's not just that, it's also the fact it didnt delet everything on c drive, usualy it should but nope still got games sat there.

 

[Tradesman1]

When you reinstalled, did you format the drive first?

 

[Dreadbeard]

Nope, I also didnt boot on restart, I think that's where I went wrong

 

[Dreadbeard]

Another thing I might add about this topic, this crash has only happend twice, once are I attempted to launch a ship viewer for starmade, and the other whilst generally browsing the internet, it hasent happend whilst gaming yet "touch wood"

It baffles me.
Can bad video card drivers cause this? A I've been having an issue with the latest nvidia drivers, every now and then the display will power down then up telling me the driver crashed and successfully recovered. Is this a possible cause for the error I posted.

Also the reinstall for windows worked in a way, but now have extremely long boot times.

 

[Dreadbeard]

Running memtest86 at the moment, pass 1 no errors.

 

[Tradesman1]

It could they are constantly updating the video drivers and when a fix for one game may be accomplished, it may cause a problem in another game