Fatal System Error, tried every fix I know of

[Glaive]

Hey all, I figured I'd see if any of you could perhaps shed some light on a problem I'm having. I spent all last night Googling trying to find a fix and have had no luck so far.

Ok, I built a new computer a couple of months ago. Specs are as follows:

AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Winchester
Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe
2 x 512MB Corsair XMS 3200XLPro RAM
eVGA 6800GT
Western Digital 74GB Raptor SATA HD
Seagate 120GB 7200.7 PATA HD
Windows XP Home

Everything was running great up until last night. I was watching a video file when suddenly the picture (along with my mouse and everything else) froze, but the sound kept going. I waited a few seconds to see if it would fix itself, and then my computer crashed to a blue screen. The error message said something about a problem with nv4_dsp.dll, or something like that. Obviously a display driver issue. I rebooted thinking I'd probably need to reinstall the display driver or something.

Upon rebooting, right after the little Windows XP loading screen, I again received a BSOD, this time with the following error (or at least something similar as I am typing this from memory):

STOP: c000021a {Fatal System Error}
Windows logon process has been terminated blah blah blah....
0xc000005 (0x0000000 0x0000000)
System has been shut down.

Tried booting into safe mode, debugging mode, VGA mode, and Last Known Good Configuration. All gave me the same error.

I tried doing a repair install of XP, but it doesn't list Repair as an option.

I went into Recovery Console and tried the whole file replacement thing (make a temporary directory, move the important system32 files there, and then copy replacement files from the C:\windows\repair directory). I've done this before to fix other people's computers, and I've seen it suggested on this site before as well. Went through all the commands, rebooted, and still have the same problem.

Any suggestions? I have data on this drive that I definitely do not want to lose (ironically I was just waiting for my next paycheck to get another backup drive to copy it all onto).

I've Googled till my fingers bled and can only seem to find sites suggesting that I do things I've already done.

[jeffr]

I guess my question is is did you update the display driver?

[Glaive]

I hadn't recently changed drivers. I'm running the 71.89 WHQL Nvidia drivers that I got from Nvidia.com, and have been running them since they were released a while back. I had not changed any driver or other display settings for quite a while. I hadn't even done anything taxing for the video card like playing a game or anything in a week or more. I was just watching an video (can't remember if it was AVI or mpeg) when it crashed the first time, and since then I've only gotten the logon error and nothing else mentioning my display driver.

[jeffr]

What program were you watching that video with?

[macko72]

http://aumha.org/win5/kbestop.php
Check here but you will have to know complete error message!!!

[Glaive]

I was using Windows Media Player 10.

I've been to that site already, but didn't see my error listed.

[rspassey]

this really has me in state of confusion, problems with compatibility wouldnt have shown up imediately, besides, they are compatible and u have tried the differnt start ups, i honestly dont know, advice would be to take it to a comp expert, which is costy, or have ur hd's wipped and start from the initial loading of ur os

but first take to expert ont the advice before clearing ur drives, dont wann ado that then realize its mearly a fault in the driver

[GaryRouth]

This might seem odd, since it does seem to point to the video driver: but run the diagnostics that came with your hard drives - SeaTools for the Seagate, and DataLifeGuard for the Western Digital. A couple of bad sectors in just the right places can give misleading errors like this. - Just to make sure. The drives will be under warranty since they're new, and you'll receive a replacement at no charge.

Also - you can slave the drives in another computer and scan them there for malware -

Here's a site for info on your options, as far as reinstalling XP go http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

. . . Gary

[bailey]

a bad stick of ram will also give you all kinds of weard errors

[Digitalic]

Have you tried a different video card, it may be a hardware issue.

[GaryRouth]

Hi again

Glaive - - - cats and Garys are curious creatures: if you find a repair, and have the time: let us know what the cause was? [Hard drive, system or video memory (or bad card), problem with the motherboard (bios setting off? or failure?), etc. . . lots of possibilities on this one]
. . . Gary