New PC problem, Stop Error

[jimmyrules712]

My PC has started giving me trouble. I was playing music on it, not even sitting at it, whe nit completely froze. I had to push the button to restart it and the nit froze in the middle of booting up. I turned it off for a while then turned it on and it finally did boot up (although it took a long time). Then a little while later it froze in mid-use again. This time when I rebooted by pushing the power button I got the following stop error:

Machine Check Exception Stop: 0x0000009C (0x00000004, 0x8054d5f0, 0xb2000000, 0x00070f0f)

Then I tried rebooting it again and several attempts in a row it froze in the middle of boot up. Then I turned it off for 15 minutes and turned it on and it booted up fine (using it to type this message).

Any ideas what my problem is?

Specs are in my signature, OS is XP media center 2005

[glc]

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/329284

Machine check exceptions are frequently caused by one of the following conditions:
• You are running the processor or mainboard beyond its specifications. For example, you are overclocking the processor or bus. We recommend that you run your hardware at the manufacturer-rated speeds.
• Noisy power, overstressed power strips, outmatched power supplies and failing power supplies can destabilize your computer. Make sure that you have a stable, reliable power supply to your computer.
• Extreme thermal conditions caused by the failure of cooling devices such as fans may damage your computer. Make sure that your cooling devices are all working.
• You have damaged memory or memory that is not the correct type for your computer. If you recently changed the memory configuration, revert to the previous configuration to determine what is wrong. Make sure that you are using the correct memory for your computer.

[jimmyrules712]

I know the first and fourth one's aren't the problem. It seems like al the fans are still running so I don't see why the 3rd would be a problem. The PSU is a forton source 450W (with dual 12v rails) so I am not expecting it to be a problem either, unless its gone bad recently. This PC is about 6 months old and has been working great until now.

However its been on for the last 4 hours and hasn't frozen or shut off again...

[glc]

Have you tested the memory with memtest86+? Have you run diags on all your hard drives? Are you sure the heatsinks and fans aren't dusty? Have you checked your temperatures and voltages?

[jimmyrules712]

no, I havn't done all of that yet.

I'll try and do it when I can set aside a few hours for the task.

But get this, it froze again this morning and when it rebooted all my favorites in firefox were erased. Nothing else seems to be gone.

[glc]

Search your hard drive for bookmarks.html - make sure you search in hidden and system folders.

[jimmyrules712]

ill do that search in a bit.

I rebooted and went into bios and checked the temps and all and it SAYS CPU temp is 53 degrees celcius, m/b temp 39 degrees, cpu fan speed 3515 rpm, chip fan speed 5625 rpm.

those numbers all sound pretty normal right?

I'm going to try the memtest and hard drive diagnostics next, but since I got out of town tomorow i may not get to em until monday.

[glc]

53 is a bit warm for an idle temp. What are the power supply voltages reading?

[jimmyrules712]

how do I test my PSU voltages? Is that info available in the bios?

[glc]

It should be - if not, install Asus Probe.