New PC is screwing up

[Aliem]

So, I've been planning on building a PC for a while. I finally did. BIOS posted right away, all hardware was detected just fine, etc. I installed Windows 7 and this is where the trouble began. Partway through the installation, it blue screened. For reals. Anyway, the installation finishes, and all seems to be well. Get my drivers updated and all that fun stuff, and everything is fine.

Then I tried to boot it this morning, and it blue screens. It did this several times. Windows startup recovery doesn't work. I try using my phone to find some tech support, but that was a failed endeavor. I, on a whim, tried to boot again, and it did so just fine. What the hell? If anyone has any advice or information on what the hell is going on with my pretty new PC, it'd be appreciated.

[Saffith]

If it happens again, be sure to write down the type of error that occurred. That'll be near the top of the screen, all caps, words separated by underscores.

[AtmaWeapon]

Bluescreen is almost always a hardware failure of some sort. When it's not that, it's a driver failure. If I bluescreened during install, I'd start over from the "format drive" step. If it continued to bluescreen, I'd be suspicious of some hardware failing. If it makes it through installation without bluescreening but then continues to bluescreen, the chances of it being a driver are higher.

Like Saffith said, it's best to keep as much information about the bluescreen around. There's plenty of troubleshooting forums where people can tell you how to get a minidump uploaded and they'll analyze it and usually they can give you some advice based on that. I tried analyzing my minidumps once and Windbg is just too cryptic a tool for me to use. Odds are if you search for "bluescreen minidump" or something related to your bluescreen ("IRQ_LESS_OR_EQUAL" or something like it is a popular one) you'll find some people that can offer much more help.

[Nicholas Steel]

Are you familiar with the "automatic restart when Blue Screen occurs" feature MS introduced with I think XP that is enabled by default? Disable it if you are so that you actually can read the blue screen.

I personally run Memtest86 or Memtest+ (whichever is newer at the time) after installing all my hardware parts and let it complete all tests at least 3 times in a row (preferably 4), if ANY errors show up during this process then your RAM is either faulty or the order it is put in the slots on the motherboard is causing it.

It takes a couple hours (at least around 2) to complete 1 or 2 passes of all tests and you have to burn the program to a disc and boot off it to run the program. If there are no problems then my second guess would be the HDD, not familiar with HDD testing software.

[Aliem]

Yeah, I just turned off the auto restart thing. That was preventing me from actually reading the error.

It hasn't blue screened for the rest of the day. I had an HP Officejet J4580 all-in-one plugged in this morning, and that printer in particular doesn't work with Windows7 64-bit. I dunno if that was the culprit or not.

If I get another BSOD, I'll be able to actually write down the error. Thanks for the replies, I'll see what happens.

[ctrl-alt-delete]

If I had a guess, I'd say you got a hard drive that was DOA.

Use BIOS or Windows 7 diagnostics to test your drive.

Chances are it will fail the Short DST test pretty rapidly.

[Aliem]

Well, I ran error checking on the C Drive and it passed. No problems so far. I'm cautiously optimistic.

[Masamune]

In my experience, memtest isn't always reliable. Recently, I had a machine that would bluescreen at any given time. I ran memtest, both sticks checked out, so I figured it was the HD. Replaced the HD, more bluescreens. Removed one of the ram sticks, worked fine. If you are using multiple ram sticks, I would try running the machine with one in at a time, and determine that way if any of them are bad.

[ctrl-alt-delete]

Why are you using Memtest anyways? In 7, in the start menu, search for Memory and use the Windows Memory Diagnostic tool.

I have very little faith in Windows error checking tool for your hard drive. Try using the BIOS. Trust me.

[Aliem]

I did use the BIOS. I probably worded it wrong in the last post :P

But it seems like the problem is solved. I'm still not sure what the problem was, but it hasn't repeated since.

EDIT

I hate when I speak too soon.

I tried to boot this morning, and was greeted thusly:
SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION


When I tried again, this little fellah said hello:
BAD_POOL_HEADER

I'd do some googling right now, but I have to get to work. >.<

[AtmaWeapon]

I spent 5 minutes on searching; maybe someone else can confirm/deny.

For SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION, 3 of the 4 useful pages I found traced the problem back to video drivers. In 1, the user had installed new RAM with different timings than the rest, but even with compatible RAM installed the user had to increase voltage to their RAM for whatever reason.

For BAD_POOL_HEADER, information wasn't as clear. 2 of the 3 articles seemed to indicate you could do something in the registry to address it, and all three of the articles mentioned the blue screen either started with the installation of a new CD/DVD drive or could be reproduced by fiddling with the drive.

[Nicholas Steel]

Increasing voltage is expected for "performance" grade RAM, though the RAM should run fine (at a lower speed) at the lower voltage. List all your hardware specs and the PSU.

[Masamune]

It sounds like the ram so far, IMO. I got bad_pool_header when my machine was bsoding, took the ram stick in question out, worked fine.

[Aliem]

Yeah, I read the video thing. I tried updating my drivers, and the only one that needed any was my monitor's driver. I dunno, I've never had to bother with any of this so I'm pretty lost :P

My specs are:

AMD Athlon II x4 635
Cooler Master eXtreme Power RS600-PCARE3 600W PSU
Gigabyte GA-890GX Motherboard
2 sticks of 2GB a-data gaming series RAM
500GB Western Digital Caviar Black HDD

[Nicholas Steel]

Whats the video card?

[Aliem]

integrated: radeon HD 4290. I was planning on upgrading them to radeon HD 5770 in the coming months.