Re: PC testing software

["Norm Dennis" <nhdennis@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Buck, interesting that it was a HP driver for you, I had the same issue with
a HP driver and a couple of adobe updates have caused me grief. 


Norm Dennis

-----Original Message-----
From: pctech-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:pctech-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Buck
Sent: Wednesday, 28 April 2010 2:31 AM
To: pctech@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [PCTECH] PC testing software

On 4/26/2010 1:48 PM, Jeff Crosby wrote:

> Over the past month or so, my PC has BSOD'ed 4 times (they are listed
> below).  I suspect hardware/driver of some kind but don't really know.

You'll learn a lot by digging through the minidumps.  I went through
that a few years ago after a Windows update installed a new driver for
me and broke my system.  Turned out it was HP's printer driver that was bad.

Anyway, I went through a more recent BSOD problem and it turned out to
be bad electrolytic filter capacitors on the motherboard.  About as big
around as your little finger, located near the processor.  Mine were
obvious - bulging tops as well as brown crust coming out of the tops of
some.  The technical issue is that dried out electrolytics don't
regulate very well, so the 1.7v bus was very unstable.

The miracle isn't fixing these things, it's that they run at all.
  --buck