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I bought an assembled PC in June, 2011. The configuration is

  • Intel Core i3-540
  • H55TC motherboard
  • 4 GB RAM
  • Hitachi 1TB hard disk
  • XFX 5450HD graphic card and Samsung 22" monitor

After only 2 months of using it, the system started crashing about 2-3 times a month. The problem became persistent since this year. The system crashes more regularly displaying blue screen errors, after which I have to reinstall Windows.

Even after system formatting, the problem still persists.

I suspect that this may be a serious hardware problem and I don't know much about these. My system has 3 years warranty and I believe it will be possible to replace any hardware parts.

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marked as duplicate by Oliver Salzburg Apr 8 '13 at 15:11


3 Answers 3

The diagnostic and tool options suggested already are fantastic, and you should seriously consider one of two options.

Option One. Follow the advice you have been given and use the tools suggested to attempt to uncover the reasons for your crashes.

Option Two. Send the computer back to the manufacturer to be checked.

From the content of your question, and the lack of pertinent information, I am not sure that Option One will be the one for you. You see, this problem has been going on for 8 months now (June 2011 was 10 months ago, and the problems started 2 months after getting the machine) and you have not come to the realization that fixing it is beyond your capabilities. I'm not saying you cannot replace a bad video card or stick of Ram yourself. What I AM saying is that you do not appear capable of diagnosing and determining exactly what hardware is bad if you have not been able to do so in 8 months. Yes, there is some credit due to you for finally asking for help, but based on how long it took you to ask I do not believe that it will be of much use.

For example. Did you know that you can write down the code from the Blue Screen error, and then search for it at Microsoft Support? That's right. If you were getting an 0x0f4... or rather an 0x000000F4 error... or if it looks better a STOP: 0x000000F4 (0x00000003, 0x8293CDA0, 0x8293CF14, 0x805C773E) error, Microsoft can tell you what the most likely cause of this error is. That's what BlueScreenView is for, and why it was suggested to you. However, this diagnostic tool is not going to fix anything. It is only going to help you identify the issue, and it will still require work on your part to do even that.

Since you suspect this may be a serious hardware problem, you are most likely better off putting it in the hands of the manufacturer (the company that assembled the PC) and letting them determine what the issue is. You can keep the monitor at home though. They won't need you to ship that back to them.

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Also, better to take the hard drive out. They shouldn't need it for most hardware issues (i.e. not HDD related), you don't want to give them your data, and typically the repair process includes reformatting/reimaging the hard drive so unless it's removed you'll lose data. Of course, some companies might demand a HDD be inside the returned computer. –  Bob Jul 15 '12 at 21:34

Assuming the system has minidumps turned on, you can diagnose crashes with Whocrashed which is a lot more userfriendly and loads and diagnoses crashes, giving a detailed, readable analysis of what went wrong.

You can also use bluescreenview from nirsoft , with the bugcheck + driver context menu option to look for solutions. If the system is too unstable to run whocrashed or bluescreenview, you can copy c:/minidumps off the unstable system and check it with bluescreenview off another box.

If its a ram issue memtest86+ is a good way to do a ram test

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First thing to do is to download and burn a Linux Rescue CD, boot from it and run memtest to check your computer memory. I found many errors and that explained my problems with constant Firefox and Chrome crashes.

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