Windows 2000: BSOD when Idle?

[The Hobo]

This BSOD problem has been plaguing me for awhile, but it's recently changed.

Sometimes (most of the time) when my computer is idle for awhile, say when I go to bed at night and leave it on, I come back to find a blue screen.

At first they were always with ati2vag.dll or something similiar, so I thought it was a problem with my video card.

Now it's happening with ntoskrnl.exe.

The error is usually KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED, but I've gotten IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL lately, too.

Sometimes, after I reboot from the BSOD and log in, I'll get another one within a few minutes.

This seems to be completely random. It happens often, but sometimes it wont happen, and I won't be doing anything differently.

It started happening about two weeks after I installed a new DVD drive, but since it took three weeks, I'm not sure if that is causing the problem.

So my big question is, besides "what's causing it?" is: does this sound hardware related?

My first instinct is to just reinstall Windows, but if it's hardware related, that probably won't fix it and I will have reinstalled for nothing.

So any ideas/suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[dglienna]

look at the system logs to see what is happening before the crashes. there should be something in common for them.

[plenderj]

Problems that are time-based normally point at overheating as the cause of the issue. Apart from that, it could also be a power-saving feature going wrong.

Check if the system is set to go into standby, or power off your hard-drives etc. after a certain length of time. That might be causing it.

Another thing you could try would be to close down every single non-essential process listed in task manager and leave it running then. If it stays on, then it was one of those processes causing a problem.

Do you run any kind of number crunching apps like seti@home?
The reason I ask is that during the night, the house would probably warm up anyway with central heating etc., and given the complete lack of air movement throughout the place, it might slowly but surely cause the ambient temperature inside the case to rise. Just something to think about

Also try Event Viewer. You might see some long list of red x's indicating some recurring problem too...

[Ideas Man]

Try downloading the latest drivers for you video card from ATI and see if that helps anything. Because you said it used to cause it, it may still be a factor. BSODs with things like that usually result from faulty hardware & drivers. You could try disabling the hardware in question in the device manager, so Windows won't load its drivers. If the problem doesn't reoccur, then it could very well be a driver problem.

Another thing to try, install the latest DirectX (9.0c) and any other drivers for your hardware you deem necessary.

[The Hobo]

This has been an on and off problem. I've created at least two other threads about it and thought, at the time, that I had solved it, but it keeps coming back in different ways.

Thanks for the ideas, I'll give them all a try.

[The Hobo]

Originally posted by dglienna
look at the system logs to see what is happening before the crashes. there should be something in common for them.

Not sure how to do this?

Originally posted by plenderj
Problems that are time-based normally point at overheating as the cause of the issue. Apart from that, it could also be a power-saving feature going wrong.

I've had the computer for about six months now, and this just started...if it's overheating, wouldn't it always have been doing that? If not, how do I check into this?

Originally posted by plenderj
Check if the system is set to go into standby, or power off your hard-drives etc. after a certain length of time. That might be causing it.

This was my first thought, so I shut off all standby features. No luck.

Originally posted by plenderj
Another thing you could try would be to close down every single non-essential process listed in task manager and leave it running then. If it stays on, then it was one of those processes causing a problem.

Will try this for the next few nights.

Originally posted by plenderj
Do you run any kind of number crunching apps like seti@home?
The reason I ask is that during the night, the house would probably warm up anyway with central heating etc., and given the complete lack of air movement throughout the place, it might slowly but surely cause the ambient temperature inside the case to rise. Just something to think about

Nope, nothing like seti@home. Although, now that you mention this...the problem may have started when we started using the fireplace (near my comp). And last night, it didn't crash on me, and it was warm enough that we didn't have a fire...maybe it's the fire heating up the comp too much...something to look into as we start using it more?

Originally posted by Ideas Man
Try downloading the latest drivers for you video card from ATI and see if that helps anything. Because you said it used to cause it, it may still be a factor. BSODs with things like that usually result from faulty hardware & drivers. You could try disabling the hardware in question in the device manager, so Windows won't load its drivers. If the problem doesn't reoccur, then it could very well be a driver problem.

Another thing to try, install the latest DirectX (9.0c) and any other drivers for your hardware you deem necessary.

Installed the latest drivers and updated to 9.0c, no luck. I also disabled my DVD Burner, since I thought this started happening when I installed that, and no luck.

[dglienna]

Run -> Administrative Tools -> Event Viewer

Probably something in System (Others are Application and Security)

[The Hobo]

Last night it crashed, and there was no fire going or heater.

It crashed a few minutes ago when I was burning a DVD.

In fact, it always crashes when I try to burn a DVD now. I've wasted quite a few DVD-Rs...

The only thing I see in the event viewer from around the time it crashed while burning is:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Removable Storage Service
Event Category: None
Event ID: 116
Date: 10/28/2004
Time: 2:56:38 PM
User: N/A
Computer: COMP2
Description:
RSM could not identify the media in drive Drive 0 of library _NEC DVD_RW ND-2510A. An error was encountered while attempting to read data from the media.
Data:
0000: 01 00 00 00 ....

[dglienna]

sounds like a conflict with the DVD burner. Are you sure that its supported for W2K? They have a hardware list of things that don't work.
Try to upgrade the driver. I had a printer that wouldn't work on W2K, for instance...

go to M$ website for hardware list. if you re-install, it will tell you what won't work in advance.

[The Hobo]

Originally posted by dglienna
sounds like a conflict with the DVD burner.

I disabled the burner and still got the blue screens, though?

[dglienna]

try UN-INSTALLING it and re-booting. there may be a driver conflict.