On 2020-08-04 9:17 p.m., micky wrote:
In alt.comp.os.windows-10, on Tue, 4 Aug 2020 18:21:12 -0500, Rene
Lamontagne wrote:

On 2020-08-04 6:11 p.m., micky wrote:
My previous thread is pretty far back so to recap, I had had 50+ BSODs
with 5 or more different reasons given.

I installed the May update over my current win10 and then downloaded a
whole version and installed that over it. No change.

Debugging was hard because it sometimes crashes before it fully boots
and sometimes within 30 seconds. Worked fine in Safe Mode

So I used that source of media, I forget t he name, and re-installed
win10 keeping my personal files and nothing else, no installed programs
other than what comes with win10 out of the box.

Then I installed Firefox, nothing else.

Guess what? it still crashes with a BSOD. Sometimes before FF is
started. One reason was less than or equal and another was something
else.

I thought this should prevent crashes?

Unless it's hardware. I had run Memtest86 for 8 hours iirc before
with no errors. Last nght 17 hours with no errors, 7 full passes?

What else could be the problem?
Optiplex 755 Win10 Pro 8 Gig RAM Originally with Vista or 7
installed. Does that matter?

Should I try safe mode? What is the point?


How much memory do you have? How many sticks?

8 gigs. Two iirc.

try running one stick at a time in each used slot.

So is that 4 possibilities?

Yes 4 trials.


If that still fails try a new power supply.

I have a bunch of power supplies that I took from full-size PC's but
this PC is one size smaller, 12"x 12 or 13 x 3.5. So they probably
wont' fit, right?

Yes a regular ATX supply may not fit.


I see that ones that do fit are only ..... not so cheap. $44 on
Amazon, $20.55 on ebay, ...less for refurbished, which in this case
probably means just "used". What can they refurbish? They blow out the
dust?

You do not want refurbished power supplies.


Any chance the connectors for those other power supplies I have will fit
and I can just run with one of them (and the cover not on the case)
until I see if it works better with a better PSU? Then I'll buy a new
one. .

The connectors on an ATX drive may or may not be compatible with your
PC, Can't tell without knowing what brand and model of PC and
motherboard you have.


But the advantage is that if there is a hardware problem, and not a
software problem, I can use the disk clone I made just as the problem
was starting, and I'll be back where I was.

Rene


Another way to separate software and hardware problems without
changing hardware is to download a Live Linux distro and install it on a
DVD or Flash drive and see if it runs fine with that, Any distro will
do, a Good small distro is Zenialpup 7.5 , If it crashes with that then
it is probably hardware, If it runs consistently good then it is
probably your Windows setup or other 3rd party software.
Do Not install the Linux distro to your hard drive, Run it from your DVD
or flash drive.

Rene