Recently my computer has been acting a bit off ("a bit" is an understatement I guess), BSOD's, program crashes, things like that.
I'm pretty sure I've narrowed the suspects down to three main suspects, the CPU, the RAM or the MOBO (tho other components might possibly be orchestrating this). Could you help me confirm that, and perhaps even narrow it down even further?
The crashes(BSODs) started with big .mkv files, mainly 720p movies (2-4 gigs) and sometimes even shows (0.5-1.5 gigs), they crashed the computer about 2-5 minutes of watching. I figured it might be the new 1.5 TB HDD (5200rpm, unlike my other HDDs) so I unplugged it, and the .mkv BSODs stopped after that (even after i replugged the HDD). This was like 1.5 weeks ago.
The .dmp files (which I don't have, sorry) pointed to files like hal.dll and ntoskrnl.exe (I used a .dmp analyzing utility). There were quite a few different error codes. i remember seeing things IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL and codes like 0x000c2. Basically it points to HW failure. Some of the BSODs induced CMOS settings reset. (or is it BIOS settings reset? Anyways I saw the word CMOS).
At the time my .mkv crashes stopped i started noticing games acting up (I only tried two, Dragon Age 2 and WoW). DA2 started to lock up at random intervals (I found out that pressing ctrl+alt+del or ctrl+alt+esc didn't fix it quickly, but pressing the windows key stopped the lock-up instantly, if that matters). WoW started crashing (albeit less frequently than the DA2 lockups) and giving me errors about "Instruction at memory "0xSomeMemory" illegally referenced memory at "0xSameMemoryLocation"". (don't remember the exact locations or the exact wording of the error)
I turned off the computer last night and it was okay. Now when I turn it on the screen doesn't get any signal, and my BIOS settings (CMOS settings?) seem to have reset once again (the CPU fan goes full speed, which means the speed limit I lowered has gone back to default or my CPU is overheating extremely in less than a second(not possible I guess)).
From this I deduced my CUP/RAM/MOBO theory, can you enlighten me more?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
