Serious BSOD headaches.

[Excalibur Bane]

For some reason, about a month or so ago, my system started spitting out STOP messages. A reinstall of Windows seemed to have fixed it but it's begun again and I haven't the vaguest idea why.

So, here is what I've done so far. This is a fresh copy of Windows XP, installed last week. Very few modifications. I had originally installed modified user optimized versions of my Nvidia chipset, Nvidia video and Creative driver files, but I have since removed them, run Drive Cleaner proper to get rid of any leftovers and reinstalled the standard ones. This seems to have had no effect.

Defragmentation is minimal to none at this point. I don't have an anti-virus at the moment, but I have a hard time believing that I managed to contract a virus with the Windows Firewall up and no downloading. I will do a full scan later, I simply don't have that much down time to spend six or seven hours scanning my 120 and 80 drives.

I've run Memtest on several occasions, all of them ran overnight with no problems. So that would rule out any faulty memory. I've done malware, adware scans with Adaware and Search and Destroy. Minimal infections, all cleaned, nothing found since. System temperatures for both the GPU and CPU are within the acceptable range.

All updates and fixes have been applied via Windows Update. Pagefile is fixed, set at a decent size. None of this 1.5x your memory crap.

That about covers everything I've tried so far, but I'm probably missing alot. I've been working since 4 pm and it's now 1:15 pm, so I'm extremely tired and very frustrated.

Here my system specifications:
Asus A7N8X Deluxe
AMD Athlon XP 3200+ (Barton core)
1 GB of Corsair, TwinX kit in Dual memory configuration
XFX Geforce 6800 GT 256 MB
Maxtor 120 GB DiamondMax
Maxtor 80 GB DiamondMax
Sound Blaster Audigy

The errors have stopped at least during idle time, but I'm getting them during gaming. Call Of Duty 2 being the worst offender, it enjoys crashing every 5 mins if I try playing that. Just started too. It also pauses and loops the sound for about 5-10 seconds upon load of a game, then resumes. It doesn't crash during video playback or audio playback, such as movies and music, only during games it seems.

The error code is always the same: 0x100008e with a reference to portcls.sys
I've pasted all the dump events to a text file, which I can post here if it's helpful. I got minidumps as well, but I couldn't get anything out of them with the Windows Debugging Tools. References about it trying to open a second IDE channel before it crashes, that's about it.

I haven't had much time to try other games, maybe it's specific to this one, but I don't think so somehow. It was working fine less then a week ago and it starts doing this with no hardware or software changes so I'm puzzled.

Please, please someone help me before I go insane and throw my computer out the window, and kill some poor bystander on the sidewalk below with 50 pounds of falling steel!

Thank you in advance, for any help you can provide.

[JonNoH]

a Quick thought (uh-oh!)

GOOGLE is our friend:
portcls.sys is part of the driver for the on-MB sound. I suggest that you make sure that you have disabled the built-in sound in the BIOS (since you already have Audigy).

[Excalibur Bane]

It is indeed disabled in the BIOS. I checked several times.

[Excalibur Bane]

Hmmm. 107 views. A single reply. Are you guys all out on holidays or are you just naturally useless?

This is one sad, sad little technical support forum.

[MobilePCPhysician]

Now that's the way to get people to help you..

[shamus]

This is one sad, sad little technical support forum.

You can get infected by a virus within seconds of connecting to the net with no AV, firewall or not, run a scan. Run as many spyware programs as you can. Run HighJackThis.
All should be run in safe mode after disabling System Restore.
After you have exhausted all your attempts to find out what the problem is try altering your attitude and join another forum. With 12 posts since July of 2004 you've obviously brought a wealth of information to others here.
Happy New Year!

[parismouton]

Hmmm. 107 views. A single reply. Are you guys all out on holidays or are you just naturally useless?

This is one sad, sad little technical support forum.

i am both sad and little. can't be bothered. etc etc
my god, was i married to you once????


Happy New Year

[street1]

A large amount of games look for DX8 and most people have DX9,Go figure.That sounds like your problem to me.Besides being anxious.Might be 107 views.May be 108 now. Happy New Year!!!

[MobilePCPhysician]

That is a Microsoft file. Service pack 2 installed? All updates? Legal copy of XP? SFC/ scannow ?????

[theonetruely]

Hmmm. 107 views. A single reply. Are you guys all out on holidays or are you just naturally useless?

This is one sad, sad little technical support forum.

so you know what to do in the future then!!!!!!
( SLING YOUR HOOK )

[houseisland]

Are you guys all out on holidays or are you just naturally useless?

I don't know but all my personal systems (more than many third world countries possess -- representing almost every OS known to human kind except OS2) run perfectly.

This is one sad, sad little technical support forum.

Hmmm. Well...... My priority service on demand rate (drop everything I am doing at any time of day or night and come immediately) is $85 an hour.

[NooNoo]

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=835221
SP1 or SP2?

BTW, if you believe that your little problem is more important than our families and work, then you are very sadly mistaken. If you think you can demand help by insulting you are also sadly mistaken... guess its just sad aint it?

Thread locked - there is enough info in my link for any intelligent person to track the problem down.