Diagnosing hardware errors - Please help

[Office Linebacker]

I'm looking at a mate's old AMD 939 Windows XP PC. He said he hadn't changed anything lately but it's been blue screening. I've only managed to make it do this one (it occurred after coming out of screensaver). It produced this error and referenced a hardware problem 0x0000009c (0x00000004, 0x80546EF0, 0xB2000000, 0x00070F0F). I've done a few memtests and the RAM appears fine. I've also run OCCPT to try it get it to blue screen more often but no joy.

Any ideas on how I can diagnose the error with out the old remove everything from the motherboard and slowly test stability? Some magic freeware tool:?:

[ur_noobie]

does the BSOD say specifically what the fault was? if yes, what was it?

if the fault was listed, its where the first arrow would be:

Hidden: show

[Office Linebacker]

I think it may have been UNKNOWN_HARD_ERROR but I'll need to check. I definitely remember it said something to the effect of "due to a hardware the computer has been stopped to protect your system".

Hmm it looks like it may be this though http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Check_Exception

[Joker]

After ensuring its not a software issue (virus, spyware, drivers, updates) by doing a clean boot and waiting for the crash,

I would start with a visual inspection of the motherboard and video card for dodgy capacitors.

If they all look ok then the PSU could cause this.

Intermittant faults are a pain. About all you can do is replace part by part until they stop.

Event logs might help, but just as often I have seen video cards produce event log errors due to a faulty PSU so use them as a guide. The error you are getting is a prime example of this, its generated by the motherboard, but this dosent mean the motherboard is faulty.

Knowing what brand all the equipment is will help everyone point to known likely issues too.

[Treloar]

Clean the contacts of the RAM and graphics card with a soft white pencil eraser and reseat the RAM & Graphics card.