BleepingComputer.com: Blue Screen of Death... BIOS related?

A good tool that I use is the UBCD from http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
You can download a free ISO of a bootable cd that has many diagnostic tools including memory tests and all the manufacturers hard drive diagnostics.
I start all my BSOD repairs with the UBCD to test memory and hard drive for hardware issues.

To Hamluis:

I was beginning to suspect that the source of the problem was hardware-related when I ran the chkdsk utility to find that I had data in bad sectors (I hope they are related). I think that the cause is most likely to be the hard drive. I bought my desktop about four years ago. How much would a 200GB hard drive cost nowadays?

To Gabrial:

I don't think that this was caused by RAM, because I've been using the desktop without problems for about a week and a half after I got my RAM upgrade, unless there is a time delay in these problems. I've also tried my old RAM sticks to no avail. On top of that, I used Crucial's RAM compatibility software to scan my desktop before purchasing to find the one that was compatible for my model.

To ThunderZ:

All the times I've tried to install sp3 was online, from the microsoft website. So this probably means that either the hard drive has gone bad or my windows installation DVD copy has been damaged.

This post has been edited by mistuhw00: 11 October 2010 - 03:28 AM

yna, on Oct 10 2010, 10:13 PM, said:

Thanks yna, this looks very useful. I'll look into it.

Did you manage to fix the bad blocks on the hard drive? You should run the diagnostic from your drive manufacturer and have it test the integrity of your drive. If it's going bad you will need to replace it or problems will continue.

This post has been edited by Gabrial: 12 October 2010 - 02:23 PM