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How can a BSOD ruin an mbr???

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f0dder:
That particular incident is one of the reasons I've only used nvidia since... too bad, since there's one point where ATI at least excels over nvidia: speed when you're using screen rotation. But then again, I hardly do that anymore :)

Oh yeah, and ATI fanboiz of course claim that it's a windows bug, because it's mentioned in a MS KB article - imho it's the ATI driver that doesn't play clean.

OGroeger:
BTW, what was the content of the BSOD?

Armando:
I didn't get the responses notices to this thead. Just... noticed. Thanks!

My BSODs are of the "memory parity error" type. For almost a year and a half, I've tried to get rid of the problem trying several strategies (memtest, prime95, etc.), to diagnose the problem but none worked. Lately, I thought that it was linked to the way my RAM modules are inserted. but 1.5 month later... it came back. Less often though, but it's unpredictable.
I see no connections between the contexts in which the BSOD's happen. I suspect it's a hardware defect, but Dell never wanted to take my laptop back -- just because they couldn't diagnose the problem properly on the phone! (The last thing they wanted me to try was to reinstall windows and all my software and wait for the problem to happen again. This is when I said : Sorry guys, this is like 40h of work for me — maybe for nothing — and I can't afford that now.)

I've had really nasty crap happening because of ATI drivers.
-f0dder (October 13, 2007, 06:19 AM)
--- End quote ---

At some point I suspected it was ATI related (well, at some point, I was even wondering if it could have been related to my blood sugar). But how can I ever find out, since the problem is intermittent???

Anyhow, getting back to the mbr problem : so the possible answers would be : a dying block or a bad driver corrupting HardDrive data (mbr in that case)?

Carol Haynes:
If the MBR is getting corrupted it could be a block on the drive that isn't behaving consistently (prior to its death).

Do you you know the manufacturer for the drive? If so many have a downloadable diagnostics tool which often runs from a boot CD or floppy - it may be worth giving it a go.

If you are getting memory parity errors it does sound like a memory problem or possibly an intermittent bus problem. Try soak testing with MEMTEST+ for at least 24 hours. The trouble is MEMTEST doesn't check all memory (it needs some for itself to run and store its results) so if it is that area of memory that is bad it may or may not show up.

Microsoft also have a free memory tester to download - but on a quick search I couldn't find it in their download centre. It might be worth finding it (and other available testers) and running a series of memory tests.

Lashiec:
Found it

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