Random BSODs, freezes and restarts

Hello All - please let me say thanks in advance for any assistance. I completed the system specs form when I set up my account.

I have an HP Pavilion p6540f with the following:

• windows 7 prof 64-bit SP1,
• 8GB RAM,
• two 1TB Seagate hard drives,
• an AMD Phenom cpu,
• an ATI Radeon HD 4200 graphics card
• a Foxconn motherboard.

My problem is BSODs, spontaneous reboots or system freezes. Based on what I've seen on the internet, there seem to be several areas which could cause such a problem: something wrong with the RAM, overheating, or underpowered, the graphics driver, or something in the BIOS that needs upgrading.

As for the memory, I burned memtest to a cd and booted from that and let memtest run over night to check the RAM. It came back with no errors.

As to the overheating and underpowered possibilities, there is a CPU fan, a case fan and the fans associated with the power supply. The case fan and cpu fan seem to be functioning normally. I had the original 250W power supply replaced with a new 350W power supply which also seems to be functioning normally.

As far as the BIOS is concerned, it's AMI v6.04, dated 5/21/2010. There is a file available from HP, and that I've downloaded, called sp49851.exe. This is supposed to upgrade the BIOS to v6.09. I thought upgrading would be good since one of the things it's supposed to fix is a problem related to the machine not coming out of hibernation which sounds similar to what I've been experiencing. I ran this yesterday evening, within my user context which is in the Admin group, in safe mode. The progress bar eventually came up and proceeded almost all the way to completion and stopped. This was supposed to only take 2 to 3 minutes but I let it run overnight and this morning, the progress bar was still sitting there a fraction of a inch from the end. See the attached jpeg. My BIOS is still v6.04.

About the graphics possibility, I went to the ATI website and downloaded an update for the HD 4200. It installed without error and seems to be functioning properly.

It seems to me that if I can just get the BIOS update to run to completion, that will be the last thing I know to do to try to get to the bottom of this.

I've seen the BSOD posting instructions here so I downloaded the SF_Diagnostic_tool.exe file and tried to run that. Mostly I get unhandled exceptions however a couple of those buttons do work. Specifically, the Host and MSINFO32 buttons work but the MGADiag button takes me to a webpage where I can download that tool. The rest just throw the unhandled exception errors.

If anyone here has any suggestions on what else I can do, or at least how to get that BIOS update to run, I'd surely appreciate it.

Welcome aboard.
Please post it following the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) Posting Instructions so that we can obtain the necessary information we need to help you.

The latest dump you uploaded is of 8th Sept. Let us know ... is it the crash you are talking about?
Attachment 236283

Dan, there is a confusion for me ... please upload those dumps in your next post, dont alter any previous post.

Well, it is a hardware issue.

Code:

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*                                                                             *
*                        Bugcheck Analysis                                    *
*                                                                             *
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Use !analyze -v to get detailed debugging information.

BugCheck 124, {0, fffffa8008181038, 0, 0}

Probably caused by : hardware

Followup: MachineOwner
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To troubleshoot it, follow the guide Stop 0x124 - what it means and what to try.

Follow it, step by step. If there is any question, ask us.