*Hardware Malfunction* BSOD - gpu problem?

[valnuke]

I've had my PC (signature) for 3 years now, I just changed the HD/ram last year, with no problems.

Suddendly, really suddenly, it started giving this blue screen error.

*** Hardware Malfunction
Call your hardware vendor for support
*** The system has halted ***

Hardware malfunction results in system error message
without additional errors.


It started happening every 3-4 hours in win7. Then after a 2-3 days it started happening every few minutes. And finally I couldn't almost login into win7 that it crashed. I noticed that it wasn't crashing in linux ubuntu (dual boot).

So I wanted to re-format and strangely I got the same error while booting from win7 installation cd! that was weird

at that point I thought it was a graphic card (nvidia 8800gts) problem, so I replaced it with another crappy nvidia card (geforce 8400gs from my other pc)
The system ran fine for hours, and I benchmarked a lot without problems.
I also noticed that my suspicious card was running fine in my other pc! so I had 2 working pcs.

At that point I put the broken(?) 8800 in my system again and it started working again. miracle
My system ran fine and I reformatted. all perfect
Then, this morning (1 week later) BSOD again. while posting a comment on youtube... restarted, another one, just using windows.


I really don't understand why this problem. i *THINK* that it's the video card but I don't understand why

1. it works fine on another pc with win7 32 (at least it did for 6-7 hours)
2. it works fine in linux ubuntu on this same pc (24+ hours)
3. it even crashed booting from win7cd...
4 it worked fine for 1 week after I removed/reinsterted it and now it started BSODing again.

I don't know what to do, I'm not even sure it's the gpu card. I paid it quite a lot 3 years ago and I wouldn't like to buy a new one just to find out that the problem lies somewhere else...


Sorry for the length, if you have suggestions they'll be much appreciated.

HW
Windows 7 Pro 64bit - Asus Striker Extreme MB - INTEL Core2 Duo E6850 3.0GHZ 1333 - XFX 8800 GTS 640mb video - Ram 4x2GB corsair DDR2 XMS2 - PSU Enermax Liberty 620W - HD SATAII 160GB Maxtor + OCZ Vertex2 SSD 120gb + 2x1500GB WD Caviar Green(RAID1)

 

[cybercore]

If you are blming the video card, stress test it to be sure:

FurMark: VGA Stress Test, Graphics Card and GPU Stability Test, Burn-in Test, OpenGL Benchmark and GPU Temperature | oZone3D.Net

|MG| Video Memory Stress Test 1.7.116 Download



If the video card is Ok, test RAM overnight:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/105647-ram-test-memtest86.html



CPU test

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/100352-cpu-stress-test-prime95.html