I hope this post is not inappropriate in this area. One of my Quad 6600's (E30) recently began throwing up Blue Screens of Death, with the MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION error. At least 2 Mid-Holo's have been lost to this problem. While I'm quite happy to swap boards/discs in the computer, the software side of things is a complete mystery to me, so I put the error message into a Well Known Search Engine, and found it to be fairly non-specific.

I cleaned out the gunge from inside the box, both literally with an air-jet to the cooling fins, and metaphorically with a full CHKDSK (which found some errors) then finally a repartition/reformat/reload everything, together with a lengthy run of Prime 95.(No errors).

All has been well now for a week or so, but the problem has returned. Any ideas?

John.

John
Although the Intel site is unforthcoming on explaining MCE, the Wiki here gives you some limited information. The MCE message itself suggests the cpu has detected an unrecoverable error and goes for a reboot with the BSOD. Although XP is quite tolerant the most frequent problem I find for BSODs are badly behaved software drivers, or masquerading memory/disc faults that upset the OS.

To me, the symptoms that you describe (with the checks you performed) sound more like an intermittent hardware related issue.

A couple of suggestions:
1. Check the memory thoroughly by running memtest86 overnight.
2. Use SISandra environment test to check the cpu/board/aux temperatures, fan speeds, and power supply voltages loaded and unloaded. You may be able to correlate with temperatures & voltages in the BIOS.

The readme on the other board has a lot of information on crashes: readme

Good luck.

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Thanks, Hagar. I saw the Wiki entry on MCE errors, and didn't like the bit about "they often indicate a long-term problem of a
general nature."!

I will certainly try the tests you suggest, but it is beginning to look as tho' I'm heading for an upgrade.

John.