BSOD "machine_check_error"

[Capn Sunshine]

I recently changed the power supply in my 90's era Dell, since the old one died. It started up fine on the bench where I bought the supply, got right to my old desktop.

I took it home, fired it up, and get the Blue Screen with "machine_check_exception" cited as the reason Windows wouldn't start up.

then the error codes 0x0000009c (0x00000001,0x8054D570,0xEZ000000,0x00000175)
any suggestions?

[ManiacJoe]

1. Usually hardware related.

If you are not overclocking the processor, it might be the power supply, among other things.
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=329284

[struggle4progress]

2. I had a new desktop at work once where a battery promptly died and

bios settings were lost with every shutdown, so it looked like the harddrive wasn't working: until i got a new battery, i had to re-enter the bios with every single reboot to reset bios settings. Some years later, I put a Linux distro on an old 90s era Dell desktop and had some problems when the battery died because the kernel was very unhappy about the system date and time: until I got a new battery, I had to enter the bios at boot-up to set the date and time approximately correctly

On a 2000 era Dell I have, the fan slowly died: it fortunately got very noisy and I replaced it. IIRC, Dell sometimes uses a proprietary fan connector

On my 90s era Dell, I once had enormous problems that I couldn't figure out: I finally pulled the old harddrive, slapped it into an enclosure, and ran a battery of disk checks -- which revealed that about 25% of the sectors had gone bad

If you google "machine_check_exception," you'll find webpages that suggest powersupply and overheating among other issues. If it were my machine, I'd check that the powersupply unit was installed correctly and had adequate power; I'd look at powersupply issues related to the bios; I'd doublecheck other bios settings and wonder about the battery; I'd make sure the fan was working correctly; and I'd try booting up a different OS off a thumb drive or cd or floppy to see if the problem was with the Windows installation

DISCLAIMER. I'm not an expert and I don't really know jack about this, except what I've accidentally learned mucking around with my own machines