How do I tell if a blue screen 'CRC Fail' error is coming from my motherboard, hard drive, or RAM?

In this excerpt from
Answercast #20, I look at a Blue Screen error that could be coming from
several directions. I walk through a few steps a technician might take (and oh
yes, are you backed up?)

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Hard drive, motherboard, or RAM?

The short answer is that ultimately, you do not. There is no simple way to determine where the error is.

The most common approach to this particular kind of problem (where you’ve got a blue screen specifically for a CRC error) is to immediately suspect the hard disk and start doing some diagnostics on that.

Diagnosing the problem

Diagnostics would include things like:

• Running chkdsk /r
• Or potentially even going so far as to run SpinRite on the drive.

A CRC error on the drive can in fact cause system crashes and blue screens. The problem is if the bad sector that a CRC error represents is a portion of (or is supposed to contain a portion of) Windows itself and it cannot be read properly. Then it’s very possible for that CRC error to cause Windows to crash and crash hard; in other words, create a blue screen.

Unfortunately, the same can be said for RAM and the same can be said for motherboard failures.

Hard disk is the first place that I’d look. Then, having eliminated that as a suspect, I would then start to look at RAM. Then, I would start to look at the motherboard. Pretty much in that order.

Technical support

Failing all of that, ultimately, there really is no good substitute for having a technician actually lay hands on the machine and look at it; and see if there’s something he can detect with electronics equipment to determine what is or is not failing.

You’ll find, I suspect, that the most common diagnostic approach is to replace the parts. In other words, while your hard disk has information on it that you don’t want to replace, swapping out RAM is one approach that you’ll find a technician will often use. If they happen to have spare motherboards for that machine lying around, they may in fact even go so far as to swap that out just to see if the problem goes away.