I just installed Visual Studio 2005 on my machine. and i've started getting this machine check exception error.
the full error is 0x0000009c (0x00000004, 0x805461f0, 0xb2000000, 0x00070f0f).

I also tried booting in safe mode to uninstall Visual Studio and i can't because it says it is missing files. I'm not sure what to do at this point

Anyway every time i boot the machine a few minutes after it gets into windows i get this stop error. Before it blue screens though ALL of my anti-virus/anti-spyware stuff goes haywire, as in it won't load or it is suddenly missing virus definition files?? I have NOD32, avast, spysweeper and comodo firewall running. I also run adaware but that isn't set to load at startup.

I'm not sure if it was the software install that did it because i've been having issues with my video card also. where it will say nvidia sentinel thinks the video card isn't getting enough power and will then spam me with that message. I tried up dating the drivers but they were uptodate. Card is a Geforce7900. All the rest of my computer specs should be under my profile. I think i'll have to update the video card info though.

Any help/suggestions/comments/candy would be most appreciated!

It could be that your power supply can't handle your new video card.
Or that Visual studio is causing conflicts.
I would uninstall Visual studio first to see if that is causing the problem.

i tried uninstalling it, and for some reason it wont let me It says it can't find some dll file and that it can't complete the uninstall. I have a 580w PSU. Is there some way to gauge about how large of a PSU you need for your computer? With out things blowing up first . Would that be causeing a machine check exception error?

If the video card is not getting enough voltage it can be a cause of malfunction.

You can google Power supply calculator, find one that looks fine and then input all your hardware, that will give you an approximate value.

But if your power supply is not a quality one, the specs might be overrated.

The printed specs in most of the PSUs are something like:

580 W at 70C

But your system won't be running at 70C so your PSU can give you maybe 420 at 90-100C.

I have a Fortron 500W which is a relatively good PSU and if I'm gaming heavily sometimes I experiment random reboots.

How much did you pay for your PSU?

Mine costs around $90 and is only considered a good PSU but not a great PSU.

hmmm it definitely wasn't $90. i'll have to go take a look at that psu calculator. I rarely have issues with it when i am gaming but this whole bluescreen thing started when i tried to load up a game so <shrug> Maybe?
i'll take a look at it and post back asap. ^__^

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/329284

Try using one DIMM in slot 1 only. Then try the other DIMM as a single if the problem persists. Run memtest86 if possible. You could also bump your memory voltage up a notch or set it to mfg. specs in BIOS.

Yes the memory is another possible culprit