Hi all,
 
I just came across this thread and I can't believe I've finally found some reference to the problem that has dogged my computer for two years!
My situation sounds amazingly similar to Alfei's. Everything was fine until I got some new hardware, namely: Gigabyte GA-7VXP mobo, Athlon XP 3000+ CPU and Western Digital WD800JB hard drive. These weren't all bought at the same time so it's hard to pin down what specifically may be causing the problem. In any case, since that fateful upgrade I get a lot of system errors when starting from a cold boot (for example, graphics card drivers failing to start with the dreaded "Machine Check"). For a while I suspected that Norton AV 2004 was the culprit as it reported that it had been "tampered" after a cold boot (much like Alfei's McAfee problem). I can now see that it was only a symptom of a different issue.
In addition to the problems reported elsewhere I seem to get a lot of data corruption on my hard disk, particularly with downloaded files but also with my iTunes songs, although this may be a different issue (anyone else get songs skipping or brief "screech" noises on their iPod?)
Since I became aware that there was a problem and it was probably hardware related, I've changed everything in the system except the mobo and CPU (and the hard drive is the same model but a warranty replacement as I thought it may be to blame). However the problem remains! I'm way beyond being out of patience and a new mobo and CPU are on the cards.
Like Alfei, no tests I've run have ever indicated a problem, but I will be happy to run any tests suggested and post the results for inspection!
 
Regards,
 
Baskii
 
Originally posted by alfei:

Quote:I've been running my AMD Duron 1100 / Gigabyte GA-7VAX (VIA KT-400 chipset) for a couple years now, through several peripheral hardware upgrades (disk, cdrom, cpu and case fans, etc.) and have always had the same problem....
It only ever seemed to happen under absolute "cold" bootup. This means leaving the PC off for a long time (like overnight).
...
the most regular appearance was McCaffee Virus scan startup reporting "corrupt signature files" or something similar
...
No memory test or cpu test ever indicated a problem.
...
alfei
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Hi all, I've been getting this problem with my desktop pc for around a year now and it's slowly driving me mad. Being a newbie, I've only just discovered the application popup with event id 26 in the event log and so have only just come across this page. I have suspected a power supply problem because it seems to happen more often when I'm accessing a drive or an unpowered usb device, and especially after cold startup.
I've recently bought a laptop and found an event id 26 with application popup in the event log when the low battery warning came on. Not sure if this adds evidence to my theory of a power supply problem with my desktop pc - perhaps someone might know something about this??
Also when looking at my motherboard, there seems to be a row of components that have rust coming out the top of them!! There are a line of 6 of these components just beneath the fan and they say 6.3v on them. This cannot be healthy! Dunno if this is related to this problem? Once it's warmed up a bit my computer runs well so I don't really want to get a new one yet. Hope somebody who is in the know can shed some light on this. Many thanks in advance.
 
System info:-
Processor - AMD Athlon XP 2200+
Motherboard - Jetway V333/V333pro
Mainboard - KT333-8235
Chipset - VIA VT8366/A,Vt8367 Apollo KT266/A,KT333
Video adapter - Nvidia Geforce4 TI 4600
 
 

Thanks to all for the different information on this BSD problem. I fixed mine but it was so different from anything on here I thought I should share it.
 
Basic machine specs:
 
Planar - ASUS AN8-SLI Deluxe (with a replaced fan for the video chip - grumble, grumble)
CPU - AMD Athlon 64 FX-55
Memory - 2GB DDR400 RAM
Vidoe - 2 x nVidia 6800 Ultras
PSU - Thermaltake PurePower 680w PSU
 
and various other stuff all relatively new (less than 2 years).
 
Another background note: the Machince Check BSD only occurred when trying to rip a CD to my HD. Everything else seemed to work fine (although I didn't try games and such).
 
At first I thought this was due to a recent monitor change (out was the Viewsonic VX-900; in was Apple's 23" HD Cinema) as I was having some other anomalies surrounding it. I read through all of the posts and then realized that couldn't be it and began to think it was a PSU or heating problem. That was quickly dispensed with since the room in this house (I live in North Yorkshire) is always nice and cool and the system's PSU is a beast. I then thought it might have been the UPS, but that proved to be a dead end too.
 
So then I started working backwards to my own "last known good" and then in an ephinanic moment it dawned on me. All of this started after I popped in a Sony CD that contained the XCP software. Norton caught the spyware but something else must have been causing this problem. I did some research and went to Sony's site, downloaded and used their removal tool, rebooted, and voila - NO MORE PROBLEM.
 
I stopped trying to figure out why and decided just to be happy that it's fixed. For the life of me I have no clue why this worked...
 
Thanks again to everyone for the good information!
 
Regards,
Scott

In my opinion there are many different problems described in this thread and the "machine check" thing being a false link of these problems.
After all this event is just information in most cases and not an error. In my case there were three pairs of "machine check" and "machine check:regs" in the event log. The system is busy and not responding for about 1 minute after the desktop comes up, then my system runs fine and stable.
Finally I got the meaning of these events when I disabled auto chkdsk for all drives at cold boot. chkdsk searches for the "dirty bit" (set after inproper shutdown) and moves along if it's all right. I have three harddisks installed and I had three pairs of "machine check", could make sense.
So there are now no more application popup events at startup but I still have the 1 minute waiting period when the destop appears and I still don't know why is that, the search continues...(it's not network related)

I've been getting this problem in the last few days, most annoying.
After a bit of detailed analysis in Event Viewer I noticed that every time the windows WMDM PMSP service started about 5 seconds later I would receive four of these error messages in system log and the PC would freeze. Having tried to stop PMSP in services, it wasn't having any of it so I used Security Task Manager to Quarantine it. So far, I haven't had the machine check freeze since.
Hopefully this might be of some help to someone, I'd advise to check your event viewer and look in both System for the Application Pop-up Machine Checks and then Application to see if there's any events starting at around the same time.