So what's going on? I've been experiencing a bad combination of all of the
above. The machine is horribly unstable. Everyone says reinstall
Windows...but the RAM test failure is the one thing that says to me to not do
that as its unrelated to Windows and points to a hardware issue. Any
suggestions? Dell E510 with dual core, 2 Gigs RAM, Win XP.

Just a follow up and clarification. Ultiamtely I'm looking to attempt to
eliminate Windows as an issue if possible. I realize there probably isn't
enough information given here. Here is a photo of the one of many BSOD
screens I've seen over the past 5 days, for what its worth:

http://www.mulsannescorner.com/images/BSOD-1.jpg

And the memtest failure:

http://www.mulsannescorner.com/image...tfailure-1.jpg



"woodstock74" wrote:

> So what's going on? I've been experiencing a bad combination of all of the
> above. The machine is horribly unstable. Everyone says reinstall
> Windows...but the RAM test failure is the one thing that says to me to not do
> that as its unrelated to Windows and points to a hardware issue. Any
> suggestions? Dell E510 with dual core, 2 Gigs RAM, Win XP.

"woodstock74" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote
> Just a follow up and clarification. Ultiamtely I'm looking to attempt to
> eliminate Windows as an issue if possible. I realize there probably isn't
> enough information given here. Here is a photo of the one of many BSOD
> screens I've seen over the past 5 days, for what its worth:
>
> http://www.mulsannescorner.com/images/BSOD-1.jpg
>
> And the memtest failure:
>
> http://www.mulsannescorner.com/image...tfailure-1.jpg
>
>
>
> "woodstock74" wrote:
>
>> So what's going on? I've been experiencing a bad combination of all of
>> the
>> above. The machine is horribly unstable. Everyone says reinstall
>> Windows...but the RAM test failure is the one thing that says to me to
>> not do
>> that as its unrelated to Windows and points to a hardware issue. Any
>> suggestions? Dell E510 with dual core, 2 Gigs RAM, Win XP.


Start you research on the BSOD here:
http://aumha.org/a/stop.htm
0x0000008E: KERNEL_MODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED

You can also do a Google search for this error for more information.

I don't know what kind of memory test program generated those errors, but
the screen shot shows it running from the XP desktop; such programs should
be run from a bootable floppy or CD, not from within windows. For testing
the RAM run at least two of these programs. They will create a bootable
floppy or CD. Boot from that and run them. Let each one run for some time,
not just a single pass.

Memtest86+
http://www.memtest.org/

Windows Memory Diagnostic
http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp

DocMemory Memory Diagnostic
http://www.simmtester.com/page/produ...c/download.asp

--
Rock [MS-MVP User/Shell]

woodstock74 wrote:

> So what's going on? I've been experiencing a bad combination of all
> of the above. The machine is horribly unstable. Everyone says
> reinstall Windows...but the RAM test failure is the one thing that
> says to me to not do that as its unrelated to Windows and points to a
> hardware issue. Any suggestions? Dell E510 with dual core, 2 Gigs
> RAM, Win XP.


You don't say anything about what you used to run the RAM test, but if the
test failed, your course of action seems clear. Replace the bad RAM. All of
your others are almost certainly attributable to the bad RAM.

--
Ken Blake - Microsoft MVP Windows: Shell/User
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