Help with hard error, please...

[Uncle Vinnie]

Little by little I am trying to isolate what causes one pc to randomly
crash. (XP Home)

As suggested, I unchecked 'Automatically restart'.

System ran fine for 3 days, now the error that came up is Unknown Hard
Error.... ntdll.dll.

There seems to be alot written on this, from a straight download of the
file, to online repair programs...

Any advice on this, thank you!

 

[Mark L. Ferguson]

Safe Mode boot menu (F8 on restart) has an option to create a boot log. ("%windir%/ntbtlog.txt"). This file will probably end with
the loading of the problem driver.

From a overall aspect, you have to say ntdll errors are a driver conflict (e.g corrupt, incompatible, virus tainted, etc). As a
general rule, anything that stops the system is Not a software problem, but something in hardware (or drivers for it)

The Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) has the job of acting as a 'black box', giving software the job of pushing the right 'levers'
to cause the desired result, without caring exactly how that is done. It prevents such system stops, by isolating the hardware from
it.

It's a driver failure (within the black box of hardware abstraction) you need to look to, to find the error.

..

 

[Uncle Vinnie]

Mark...

Sorry, I've been on the road.. thank you for your reply... I'm not sure how
to do the switch ("%windir%/ntbtlog.txt"), other than when booting up in
Safe Mode, selecting it, and then where to find it.

I will try later on today....

I have a funny feeling I may have found the problem. I have one stick of
256, and 2 sticks of 128's, all the same speed, different makes. To date,
only running with one 256 (slow I might add), we've had no trouble... all
3 seem to be fine independently, but not together...

the board may be finicky as well, Intel 815EEA.....

I hope this is is... it would make some sense.... thank you for your
continued help!

Vinnie