One Eyed Jack said:
What the heck does page fault in nonpaged area mean?
I've had this problem for quite a while, used a RAM tester, windows
tester, ROM utilities, etc. Nothing says there is a problem, but
windows crashes sometimes with a blue screen and says page fault in
nonpaged area.
Can anyone help?
Thank you
You need to run your memory tester for a long time 12 hours + you don`t say
how long you ran it for but even 3 - 4 hours is not long enough believe me.
If it isn`t a actual hardware memory problem its a memory problem being
generated by a problem driver. I hope the information I provide helps you
maybe you can identify some or all of the problem symptoms in your system.
MEMORY RELATED BLUESCREENS
Sometimes its quite obvious system suddenly displays a PAGE FAULT IN NON
PAGE AREA blue screen after reset you get no display and POST error beeps
indicating memory error (so long as you have your speaker wire connected to
the right pins and find/trust the BIOS manufucterers error codes your home
dry).
I`ve personally expierienced this one on my own systems however when I
expierienced it I didn`t get any POST beeps and the speaker wire was
connected correctly - which sent me off on a path to destruction and self
loathing. I eventually found the true problem when the memory stick did
cause error code beeps in another motherboard although 1/2 the time it
booted up and "seemingly" operated correctly.
Another time its that you got a memory stick that maybe started out life in
your system ok - but for whatever reason and in my case I suspect
overclocked to too high an fsb your memory stick becomes corrupted - however
your motherboards POST error codes don`t tell you this and your PC continues
to boot up and runs "seemingly" normally - however you get the infinite loop
problem here your display goes off and after reboot a message appears on the
screen saying the device driver (yourgraphicsadapter.dll) got stuck in an
infinite loop - it puts you onto the path of true destruction as you think
its the graphics card and more depression and self loathing loom large
untill you try that stick in another board and its POST code error beeps
sound the alarm!
Finally I expierienced this type on a system I upgraded as a favour for
someone else on the cheap (ie the memory was from questionable source eg
your mate, ebay etc) well this one again needed constant attention becuase
like example number 2 its intermittement nature means you need to be around
when it happens. Basically the system was suffering from application errors
right after desktop loading eg startup apps followed by a blue screen error
but sometimes just a straight blue screen error of the following;
PAGE FAULT IN NON PAGE AREA *STOP*
PFN_LIST_CORRUPT *STOP*
MEMORY MANAGEMENT *STOP*
IRQL NOT LESS OR EQUAL * STOP *
Now like all memory errors there intermittent which means your system can
appear to be stable for long periods then suddenly you get two of these
errors then no more for a while - with the above scenario trying to
reinstall Windows XP results in files appearing missing during the file copy
process and then more of the blue screens as the graphic portion of the
install process tries to start.
I think the best way to "kill" or find out a failing memory module is to run
Prime 95 torture test & also if possible try the stick in other boards. In
example number 3 Prime 95 for an extended 15 hour period actually made the
errors happen more consistently to the point of instead of failure 1 or 2
times a session every session immediatly crashed to a blue screen.
