N
Nick Le Lievre
Hi group;
Upgraded a PC for a family member about a month ago and it was not stable
ever since - user reports blue screens. When I had a look at it I saw the
occasional Page Fault error and loaded BIOS fail safe settings, moved hard
drive onto an ATA 33 cable and they seemed to go away.
I asked the user about this and they weren`t forthcoming with much info so I
assumed it to be 95% ok - said family member went on holiday and I had
access to his computer so I ran a Prime 95 torture test on it overnight last
night. Just before going to bed I checked on it and it appeared to be ok -
I`d not had any problems at all thru light use prior to starting the tests
so I went to bed feeling positive that it was ok.
This morning I went and had a look there was an application error on the
screen! after I pressed ok the Page Fault Blue screen error appeared I
restarted and shortly after desktop loaded I got another error on screen
where another process had just died followed by another BSOD.
Well I spent a good few hours there restarting and sometimes cycling the
power and each time I either got an application error followed by bluescreen
or a straight bluescreen. The applications that crashed varied as did the
bluescreens but I actually saw;
PAGE FAULT IN NON PAGE AREA *STOP*
PFN_LIST_CORRUPT *STOP*
MEMORY MANAGEMENT *STOP*
IRQL NOT LESS OR EQUAL * STOP *
I have seen some of these before on other systems PAGE FAULT IN NON PAGE
AREA & IRQL NOT LESS OR EQUAL which I had thought was a driver problem.
Eventually however XP crashed with UNMOUNTABLE BOOT VOLUME and that was it I
could not get into any mode including safe mode last known good etc.
When I tried to repair Windows XP no previous operating system was detected
so I decided to format the drive and start again - however during file copy
process I was getting the error that files were missing - I thought it a
little strange but maybe the CD was scratched it did look a little damaged.
After file copy had completed (having skipped a few files) setup rebooted
and the graphic portion started however after a minute or so of no apparent
progress I would again get a blue screen error like one of the above. AHHH!
this was getting frustrating - I tried a number of different things w/o
success.
Then I removed one of the memory sticks and noticed that during the file
copy process even more files were supposedly missing then when I had 2
sticks in there - I was like wtf ? is this CD detoriating before my eyes ???
however when I swapped the sticks over and tried the other one there were no
missing files detected and XP went on and installed without a hitch.
So the moral of this story is - its BAD RAM MEMORY.
Upgraded a PC for a family member about a month ago and it was not stable
ever since - user reports blue screens. When I had a look at it I saw the
occasional Page Fault error and loaded BIOS fail safe settings, moved hard
drive onto an ATA 33 cable and they seemed to go away.
I asked the user about this and they weren`t forthcoming with much info so I
assumed it to be 95% ok - said family member went on holiday and I had
access to his computer so I ran a Prime 95 torture test on it overnight last
night. Just before going to bed I checked on it and it appeared to be ok -
I`d not had any problems at all thru light use prior to starting the tests
so I went to bed feeling positive that it was ok.
This morning I went and had a look there was an application error on the
screen! after I pressed ok the Page Fault Blue screen error appeared I
restarted and shortly after desktop loaded I got another error on screen
where another process had just died followed by another BSOD.
Well I spent a good few hours there restarting and sometimes cycling the
power and each time I either got an application error followed by bluescreen
or a straight bluescreen. The applications that crashed varied as did the
bluescreens but I actually saw;
PAGE FAULT IN NON PAGE AREA *STOP*
PFN_LIST_CORRUPT *STOP*
MEMORY MANAGEMENT *STOP*
IRQL NOT LESS OR EQUAL * STOP *
I have seen some of these before on other systems PAGE FAULT IN NON PAGE
AREA & IRQL NOT LESS OR EQUAL which I had thought was a driver problem.
Eventually however XP crashed with UNMOUNTABLE BOOT VOLUME and that was it I
could not get into any mode including safe mode last known good etc.
When I tried to repair Windows XP no previous operating system was detected
so I decided to format the drive and start again - however during file copy
process I was getting the error that files were missing - I thought it a
little strange but maybe the CD was scratched it did look a little damaged.
After file copy had completed (having skipped a few files) setup rebooted
and the graphic portion started however after a minute or so of no apparent
progress I would again get a blue screen error like one of the above. AHHH!
this was getting frustrating - I tried a number of different things w/o
success.
Then I removed one of the memory sticks and noticed that during the file
copy process even more files were supposedly missing then when I had 2
sticks in there - I was like wtf ? is this CD detoriating before my eyes ???
however when I swapped the sticks over and tried the other one there were no
missing files detected and XP went on and installed without a hitch.
So the moral of this story is - its BAD RAM MEMORY.