Not a rookie with PC's here but anyway, a little while back my PC started doing a "memory dump" and rebooting itself. At the top of the memory dump count-down page, are error "descriptions" such as: PAGE FAULT IN NONPAGED AREA or IRQL NOT LESS OR EQUAL and sometimes nothing at all. My first thought was that I had an IRQ conflict but I'm beginning to suspect my video card for various reasons. Any thoughts on this?
I remember this dump I took after corned beef and cabbage and green beer, so it had to be March 18th. It burned the retinas out of my eyes. Ahh memory dumps.
I considered linux but you know...comfort zone, etc... I'll check the other stuff when I get home. The PC is getting some age on it...been awhile since I built it.
Well...I'm now guessing my problem is a hardware problem. I disconnected the original HD and tried to do a fresh install of Win XP Pro with no luck. I'm still getting the same errors I stated above. So this would seem to mean that my settings in Windows all were probably ok. I've also tried another known-good video card and that didn't seem to be the problem, so I am now suspecting my 256M of DDR Ram or my BIOS or maybe even my processor which by-the-way is a 1.4G AMD Athlon. The only new HW i've recently installed was a monitor so, given that i've eliminated the Win settings and driver problems, I can't see that the monitor would be the problem. Just to be sure I need to have my RAM tested but I need to know where I can get this done for free. Also I think i'll try my original HD on another PC just to see if it will boot up. If all that works then I'll get another Motherboard. If it still doesn't work I'll get a new processor. Does this sound like a solid plan folks? Thanks for the help!
Before you Get a new Motherboard try these 2 things. Get a new Video Card, and if you have multiple PCI cards change the order up. When I went to XP on my Athlon I had a similar situation and just reseated everything. And voila...
Thanks David and cowboy. I'll give your idea a try David however I only run one PCI card; the ethernet card. My Graphics card is in the AGP slot. Cowboy, can I run memtest without booting up the computer? As of this point my PC will not boot up without an error which requires me to re-start. Can't even get into safe-mode.
Hmmmm...y'all think the dust and crap packed in my processor's heat sink causing the processor to soar to about 197 degrees could be part of my problem here?!
damn...ya think? :lol: i actually had a friend call me the other day about his computer running slow. he asked if it could have anything to do with his prescott running at 83c....d0h
Update: Got Win XP Pro installed on the "new" drive but still haven't attempted to access the files on the old drive. That's next! Oh yeah, once I cleaned the heatsink, the temp dropped 60F.
thats still high...get some artic silver 5 thermal paste and reseat your heatsink...it should be somewhere around 40 at idle, 50ish under load.
ya lol 50c....water cooling wouldnt even get you down to 50f edit: sorry, misread what you stated. thought you said dropped to 60c
