Do I really need to reinstall my OS?

This is long -- read it if you have ideas about Stop errors.




I got a new Dell computer March 11th. OS is Windows XP Home Edition.

See attached document please

 

uhmmm that didnt take very long to read at all

 

umm, I SAW my copied over text...but when I went to post it it disappeared. I've never posted anything as an attachment, so I hope I've done it right.

 

Use memtest86.


Let me tell you my experience with Dell diagnostic CD crap. 3 times I have had that CD pass with flying colors. Those same 3 times, the onboard video was fried.

THe CD said there were no problems. The phone techs argued. I had to yell and scream each time.

And each time, a new motherboard fixed it. Doesn't say much for Dell hardware-wise, either.

 

I have to agree with Adrynalyne ive been trawling those errors for the last twenty minutes and possible ram failure seems high on the list

Let us know how memtest goes

 

The one Dell guy I ended up with at the end agrees with you about the diagnostic CD's!!
Tell me what is meant by use memtest86 -- I'd like to do it 'cause I've wasted hours trying to figure this out.

AND...a new motherboard fixes a problem with RAM?

and...therefore this MAY have nothing to do with software/drivers?

 

ok heres the link
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=1247

There should be a read-me file included to help you through

 

Nono, I was just quoting my own issue with the CD. It has nothing to do with your issue, other than that their diag CD is really bad.

 

pegg,

I just want to butt quietly in here to urge you not to hurry into that re-installation, just because Dell dinglebells say that's the way out.

If the mem test shows nothing, let us know that, and we'll suggest other diagnostics and driver changes that have really good chances of telling us what the problem is.

 

Uh-- going nowhere fast

OK -- I give up. I'm not the brightest computer person, but I read the lengthy info re: memtest and even went to their site, because I don't have a floppy drive. It gave a way to download a file to burn a bootable CD. It's an .iso file and I don't know what program to use to open that with (??) so I think that's my first problem. Second, I think I read somewhere that you have to have something extra to burn a bootable CD....because when I restart my computer and tell it to start from my CD nothing at all happens (I'm assuming that is what I'm supposed to do for this test). Actually, it begins by talking about changing my serial console default and the serial baud rate which I spent 1/2 hour trying to figure out...to no avail (that should be my login name "To No Avail")
Any other ideas?

 

i built a new pc about a month ago and it crashed every day with that physical memory dump blue screen. i ran 2 memory diagnostics and they found errors, so i took my mem back and got a diff brand. works fine now.

So run those memory tests and if they're bad make dell give you new sticks. look at the memory downloads here at MG, that's where i found mine.

p.s. you can make an .iso with Nero. then boot from CD before hard drive.

 

you just download the iso image and burn it onto a cd, you can use Nero, Winiso, adaptec or several other burning apps
if you need further advice let us know what software you use to burn your cds
if you burn this image to a disc and set your machine to boot from cd it should work ok

 

Well, I still must be doing something wrong. I used to have NERO, but didn't download it on this machine. Doesn't it cause problems with Windows XP?

I tried burning it with Sonic Record Now and it showed that it was on the CD. I restarted my computer, hit F12, then #4 to boot from my CD (right?) but it just went to Windows each tiime. I tried burning it by opening the files in Explorer and highlighting the "burn files to CD" and it would open a program (maybe something by Microsoft -- sorry I can't remember) and it would just say, "you have files waiting to burn to CD" -- then I would click on the "bubble" in the system tray and then I would burn the file. That didn't work.

I tried another way and it would send it to my FinePix viewer (which is a program for my digital camera) but it is missing the direct link to Pixela ImageMixerVCD so I couldn't burn it that way.

UGH -- anyway I know it's been on the CD but I haven't been able to boot with it -- so what else am I missing.

I downloaded the AleGrmemtest.exe from Major Geeks and it can run straight from Windows. It started automatically even though it's document talks about giving it commands for logfile, patterns, maxerrors, time and memory. It ran 30 passes last night with no problems but then I stopped it and went to bed. This morning I started it again and I checked it after only 10 passes my display monitor was filled with an array of rectangles flickering all over it. The computer wouldn't answer any commands (I gave it time to respond) so I eventually shut it down)

Any ideas? I e-mailed the AleGrmemtest site but haven't heard anything yet.

 

Okay firstly Nero works fine with XP Maybe you are thinking of Adaptec now there is a rubbish program
Secondly is that how your dell is designed to boot from CDrom, you must do this straight away as soon as your machine posts
When you try this do the lights on the CD drive flash indicating that its trying to read the disc?
If not read your manual and follow the steps to enter the BIOS setup and set your first boot device to cd rom from there

Lastly i have no experience of that particular memory tester so i cant offer you a lot of advice, but sounds like could be a corruption of sorts
Maybe try running the app again

 

Have all the right stuff - don't know what to do with it

OK - I installed my NERO -- I downloaded the memtest86, when I unzipped it, it has 4 files in it. So when I go to burn it I just burn the main file...but you're talking about burning the "iso image"....and when I burn the file memt86 and try to reboot it's worthless. SonicRecord Now let's me make a CD "bootable" but I need a floppy disk which I was stupid enough to get a computer without a floppy drive (but that's for another thread).

So -- one more time...what do I need to do to "download the iso image and burn it" since I must have all the right stuff (on my computer anyway)

 

Go to www.memtest86.com Download ISO-image which only have 1 file (memtest.iso) That you burn, it IS allready bootable. You can use Deepburner http://www.deepburner.com/ if Nero give trouble. Question is if computer is so unstable you have problem doing normal tasks like burning, hmm. Try again then. Computer must be able to run memtest86 for many hours. There is another version of memtest86 on www.memtest86.org I think - show memory timings and some more. Basically the same, use whatever you like. Microsoft also have one http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp also about the same - hmm only floppy? Anyway there is a reason MS have picked up interest for memory test. First thing to do with new computer. You can read all the text if you like but you are only suppoesed to 1. Download and burn 2. Set bios to boot from CD before hd, floppy 3. Go to sleep and check result when you wake up.

As you can see on website not all errors have to mean bad memory, could be bad timings/voltage or half-dead motherboard. Time will tell, note which test give errors. Smells like bad memory for sure. Give data corruption etc. but you know... test asap. If you have 2 memory modules test them separately, if one is bad you keep it away from computer.

 

Thanks JSDK and the General

Well -- sometimes lights flicker ever so faintly -- sometimes they seem to say, "Yes, I am here, but I am hopeless..." Then they go away.

But - hey, my kids can play a CD-Rom on the drive and I burned videos from my camera onto yesterday so go figure. Oh - I just checked it now with a game and it worked fine too.

OK -- I burned the .iso with NERO. I forgot that I had gone to the actual website and found the iso image and when I had tried to burn this stuff again I was using the other files (blah, blah, blah).

Anyway...I got into Setup and told the computer to boot to my CD-Rom Drive before the Hard Drive... but it didn't listen to me.

Then I actually went in and disabled the hard drive in the Boot up sequence so it didn't have a chance to skip over it and it just said there was no CD drive to boot from and to hit F1 to retry or F2 to go to Setup which I eventually did and returned everything to it's normal state.

I've gone in and checked the D: drive and it says it's working properly. So what gives? I know this shouldn't be this hard. I know the .iso file is on the CD. I know Nero works and I know how to use it. The SonicRecord now does something with DLA and you have to disable it with Windows XP and format your CD, etc. -- I won't even do that for right now, I'll stick with NERO. However, I'm spinning my wheels and it makes no sense that it won't read the CD and boot from it. RIGHT?

 

I've had three error reports that have been sent to Microsoft today and yesterday. They are probably the 20th reports that have been sent from this machine in the 5 weeks I've had it too. Does that say anything? I'm usually just in WORD, or often, looking something up in the HELP section (since I've been there every day)

 

Hi Pegg im sure this must be very frustrating for you
Can you enter the Bios setup, and look under your standard cmos features there should be a listing there for what devices are attached to your primary and secondary ide channels, now is your cd drive showing up at all
if not select the channel you have your drive on usually by pressing enter and try changing the value to auto it should now hopefully detect your CD drive leaving you to save the changes, having also set first boot device to your cd drive
reboot and hopefully it will boot to the cd,
Report back and well take it from there

 

Just to be sure. You say ". I know the .iso file is on the CD" - well it shouldnt be . The content of iso must be on cd. Difference is what you tell Nero to do, burn image or just burn as you would a Word document, any normal files. Iso-files need special treatment. I dont know Nero but should think it say "burn image" or simular in menu, anything with "image" not "create new date/music cd" etc.

 

Yeah -- I figured out that I had burned it to Nero as a regular data whatever - but there's a place to burn it as an "image"... when I did that (as YOU ALL know) it came up as bootable and I finally ran the program last night (thanks JSDK but I was actually one step ahead of one of you guys - scary thought).

The program started automatically and I just "let it run" like someone said -- in the default setting. It actually ran for 12 hours and the 2 Error sections on the right hand side showed ZEROS when I checked it this morning. Hmmmmm. So I didn't go in and run any error summary or report or anything I just ended the test.

 

EXCEPTION error AGAIN

Yesterday I was in the HELP section again on my computer (no surprise there) and there was another EXCEPTION error and a report was sent to Microsoft. I've never seen this: It was filled with info about Modules 1-116 then it started in with threads 1 - ? with all the lines they use when checking the memory....

The beginning of the exception was:
code: 0xc0000005 Flags: 0x00000000
Record: 0x0000000000000 (I don't know how many zeros)
Address: 0x000000000 1a62bed

SysInfo. WindNT 5.1 Build: 2600
CPU Vendor, etc.... I wrote down more but I didn't know if you needed it.

Any idea what it means (if anything) that it listed 116 modules with all their details? (Image base, signature, file version, Product version, flag mask, flags, OS, etc.) in this "exception"?

 

Ok have you tried running with each of the modules (i'm presuming there is more than one...) on their own? Also what kind of ram is it? is it rambus? (all dell P4 machines run on rambus AFAIK).

Have you tried resetting the CMOS? perhaps a setting got changed and reverting to defaults might help. Its just i get simelar STOPS when i overclock a little too much... because my ram is failing. Perhaps the bios settings are running it a little too fast?

 

I hit ESC thinking it would STOP the test and I could then run a test page or something -- I forgot I was supposed to hit "C" and then I could find commands...so, OK, I'm a dope. Was it good enough that the main page showed ZEROS for errors --- meaning zeros for all the memory it had been checking?

 

Ok - you don't know me very well and that's ok -- but you lost me at rambus! If you tell me how to go in and check all that I'll tell you what I have. I don't know how to reset CMOS (I don't know what CMOS is) and I've never understood what overclocking is when I've read about it here. I know ram can fail, but this computer is 5 weeks old.

I'm sure those are great ideas you have -- I'll do what you say - ---

 

Oh, whoops! didnt mean to confuse!

Ok, well, I'm not the best person to explain how to read off bios settings from dells as i only have very breif experience with Dell BIOS, and i dont have a dell in front of me either. Perhaps someone else will be able to guide you better.

Is it a P4 dell? That was my main question. I'll take a guess and say that it is, as its fairly new, and the fact that Dell doesnt make machines with AMD processors in them. RAMBUS is just another type of memory, which pentium 4's work best with, which is why Dell use it in all their machines. But anyhoo.

It could be that one of the memory sticks are duff, which is why I suggest taking all but one out and test with each one seperatley (within Windows, that is) If you have no problems with just one of the sticks, the other one must be bad. But if MemTest shows no errors, perhaps that isnt the problem at all! I'd wait till someone else reads over this before trying that.

 

OK - Yes, it's a DELL 4, I did find that it's an ACPI Uniprocessor PC, Pentium 4 Processor at 2.8 GHz
256 MB of memory (don't laugh now)

AND -- if someone comes on and tells me anything about moving memory sticks, you'll have to tell me where and how

 

Interesting -- I went into SETUP (where I spent a lot of time yesterday) and there are items marked in BLUE which I KNOW were not BLUE yesterday -- is this a warning of some kind. White before the memtest - 86, blue after running it all night??? I didn't see any explanation for "blue" when I hit F1 which is help.

I went to CPU and hit enter. CPU speed said "normal" and was written in white but all the rest of the info is in blue.
Bus speed -- 533 MHz
Processor 0(slash through the zero) ID F29
clock speed 2.8 GHz
Cache size 512 KB

So then I went into the "Memory" Field. All that info was written in BLUE:
256 MB DDR SDRAM
System Memory Speed 333 MHz
System Memory Channel Mode -- Dual
AGP Aperture -- 128 MB

 

Ok Pegg reading your specs, it says you are using dual channel ram with 256mb installed, so my first question is can you slide the side of your case off and see how many sticks are there
They should be located to the right hand side of your CPU(BIG FAN) going from top to bottom not the slots going left to right, these are usually black (but not always) slots about 5 inches long with white tabs at each end to hold them

Look and see how many slots are filled

 

Does it matter that I don't have the "regular" large hard drive case but one of those new "slim" drives (base, stands, whatever you call it)? I wanted to know before I took the case off and started looking in the wrong place.

 

Thats fine i dont think it matters but it might be a little more fiddley getting the sticks out. You should still be able to slide the outer casing off just as easily (after removing a few screws that is)

I was mistaken, apparently you have DDR ram rather than RDRAM which is what i thought dell shipped with? Well, anyway, since you have ddr i can show you a pic..
http://images.crucial.com/images/303_184pinddr.gif
That is a stick of your type of ram. There will be two clips holding it in place (in those notches at the bottom), you need to push them gently downwards/outwards which will release the stick. You should be able to take the stick out after you've done that. Putting them back is just a matter of pushing them into the slots (aligning the notches on the bottom) and putting the clips back in place.

Oh by the way, opening the case probably voids warantee but if you didnt know that i doubt you would be here!

BTW i was just going over the process of removing sticks for your future information, im not sure what the other guys want you to do with them yet!

 

Good info Goldy
Before doing anything else i wanted to know if Pegg had two sticks of ram, im assuming 2 seeing as the info posted was her machine was running in dual chanel

As for the case dont really know anything about that case sorry, if not Pegg you could always download something like AIDA 32 this will tell you how many ram slots are filled
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=181

 

Yeah if its running in dual mode it must be two 128MB sticks, I guess. I'm actually quite surprised that it was DDR not rambus which all the other Dells ive see have, since it works best with the P4 processor. But on closer inspection they do sell them (obviously!!)

Once you've got into the case and found the memory, if there is two in the slots, we are on the right track, and you'll need to remove one of them, run MemTest for a bit, then put the other one in and do the same.

Needless to say the machine must be off and UNPLUGGED before you go removing memory modules

 

CPU graph flatline

So we're testing to see which, if either, mem stick has a problem?

And yes, I definitely would have turned off my machine, probably would have remembered to unplug it, but thanks for the note.

UM -- should I be alarmed that for about 20 minutes my computer was SLLLLOOOOWWW and I finally looked at task manager and the CPU was 0% for a long time and then maybe 2% (I know it fluctuates up and down but this didn't) and then this box came up in sys tray and said CPU was 0%. I couldn't get anything to open or close...it was like a flat line in the CPU graph....

THAT can't be good.

 

Thats... very strange.... makes me think video, as if it was software/driver the slowdown would cause 100%CPU usage. Well, I think so. Might be a driver problem.

But anyway, thats another problem entirley. If you get it again we can address it after going over the ram.

I just say that because i know of someone who I talk to who left the machine plugged in but turned off while he took out the memory modules and he corrupted his BIOS, or somthing. Nasty!

And yeah, we're testing each stick individually to see if either has a problem. hopefully we can work out if one of them has a problem, and whether you can replace it/not use it, and be fine. Otherwise you'll be getting problems in your brand new re-install, if you need to do that...

 

running Memtest86 again??

I have already run the memtest86 -- I posted this earlier:
The program started automatically and I just "let it run" like someone said -- in the default setting. It actually ran for 12 hours and the 2 Error sections on the right hand side showed ZEROS when I checked it this morning. Hmmmmm. So I didn't go in and run any error summary or report or anything I just ended the test.

I still should take out each memory stick one by one and check it with this same test? I don't mean to sound dense but I ran that test for 12 hours so....what will this accomplish?