Memory Dump - Driver Related?

I am trying to help my brother whose Dell Latitude had a memory dump attitude. It first appeared when he was running McAfee scanning his system for a virus. He has managed to get it partially operating and has removed AOL (Don't say it, I have already told him AOL is the Devil).
Still, when he tries to run his diagnostic program on his resource CD it freezes part way through. Same with Spybot but his "adware" removal program did and pulled 38 off his system.
I have been reading as much as possible before coming here and got him to disable his auto reboot function and he got this memory dump error message on his blue screen of death.

***STOP:0x000000D1 (0x0000000C,0x000000FF,0x00000000,0x0000000C)
DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

I am hoping this can shed some light on his problem and give me some idea as to how to guide him from here. I am far from competent in this having only learned from struggling with my own problems but know more than he does. (I love comparable competency). I am guessing that this DRIVER_IRQL message is telling me that it is a driver conflict as many posts suggest this can be due to.

Thanks in advance for anything you can do to shed some light on this.

Dell Latitude C600
256 Mb SDRAM
Microsoft 2000
standard edition.. no bells or whistles. I have no additional info but can get it if you ask.

 

So, you have windows 2000. What service pack is on it? I believe SP4 is the "latest and greatest".

I had, at one time, a similar issue on my personal computer about 6 months ago. Every time I did a virus scan, be it from Mcafee, Norton, AVG, Avast!, a few others, I'd get a BSOD. I checked everything that I could think of, including brining home my work's copy of quickteck. Anyway, I found that I had memory issues. I had DDR 333, but knowing that I had DDR400 I bought new memory. Since then, I had no issues.

Btw, I did scan with multiple memory checking tools. No errors.

For you, I'd try scanning your system memory for memtest86+. Also, if you don't have any service packs on your machine, I'd get them updated.

Another note. Is that the entire BSOD you are getting? Does it list a file? Sometimes it does, other times it does not. Also, obtaining the .dmp file and reading it, you sometimes pinpoint the root of the problem.

 

That is the entire message he got. I had him go to run-cmd ... then cd\ and dir to check his C Drive for a dump file but he found nothing. Perhaps I didn't make him look in the correct place.

I just told him to remove and reseat his memory chips (2x128) as part of my "eliminate the easy stuff first" program but not sure where to recommend he go next.

He didn't know which SP he is on but said he updates every time the computer tells him to. I am not sure where to tell him to look.

 

Start
run
winver

This should tell him what sp he has

Or, right click on "my computer" properties, this should also display the info.
Or, go to start, run, control panel, System properties.

The minidump file should be located under %systemroot%\minidump

Also, here is a first step in reading the dump file.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315263
If you need more help, I'd need the actual file, so I myself can read it.

 

Just noticed the 2x128 memory sticks. Try taking out one of them and seeing what happens. You can do this, as long as he doesn't have RDRAM (RIMM).

 

I walked him through the removal of one of the sticks and it actually got him back to being able to access his desktop but the problem reoccured. Naturally, it was very very s l o w.
I have told him to remove them both, wipe the contacts with a clean paper towel (after de-staticing himself) and then reseating them.

I will get his SP but don't know where to look for the minidump files. Where do i find %systemroot%\minidump