Desktop RAM/HDD (fried? halp!)

[Godwynn]

Greetings!

My desktop is acting up yet again. I got a blue screen with the following:

STOP: 0x0000007F (0x00000008, 0x80042000, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)

I think it might be a RAM problem. I have two 1 Gig sticks in there. Windows, however, won't load, so if I take one RAM stick out and it is bad, will Windows load normally?

Thanks ahead of time!

 

[PeteAtoms]

What version of Windows do you have? What were you doing when you got the blue screen?

Some googling yielded:
Microsoft Support
Symantec Support

 

[Godwynn]

What version of Windows do you have? What were you doing when you got the blue screen?

Some googling yielded:
Microsoft Support
Symantec Support

Windows XP home.

I was just cruising the net. It rebooted by itself before, plenty of times. Sometimes right after I start up the computer, sometimes after I have been playing Left 4 Dead for hours and hours.

I did a Windows repair just a few days ago. I also took out every stick of RAM and put them in one by one testing to see if it would load with any stick. It didn't load with any one stick, and two of the sticks are less than two years old.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Pull out one of the sticks in turn, see if it works with one of them. Run memtest86 like I told you. Make sure to do at least 10 passes. If it gives you more than one error during any test, the memory stick is bad.

 

[Godwynn]

I ran both Dell's Symptom Tree and Hard Drive Diagnostics and the RAM passed the first, and the HDD passed both.

I am thinking it might be Windows now, I repaired it just a few days ago, could it have failed so soon and caused my rebooting problem? I haven't re-installed it in the 5 years I've had this desktop. I bet the registry looks horrendous.

 

[Cutlass]

Clean wipe and reinstall then. Back up everything and go for it.

 

[PeteAtoms]

Clean wipe and reinstall then. Back up everything and go for it.

Lol, when all else fails... But that's always my backup-backup-plan

 

[Cutlass]

Lol, when all else fails... But that's always my backup-backup-plan

Well, a Microsoft certified trainer will tell you that format C: is actually the correct solution to any Windows problem that you can't sort out in an hour by other means.

edit: I should add that a failure of a reinstall of Windows could be a pretty good indication of a hardware failure.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I ran both Dell's Symptom Tree and Hard Drive Diagnostics and the RAM passed the first, and the HDD passed both.

Also it may be good to run Memtest86 just because doing more than one test is a good idea. Free download or you can pay for the disc.

Edit: Or Memtest 86+? Not sure of differences.

 

[Godwynn]

Also it may be good to run Memtest86 just because doing more than one test is a good idea. Free download or you can pay for the disc.

Tried that, my CD-Rom won't recognize it for some reason. I even burned it with Nero! So it is probably my fault for being an idiot and choosing a wrong option somewhere.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Tried that, my CD-Rom won't recognize it for some reason. I even burned it with Nero! So it is probably my fault for being an idiot and choosing a wrong option somewhere.

You choose to boot from CD?

 

[Godwynn]

You choose to boot from CD?

Yes ma'am, I believe it said something along the lines of device is not ready or unrecognizable.

I'm not worried about the memory anymore since I tried each stick individually, and Windows wouldn't load with any of them. It also passed all of the tests from the symptom tree.

I just can't believe Windows can die so quickly after being repaired 5 days ago.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

It's a finicky creature, that Windows.

 

[Turner]

Except if you're booting from the CD, memtest doesn't try to load windows. I'm pretty sure it doesn't even have a gui, just a CLI.

 

[Godwynn]

So I reinstalled Windows, and everything works but the sound.

I figured out that it will work if I uninstall it, and re-install it every time I boot up Windows, otherwise it won't work at all.

This doesn't make sense!

 

[Cutlass]

Did you look for new drivers online?

 

[Turner]

Yeah, sounds like a faulty sound driver. Check for an updated one.

 

[Godwynn]

I have a 0% success rate with drivers. Every time I install them, the thing I installed them for doesn't work! [I made a thread a few weeks ago about my video card drivers.]

Do I uninstall the old drivers first? Do I just patch over them? I downloaded both the sound drivers from dell's website after putting in my Tag and the drivers from the maker's website and neither worked. I only get sound uninstall and let the computer automatically install the hardware again.

 

[Integral]

Since you're already comfortable with reinstalling Windows, try this:

1. Find the correct sound drivers. Copy them to a USB stick. Oh, and copy any other important drivers as well. Graphics, wireless, etc.
2. Back up anything important.
3. Reinstall Windows from the ground up.
4. Install the sound driver from your USB stick. There shouldn't be any problems with pre-existing drivers because there won't be any pre-existing drivers.
5. Profit???