In reference to my mom's computer- whih is a Dell Studio 1535... REFURBISHED. Mistake #1, I know.

Running Vista 64 bit and no seriously intensive programs except for Quickbooks (recipe for disaster).

No particular pattern to the cause of problems. Seems pretty random.

First BSOD problems I had seemed to be in reference to a driver associated with the webcam. I changed out the drivers and it seemed to calm the laptop down.

Also, the minidumps are hard to extract info out of: "probably caused by"
11-05 memory_corruption
11-01 ntoskrnl.exe
10-19 ntfs.sys

of the previous files, notskrnl.exe is definitely the one that shows up most. from what i understand, this is related to usage of the dual processing. One question i have is that if i am going to give this a college-try and reinstall an o/s, should i give it a whirl with 32 bit version of windows 7? I'm running out of ideas.


I was kindof banking on a memory problem... I started with the windows memory test, then moved to memtest 86+. I think that the new version v4.00, which I got ahold of today, works very well with the Dell. For some reason, I downloaded an earlier version a couple of weeks ago and it didn't run at all-- so I was thinking that it had to be memory sticks.

So far I've run the test without keeping an eye on it. I believe that the program will not simply reboot without giving a heads up on a problem. I am currently running memtest again with no errors. Am i supposed to run this 7 FULL times before I conclude that there are good sticks in here?

I'm attaching the last 6 minidump files. I don't know if i'm using windbg properly. Apparently you cant attach dmp over 200kb and all of mine are 264kb... so they're text files... and I don't know if the symbols are all there, the way they should be... I thought I knew my stuff but hey--- i'm knee deep in this stuff and I'm second guessing myself. Any advice or help is appreciated. (Oh and i did all of the steps asked of me before posting this, except for running memtest 86+ 7 times becasue I didn't get it to work until the middle of writing this post.

Thanks in advance for anything/everything!

edit: minidump files are hosted on rapidshare... i need 5 post counts to post links!!
ht tp://rapidshare.com/files/303834866/Mom_s_Vostro_Minidump.rar.html

The test needs to run a minimum of 7 Passes. The more you can run beyond 7 so much the better. There are 8 tests per PASS. Even though the test looks like it is repeating the same patterns over and over it is not.

Your dumps cite memory corruption and that is where you need to concentrate because corrupted memory can cause all kinds of issues while throwing out all kinds of error codes.

Thanks! I'm on pass 3 with no errors yet.. I would prefer to findone or two or ten so that I can get to the bottom of this.

Thanks!

7 passes....... no errors..................
what now?

Can you access the BIOS to see if the voltage settings match the RAM manufature's voltage specs? Also, is the memory that is installed recommended by DELL for this system?

From googling....

(1) The mobo sets the ram at 1.8v automatically
(2) It is not changeable

I loaded up the Bios and under the memory field
(3) None of these fields are changeable

also
(4) Bone stock ram.... so it aught to be agreeable. I do have a vostro, though, which is a F*****G brick (another brand new brick by Dell) with 4G of ram... which i can toss in there as a hail mary... but there aught to be a way out of this. The vostro was a $400 brick--- but this is a $800 brick. Ughhh! Never again, Dell... we're breaking up. Fool me once shame on you... .fool me twice..... see y' never gonna fool me again (-G.W. Bush).