Hello.
For the last ten days or so I've been experiencing moderately regular STOP messages with this information given:
STOP: 0x0000007F (0x00000008, 0xBA338D70, 0X0, 0X0)
There's nothing displayed to tell me what process or module failed.
I should say straight off, I have not got a single technical bone in my body. I'm a pretty competent user of the PC, and I'm happy to install things, take bits out and put other bits in and generally housekeep and tweak - but I have no idea at all how a computer actually works, once you get into the bits that're all long strings of numbers. Could all be hamsters, for all I know. Mathematical hamster geniuses.
With that in mind, I've been trawling the net looking for possible causes of this problem. It occurred suddenly, whilst playing a game (Mount & Blade Warband, if it's of any relevance, but I don't think it is), and it's happened fairly regularly since. Often on initial bootup once I'm past the Windows logon screen; other times it runs happily for an hour or so and then BSODs once it thinks I've got too relaxed about the whole thing.
It looks as though most sources online agree that it's probablypossiblymaybe a hardware problem, most likely RAM. I have 2GB installed in four 512MB blocks. I've run memtest86+ fairly halfheartedly - about three sweeps (non-consecutively) have come up with nothing. But I'm aware memtest needs to be run more thoroughly than that, so that's on my list. I have two questions first though, if I may run them past you knowledgeable types?
1. I'm one of these people who's a bit squirrelly about leaving a computer running - especially if it's actually doing something - overnight. As silly as it sounds (particularly since I work in an office whose hundred or so computers haven't been switched off in about five years), I'm always reasonably convinced it'll blow up and burn the house down. So with regard to memtest, to get a proper result using, say, 8-10 sweeps, do those sweeps have to be run consecutively?
2. I run a dual-boot system between WinXP (SP3) and Ubuntu Linux 9.04 (Jaunty). If I'm running Linux, I've not noticed any problems at all in terms of crashes. No, I'm not going to start on 'Linux is better than Windows' - but I would like to know if a RAM fault would be likely to affect Ubuntu running on the same machine in any way. Ubuntu certainly doesn't have to do a lot of the work that Windows does (Win's mainly a gaming setup for me), but it does have some moderately memory-intensive programs. Should I expect them to be affected as well?
Sorry about the wall of text: I tend to ramble. I'd appreciate any advice, though, just to see if I can identify which is the poorly hamster.
)
For the last ten days or so I've been experiencing moderately regular STOP messages with this information given:
STOP: 0x0000007F (0x00000008, 0xBA338D70, 0X0, 0X0)
There's nothing displayed to tell me what process or module failed.
I should say straight off, I have not got a single technical bone in my body. I'm a pretty competent user of the PC, and I'm happy to install things, take bits out and put other bits in and generally housekeep and tweak - but I have no idea at all how a computer actually works, once you get into the bits that're all long strings of numbers. Could all be hamsters, for all I know. Mathematical hamster geniuses.
With that in mind, I've been trawling the net looking for possible causes of this problem. It occurred suddenly, whilst playing a game (Mount & Blade Warband, if it's of any relevance, but I don't think it is), and it's happened fairly regularly since. Often on initial bootup once I'm past the Windows logon screen; other times it runs happily for an hour or so and then BSODs once it thinks I've got too relaxed about the whole thing.
It looks as though most sources online agree that it's probablypossiblymaybe a hardware problem, most likely RAM. I have 2GB installed in four 512MB blocks. I've run memtest86+ fairly halfheartedly - about three sweeps (non-consecutively) have come up with nothing. But I'm aware memtest needs to be run more thoroughly than that, so that's on my list. I have two questions first though, if I may run them past you knowledgeable types?
1. I'm one of these people who's a bit squirrelly about leaving a computer running - especially if it's actually doing something - overnight. As silly as it sounds (particularly since I work in an office whose hundred or so computers haven't been switched off in about five years), I'm always reasonably convinced it'll blow up and burn the house down. So with regard to memtest, to get a proper result using, say, 8-10 sweeps, do those sweeps have to be run consecutively?
2. I run a dual-boot system between WinXP (SP3) and Ubuntu Linux 9.04 (Jaunty). If I'm running Linux, I've not noticed any problems at all in terms of crashes. No, I'm not going to start on 'Linux is better than Windows' - but I would like to know if a RAM fault would be likely to affect Ubuntu running on the same machine in any way. Ubuntu certainly doesn't have to do a lot of the work that Windows does (Win's mainly a gaming setup for me), but it does have some moderately memory-intensive programs. Should I expect them to be affected as well?
Sorry about the wall of text: I tend to ramble. I'd appreciate any advice, though, just to see if I can identify which is the poorly hamster.
)
