help with BSoD: bad pool caller

I'm running windows XP home on my desktop. No problems until about a week ago, but now I get an error screen on bootup (BAD_POOL_CALLER, 0x000000C2) This happens every time, safe mode same thing.

A friend of mine said it might be bad ram. I have a 512 and a 256 stick installed. I tried reseating them, cleaning them out, running just one at a time. Error still occurs no matter what I do.

I've looked online and it seems like if it isn't bad ram then it's a bad driver. I didn't install anything new at the time the error first appeared that I can recall. At this point, we've pretty much hit the depth of my ability to fix this. How can I determine a) if it really is a driver issue and b) which driver(s) are to blame?

Any advice/suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

What speed are your ram sticks???

Seen a lot of problems recently caused by mismatched ram!!!!

What speed? I'm not sure what you mean.

I've had both sticks for a year and a half now without a problem, and running with only one or the other of them doesn't solve anything. Could it still be the RAM despite this?

Ram is given numbers like 2100 or 2700 to denote speed!!!

Google and get memtest and test your ram just to make sure it is ok!!!

Both sticks say PC2100 on them, so that means they are the same speed?

Took me a while to get ahold of a floppy disk to run memtest. The 256 stick, which came with the computer, made it through three passes with zero errors. The 512 stick, however, had a lot of errors. Taking it out doesn't solve the problem though, I still get bad_pool_caller error on bootup. Now I'm really at a loss.

Ideas? Thank you for your help so far.

See if you can get into safe mode by pressing F8 before windows begins to load and selecting safe mode!!

If it does work, run scandisk then reboot to see if there is any improvement!!!!!

I can't get in under safe mode (exact same error message.) Same happens with all the other options, last known configuration, etc.

Sorry, im having internet connection problems!!!!

Do you have a windows cd, if so, you may have to use it to repair your installation!!!!

Hmmm.... I hope I still have the CD. It's been a long time since I've had to do anything with my installation, and I'm not sure where it would have ended up after my last move. I'll have to look around for it.