Hi new to forum so hope no one minds if I ask for help please. My lap top started to occasionally report short of memory although it has 2Gig, then it got to a stage where sometimes it would not boot up, occasionally when this happened I bravely (as I am a silver haired non techie) removed both sticks of memory, swopped them around so No1 was in No 2 slot and 2 in 1 and off my lap top would go happily booting up and running for days.

Finally it would get to the screen saver and it would show most of the icons but a couple would remain black and the lap top would freeze. It was suggested that I repair Windows XP Pro using the original CD. When I did this and ran the second repair - it is essential that I retain the ingrity of my programmes and files. The repair programem would delete and copy new files across but at the - Please wait while windows sets up configuration - I would get the blue screen of death. The Techical informtion shown is:-

****STOP**** 0x0000008E (0xc0000005)0x809015cc,0xf78AABDO, 0X00000000

serenum.sys Add F78AABDO base@F78AABD0 Date Stamp 00000000

If anyone can help in non-technical terms I would be gratefyl.

regards
David Dutch

test your ram with memtest 86+ booted from a CD or floppy drive.
run for 7 passes or more. Any errors indicate bad ram. Replace.

Google "How to read minidumps" to determine other errors.