STOP: 0x0000008E (0x80000003, 0x80ac2229, 0xf731435c, 0x00000000)

My laptop (Dell Inspiron 5100) stopped responding to the keyboard and the touchpad only worked for about 3 minutes after startup. I used a USB mouse and the virtual keyboard to re-install (a fresh version) XP (three times!).

Now I can't do Windows updates and when I plug in a USB flash drive, I get the BSOD mentioned in the first line. Other information on the BSOD screen suggests BIOS updates, adequate disk space, and disabling BIOS memory options such as caching or shadowing.

I also get a BSOD if I try to go to Safe Mode.

After the third XP re-install, I only loaded AVG 7.5 and CDBurnerXP Pro3 which I used to burn 7 CD's of information I wanted to save, so the machine is "bare bones".

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!

learn how to read minidumps: http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic31341.html

1. I suspect your ram has failed. Also your registry could be corrupt. Boot off an XP CD in safe mode and run CHKDSK on your C drive.

Thanks for the information, Tedster, I tried chkdsk and got the following message:

The procedure entry point ?Initialize@CLASS_DESCRIPTOR@@QAEEXZ could not be located in the dynamic link library ulib.dll

Mooser