BSOD - PagE Fault / Driver IRQ

[Gamerwolf]

Howdi,

I've started getting random reboots the past week or 2, finally i disabled reboot on error so i could find out what exactly was wrong, so now, i have written down, a couple of errors that i have gotten from these BSODs.

Due to the reboots, i tried to investigate what could be wrong, and read it could be, 1) RAM, 2) Drivers, 3) Other hardware. So i promptly, updated my GFX drivers, my webcam driver and searched for new motherboard drivers and only found a newer one for my integrated sound. Then i got this:

PAGE FAULT IN NON PAGED AREA

# STOP: 0x0000008E (0xC0000005, 0xBF8003C0, 0xEF9A6770, 0x00000000)

win32k.sys Address: BF8003C0 (i didnt write down more than this on paper)

Then upon shut down i swapped my 2 ram sticks from slots 1 and 3, to slots 2 and 4, then later on i got this:

PAGE FAULT IN NON PAGED AREA

# STOP: 0x00000050 (0x8B0189FC, 0x00000000, 0x804EB63E, 0x00000000)

(i didnt write down more than this)

Following this shut down, i removed stick 2, so was left with 1 512mb stick in slot 2. Computer was on all night, largely getting near 100% RAM usage at times, no BSOD. Then the following morning (this morning) i plugged in again the 2nd stick of RAM into slot 4.

I worked away, trying to force 100% RAM usage to get a BSOD, and eventually, i got this:

DRIVER IRQ NOT LESS OR EQUAL

# STOP: 0x100000D1 (0x00000039, 0x00000009, 0x00000000, 0xEF027437)

i8042prt.sys - Address: EF027437 base at EF027000 DateStamp 41107ecc

Included are the following files:

PStat Result: clicky
Program Groups: clicky
Error Text: clicky

I havent run a memtest for the sole reason i only have this machine running and dont want to lose access to it for simply running a memory test.

I think that my 2nd ram stick is faulty, but this idea has been confused by the fact that i now get an IRQ BSOD for a keyboard driver.

Please note i run Windows XP Professional w/ SP2 and all latest updates.

I have added no new hardware recently, i HAVE installed a few new programs but nothing major.

Any help and ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Regards, Andy.

 

[Tmagic650]

You certainly have a lot of programs that can add to an unstable system's troubles. I would replace that memory ASAP... after that you could use a good registry cleaner to "clean" things up a bit

 

[Gamerwolf]

I have new RAM on order already, waiting for it to arrive, i tried resetting my pagefile and so far i havent had a BSOD (touch wood) even though im doing quite a bit of image editting.

I dont know why, but my page file sizes were 3,096 Initial, and 4,108 Max.

Im sure thats wholly far too big, and cant remember why it was set so high, but i set it to 0, rebooted, then set it to 1,536.

I try to keep little running in the background, I have too much?

 

[CraigMc]

This is not necessarily a hardware problem, it could be a corruption to one of your system files.

With BSoD's the first thing I normally do is boot the computer from a Windows XP CD into Recovery Console and run 'chkdsk /p' at the command line. This in itself can fix a lot of issues. If you are still receiving the same BSoD's after then you can start looking at other options.

WRT Pagefile, it depends on how much physical RAM you have. Generally it's recommended that you have the min set to 1.5x and max set to 2.5x the amount of physical RAM you have, with the maximum being 4gB. Personally I haven't ran into any problems having both min and max set to 2.5x but it depends on what apps you are using and how they take up/release memory etc.

 

[Tmagic650]

The new RAM will help with the pagefile settings... I'm running 1GB, with no pagefile. Your hard drive free space has an affect on the pagefile size too

 

[Gamerwolf]

i have already run Start -> Run -> "chkdsk /p /r" -> "Y". Then it ran pre-bootup and it found no errors.

I just had another BSOD, this time its:

DRIVER IRQ NOT LESS OR EQUAL

# STOP: 0x000000D1 (0xE57A3000, 0x00000002, 0x00000001, 0xBF80FBDB)

win32k.sys - Address: BF80FBDB DateStamp 45F013F6

Was image editting.

And again.

DRIVER IRQ NOT LESS OR EQUAL

# STOP: 0x000000D1 (0xFFFFFFFF, 0x000000FF, 0x000000, 0xFFFFFFFF)

On the next BSOD im going to remove the stick of RAM i think is good, and see how i get on, and after that, ill remove the bad stick and leave in the good stick, and wait for my new RAM because i cant keep rebooting every 5 minutes cus of BSOD

----------------------------------------- EDIT -----------------------------------------------

Further confusion.

Been running now on what i thought was the bad stick for 12 hours, including playing Supreme Commander for about 5 hours of those 12. No BSOD. Same happened yesterday with the other stick of RAM.

Why would i get BSOD with both sticks in, but not when i only have one or the other?

----------------------------------------- EDIT -----------------------------------------------

In continuation for above, those 12 hours became 48 hours of stable uptime on 1 single stick of RAM, after image editting, and gaming, eventually, i rebooted and plugged in the 2nd stick again, it ran fine over night, but once i started gaming in the morning, i BSOD'd, this time to a blank BSOD. Cant wait for new RAM to arrive tomorrow and hopefully have this sorted out for good.