Need BSOD Crash Help - minidumps provided

[Severion]

Greetings,

I have a old Dell laptop that was loaned to me by my boss for assistance with some work tasks that's experiencing some consistent BSOD failures. I'm reluctant to mess with it by pulling the ram, etc. to run the Memtest86+ software because it's not my machine and I'm concerned about liability. The machine is running an Intell Pentium III 1.20 GHz processor with 768 MB of RAM (one 500 MB chip and one 256 MB chip). One of these chips (I think the 256 one) was added prior to my boss's passing the machine to me and I do suspect that this may be the problem (I've told him so). Both chips are apparently Crucial brand, but I'm unsure about their precise spec.

If these minidumps help confirm or deny the memory problem diagnosis, it would help me a great deal in going back to my boss to provide a stronger recommendation. Any assistance will really be appreciated.

Much obliged,

Brett N. Meroney

PS: 5 minidumps provided

 

[Severion]

I forgot to mention, it's running Windows XP with Service Pack 3

 

[Route44]

Memtest is very safe and secure. It is a simple ISO file burned to a CD, placed into the CD-drive, and upon boot-up will take over. Even systems under warrenty will not see this as a violation. You should be quite fine running memtest without any liability issues. With it being so old I doubt any warrenty even exists unless of course you are viewing liability = boss.

Second, in order to read your minidumps please only give us the 5 most minidump files themselves in one Zip file and attach to your next post.

 

[Severion]

I did provide the minidumps - 4 in the first zipfile and 1 in the second. I did this because the system reported a max filesize limit of 200 KB and together they were around 212. Second, it's not that running Memtest might be a problem. It's that pulling the RAM sticks one by one from the system myself would be a problem considering it's not my system and yep, liability in this context = boss (who's actually a client considering I have a contractor relationship with him).

 

[Route44]

I would still run Memtest for a minimum of 7 Passes and more idf possible. Then if it is corrupted memory he has no other recourse but to allow you to replace the RAM.

I opened the first Zip file but only two of the four dumps were even readable. The second Zip file couldn't even be unzipped.

The one error is 0x00000050: PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA
Requested data was not in memory. An invalid system memory address was referenced. Defective memory (including main memory, L2 RAM cache, video RAM) or incompatible software (including remote control and antivirus software) might cause this Stop message, as may other hardware problems (e.g., incorrect SCSI termination or a flawed PCI card).

This simply cited a Windows OS driver and they are usually too general to be of much help.

The second error was 0x8E and they are almost always caused by hardware issues and are particularly a strong indicator of corrupted memory.

One other thing. In the two dumps I was able to read the Windows executible csrss.exe was mentioned in the Process_Name section of the dumps. From Tony an IT technician he writes: This file is actually a Client/Server Runtime Server Subsystem ... This is the user-mode portion of the Win32 subsystem (with Win32.sys being the kernel-mode portion). Csrss stands for client/server run-time subsystem and is an essential subsystem that must be running at all times. Csrss is responsible for console windows, creating and and/or deleting threads, and some parts of the 16-bit virtual MS-DOS environment. The csrss.exe which is from Microsoft is located in the c:\windows\System32 folder. It has been noted that one virus had been found that runs as csrss to hide from you.

* Another thing about this executible is that at times it can demand high % of your cpu and it is used for hardware graphics excelleration. I am NOT saying this is the cause but it may lend some light.