Windows XP shuts down on HW

I seem to have developed a nasty on my dedicated HW PC - it's now happened about 4-5 times. While HW is running (or in one instance while the organ was loading) Windows shut down and gave the following message (part thereof):

A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer....... If a driver is identified in the stop message, disable the driver or check with the manufacturer for driver updates.

Tech information:
STOP: 0x0000008E

Does anyone know how to identify the driver from the STOP message ?

And on another occasion Windows aborted and I had the abort message

PAGE_DEFAULT_IN_NONPAGE_AREA.

I half suspect the M-Audio 2496 soundcard driver, the driver installed is
not the latest one but the older seems to give better results.

My A-Audio 2496 driver is 5.10.00.0027, but this is not the latest one.

I've got 1.5 GB RAM with a 2.6Ghz AMD chip.
Windows XP pro 5.1 Build 2600

Any help would be appreciated

John Dean

Found a few references to that stop on Microsoft's knowledge base:

This one metions that code when installing XP, and suggests it is caused by faulty RAM:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.as ... US;Q315335

This one mentions the code again, but also includes a reference to NVidia video drivers (don't think that's your problem as your code didn't mention the driver):
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=325730

Another one suggesting a service pack upgrade:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=829578

Hope you manage to track it down!

Chris.

Chris,

This one metions that code when installing XP, and suggests it is caused by faulty RAM:

Thanks for the reply - I would like to test my RAM. Does anyone know
of a good RAM Checker / Tester ?

Thanks,
John Dean

Thanks for the reply - I would like to test my RAM. Does anyone know of a good RAM Checker / Tester ?

http://www.memtest86.com/

free and very thorough, it basically creates a bootable floppy that does nothing but check your RAM until you turn your computer off.

I got similar messages and problems in WIN2k

I tried everything,
and finally removed all of my memory chips, then reinstalled them one by one until the problem reocurred.

Then i replaced the suspect memory chip, and so far, no further problems

Jonathan

free and very thorough, it basically creates a bootable floppy that does nothing but check your RAM until you turn your computer off.

Thanks for the info. I obtained it and have run it several times. The problem is that it gives different results every time. For one pass I had all the cards in and it gave 4 fails but when the cards where tested separately it gave no errors at all. The documentation does say that it can at times give spurious results.

I tried everything, and finally removed all of my memory chips, then reinstalled them one by one until the problem reocurred.

I think this is the only way to do it.

John Dean

John,
How many memory cards were you using. I had a similar problem when I moved from 1 GB (2 sticks of memory) to 2 GB (4 sticks). I had four slots, and I hadn't read anything in my motherboard manual about using the fourth slot.

Later, after buying another stick of 512 MB and asking questions in a newsgroup that addressed only motherboards, I learned that even though I had four slots, I could use only three with unregistered memory. I have (at a very attractive price) two extra PC2100 sticks of DDR ram with heat sinks, no less!

Good luck, John.

Could also be a power problem - is your power supply powerful enough?

Christian.