BSOD Stop error

Hi all,

I attempted to upgrade one of our office PC's today, adding an extra 128MB stick to the 128MB already installed.

When I switch the PC on, it confirms that there is now 256MB installed, but when Win2K starts to load I get a Stop Error, stating PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA. I haven't got the address string as i've stupidly left my notes in an office 50 miles away!

The office is full of identical PC's, so I swapped the same memory in to another machine, which worked fine. Either chip will work on it's own, but this machine just will not accept the 256MB together.
I also swapped the hard drive to the other machine, but as soon as I installed the 2nd memory chip, it wouldn't load Windows.

Basically, it looks like this installation of Win2K will not accept 256MB for some reason.

The PC is a Dell Optiplex GX150, 1.2GHz Celeron with 2 memory slots. The ram i am installing isn't identical (same spec but different manufacturer) but this shouldn't be an issue as it works fine in other identical machines.

Any ideas? I really am stumped by this one. What should have been a 5 minute job has taken up most of my day!

Regards,

Andy

 

Will a single memory stick work in any of the available memory slots?

I'm moving this to hardware since it's more likely a problem there rather than something OS specific.

 

Some suggestions:
Does one of the other machines have a stick of 128mb so that you could try 2 identical "Dell" sticks together (and swap the new stick to that machine)?

Can you move both the harddrive and the sticks into another machine? (Edit: I see you tried this, have you tried running those RAM sticks together on one of the other machines with a different harddrive?)

I wonder about reinstalling or repairing Windows, but don't know Win 2000 real well.

(Actually, you may be very lucky having a few identical machines to play with, generally we have to tear our hair out trying to troubleshoot with just the one )

Luck
Matt

 

Hi, thanks for replying.

I've tried 2 identical Dell sticks in this machine (which work fine in other machines), and it still falls over.

As you say, i've already moved the H/D over to another machine and it boots fine with 128MB, but still falls over with 256MB.

It's looking like I will have to reinstall W2K from scratch, as I think ghosting it will bring the same problem.

Well, you win some you lose some!

 

most likely, having the extra ram is causing drivers to load in different memory addresses, exposing a bug in one of the drivers.
Does it repro in safe mode?
Have you run chkdsk /f /r
Are you current on drivers from windowsupdate?

 

smit99,

Agree it's most likely a mobo problem.

Do you have a 256Mb memory stick? Might try replacing the 2 sticks with one 256 to see if one of the slots is problematic.

I'd also consider reflashing the BIOS as a last resort.