I think my laptop is dying.

godzilla525

It figures. I just installed 512MB last week and Prey arrived yesterday morning. :shakehead I KNEW this was going to happen.

Dell Inspiron 8200 (Vintage Aug 2002, many parts newer)
768MB, P4m 1.6, 64MB Geforce 4 Go 440, 80GB WD Scorpio formatted in multiple partitions (so my data is unharmed after all this. ) 15" UXGA, etc.

Well, here's how it goes. I only had the Prey demo crash ONCE. Otherwise everything was fine, until yesterday...

I sat down around 11:30P to play the full version I had installed that morning (was busy all day). I was playing for a few minutes before it crashed the first time. Then again a little further on. That game is slow to get the story out of the way so it was a bit annoying.

Every other 3D game works...worked perfectly (NFS HP2, UT, UT2K4, etc.), and it doesn't appear to be a bad video card. I had one of those happen to me on Dec. 26 '06.

The first time it crashed was no big deal, just restarted the game and kept going. The second time the video got stuck and I had to type blind over AIM after exiting and then shut down and restart. This is when things started to go bad.

Once I logged into Windows and got everything loaded, it wasn't until a minute or so later that Explorer faulted, RPC tanked and it was going back down. After that restart, EVERYTHING that loads on startup came up with a dialog about corrupted files after logging on and RPC tanked again.

Then it bluescreened. Stop 0x04 (0x03 ... ... ...) Some key Windows process stopped working.

Pulled the drive. Installed it into a 2.5" USB enclosure and plugged it into another computer. CHKDSK decided to drop 119 files from the system partition. AVG didn't find anything. I ran Memtest on the laptop and after testing the modules individually and together (a 256 and the new 512) for what amounts to 3 passes each, no errors were detected.

Put the drive back in the laptop and tried booting into safe mode. No dice. (Honestly, I can't remember a single problem I've had where Safe Mode OR the Recovery Console were of any use at all)

Safe mode w/console gave me a BSoD. Stop 0x8E (0xC0000005 ... ... ...).

I tried the old upgrade/reinstall trick, until it quit copying files because I had run out of space on that partition. (or so I think...when I went to reformat C: after that it said there was about ~850MB free.)

Reformatted C: and tried again. Got as far as to Windows setup restarting and installing from files on the hard drive after precopy from CD. Then things went south again, and I got the weirdest BSoD I've seen yet.

STOP: c000021a {Fatal System Error}
The Windows Subsystem system process terminated unexpectedly with a status of 0x
c0000005 (0x7c911f6e 0x0068efc0)
The system has been shut down.

Lovely. So that leaves me with a computer that appears to run fine until it sees Windows and then it crashes.

Incidentally, I'm using a WinXP Pro VLK (legal) Slipstream SP2 disc that I had used successfully before.

I don't know what to do. I don't get any weird errors from IDE and it's not random at all, so it's probably not the CPU or RAM. It seems like a software problem, but after reformatting it still doesn't work.

Oh yeah. I'm still out of work so there's that angle. I have all the time in the world to fiddle with this, but I'm not spending any more money on this enterprise until I have something resembling a future. (not likely to happen anytime soon)

If it is blown, I'm not sure I can get a new lappy that has the level of upgrade options that this one does. I mean holy crap it runs Prey (slowly). ...or that runs reliable enough to be up for 72 days without rebooting.

My impression of new laptops seems to be Vista-encumbered firestarters with integrated or soldered on video.

I think I'll take it all apart and clean it up and see what happens, although if anyone sees an obvious reason for this, let me know.

AARGGH. :bawling:

kryyst

Do a clean install sounds like you've thoroughly botched this one in trying to fix it. Backup whatever files you want wipe out your partitions and install it to one big disk, or maybe 2 partitions. It sounds like your initial problem was the disk ran out of space, the page file likely went haywire and things just went down hill from there.

godzilla525

I found one problem so far: the XPSP2 disc I was using appears to be bad (scratched too much). Good thing I have another one.

After that install went fine, I still had issues with it, and the symptoms pointed to loose ground or AGP connection (or software). I cleaned those off and checked around for any metal shavings...sometimes the threaded bushing that holds the battery charger board and graphics board in one corner onto the motherboard and acts as a ground comes unsoldered and causes all sorts of issues...it was fine this time.

So far the only video drivers that seem to work are the stock crummy ones included with windows or the XG Forceware 71.84 version (that has a history of being both fast and bulletproof on this machine... almost all of the time).

It appears to be at a point now where I'm reinstalling hardware/software and getting Windows reconfigured properly (ugh.) I haven't tested yet whether or not 3D acceleration works, but I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't. It could be just a software thing or I could have either the motherboard or graphics card on the way out.

Just tested UT to be sure. It works flawlessly.

*fingers crossed.

godzilla525

Good news. Prey works this time. I found the problem. The demo version savegames were screwing up the full version. (had to delete them from My Documents\My Games\...)

I guess it just coincided with that secret hidden Windows setting to randomly destroy itself after x number of years have passed since install.

Now I have to go reinstall and configure everything else.

godzilla525

Update: It threw a crashing fit again. The 512MB module appears to be marginal/intermittent and does not agree with the laptop. I'm back down to 384 until I can get a RMA from Crucial.

It's either a bad module or else I have a lazy address line. ...although I don't think it's the latter since DRAM uses row/column addressing...

Just out of curiosity I checked Dell's page for RAM upgrades (in case the 512MB PC2700 CL2.5 was 'too fast'). They had essentially the same part with the same specs, but for twice as much.

Today's lesson: Memtest, Dell diag. CD, and Dell BIOS diags. (F12 or Ctrl+Alt+F8 at POST) are ineffective memory testing tools compared to the really busy Windows XP kernel for marginal units. ...They will definitely tell you if you have a flagrantly bad module, though ...or, I should have listened to my gut feeling in the first place and saved myself the better part of a week reinstalling software.

godzilla525

I'm not buying anything from Crucial again.

They don't respond to their email for days if at all, and their live chat support, while nice, has a very loose grip on the English language and can't help you with anything anyway, redirecting to email (HA!) or phone.

...Phone support. I'd rather eat a box of thumbtacks. I do not want to spend hours on the phone with someone who's dumber than a box of rocks going over every stupid little thing that I just spent the past ****ing week working on. ALL I WANT IS A GODDAMN RMA! IS THAT *TOO* MUCH TO ASK FROM LIVE CHAT?

Christ.

And to the rest of you wasting their time asking where the 'Any' key is after the BIOS registers a change in memory amount and needs your confirmation. Please go kill yourselves—now—for the sake of everyone.

godzilla525

Update again. I did some more testing. It's a thermal issue, as in the RAM only works when it's hot. I did get a reply to my email with an RMA number for exchange just before Thanksgiving. It's packed up and ready to go.

Thank you, Crucial, for not making me use the phone.