A Dell laptop (Windows NT) that we use for conferences is malfunctioning, automatically undergoing a physical memory dump which renders it inoperable. What is a physical memory dump? How do I avoid it, or at least get the thing back up and running after it does this? Rebooting only results in a repeat performance and inability to use any programs on the computer.
A memory dump occurs when your program or OS has crashed. It is likely that your OS has problems that need to be addressed.
A physical memory dump is a dumping of your RAM into a dump file. You can find the .dmp file but it would only be of value to MS.
Question:
Are you getting a STOP error on your blue screen of death? Has any new hardware been installed right before this started occuring? This might be an OS incompatibility with the hardware.
This website will explain these errors:
http://www.adare.ca/stop.htm
Post the error message that accompanies the Memory Dump for better troubleshooting.
Yes, I am getting a stop error. I hope I get this perfect. It says:
Stop: 0x0000001E (0x00000094, 0x801E9417, 0x00000094,0x000000000)
KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED*** Address 801e9417 has base at 8-1e7000 - flashcard
dauer: As has been said, that info is likely only useful to Microsoft. In an Open-Source world, we could run a debugger on the binary and the core dump (gdb does this, for example), find out where the problem lies (by running test cases and observing the state changes), and patch the source code and recompile. (Then we’d publish diffs so our changes can get folded into the main branch ASAP.)
In a closed-source world, we submit bug reports to Microsoft and wave dead chickens until the appropriate Service Pack comes out, and then hope the Service Pack itself doesn’t break anything vital.
No, Derleth this error message is somewhat helpful. Stop errors usually indicate that a piece of hardware is incompatible with the OS (NT in this case). The error even tells us that the hardware is a “flashcard”. dauerbach, do you have a piece of hardware with a similar name installed? If this is a new error than the latest hardware change is probably the culprit.
Here’s the MS knowledgebase article about this error:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;275678
You might also want to scan the Microsoft compatibility list for all the hardware on that PC. If you find something not on this list, than that might be the problem. This can be found here:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/hcl/search.mspx
Good luck.
Yes we do have something called a flashcard. I will try taking it out and see what happens. It has been in for awhile, and everything was working fine, but perhaps it has become loose or failed.
btw, thanks for the links to the ms sites, but yikes, that stuff is way beyond me. I just hope the IT people get here soon.