[louuu]

hi, im trying to get my sisters computer up and running back to normal. its clean and there are no viruses at all (i was in the geekstogo malware forum and got a clean bill of health). they told me to come to this forum for my errors, which they believe are hardware related. let me tell you what happened and ill try to be thorough.

about 3 weeks ago i installed 2 new hard drives and 1 gb (2 x 512mb) of memory (so now theres a total of 2 gb of memory 4 x 512mb), and we installed norton internet security 2007 to replace her norton antivirus 2005. i did use the norton complete removal tool as per nortons instructions before installing internet security 2007. we have 2 hard drives (c and f, with c being the main drive and f being the backp). we use casper xp to clone the main drive once a week on the backup, so in case of any hard drive failure, the most work we can lose is one weeks worth. my sister noticed that since we upgraded the hard drives and memory, her system appears to be slower and there have been random crashes and blue screens of death (bsod). we had a vundo virus infection and now it has been cleaned. the c drive failed and i had to send it back to seagate for a replacement. so i took the now clean f drive, which was the backup and installed it as my c main drive. it boots up with no problem. but we have been getting many bsod. one of them said something about _pool_caller. another said fault in non paged area. and today one bsod said we should disable all antivirus, 3rd party disk defrag and any 3rd party backup utilities and check the hard drive configuration. it also said on this bsod to check updating the drivers and then it said i should run ckdsk/f. the weird thing is this drive is no longer the f drive, and it should be saying ckdsk/c. i only have one drive in my computer and its the c drive, which is the main drive now.

we have also been getting alot of iexplore nees to close errors which kicks us off repeatedly. my sisters machine is about 3 years old. its a dell 8400 running windows xp sp2. she has norton internet security 2007 and doesnt use system restore as she uses norton goback. goback has been on her system for years, so i know thats not the problem.

i would appreciate any help in trying to get this problem resolved. as i said, its only been happening for 3 weeks since we installed the new hard drives, 1gb more of memory and nortong internet security 2007. thank you in advance for any help you can give me. take care.

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Hello louuu...

Sounds like you could really use a repair installation...which you can accomplish with the Dell recovery cd, if you have it. BUT, some of the problems you've been having may be related to bad or incompatible RAM. We don't want to try the repair until we know the RAM is good.

Download the Windows Memory Diagnostic Tool and create the disk as outlined in the "Quick Start Information". Boot the machine to this disk and let it run for an hour or so to check the memory's performance and reliability. Any failure may indicate a bad or incompatible module. To end the test, press the X key and remove the disk...or remove the disk and power the machine off.

Let me know how you fare with this test. If the RAM checks good, I would try this REPAIR to your installation of XP using the Dell Recovery disk that came with the machine.. This procedure will not damage or change your current files or settings...it will just repair or replace damaged system files. You will be asked for your Installation CD and may be asked for your product key. Follow the instructions carefully...print them out if you can. Note: This option is not always available on OEM Recovery Cd's

Once this repair has completed, you will have to download all Windows Updates again.

**The chkdsk /f is actually a command...not a reference to the drive letter. If you choose to run the disk check, use the command chkdsk /r instead.**

wannabe1

[wannabe1]

Hello louuu...

Sounds like you could really use a repair installation...which you can accomplish with the Dell recovery cd, if you have it. BUT, some of the problems you've been having may be related to bad or incompatible RAM. We don't want to try the repair until we know the RAM is good.

Download the Windows Memory Diagnostic Tool and create the disk as outlined in the "Quick Start Information". Boot the machine to this disk and let it run for an hour or so to check the memory's performance and reliability. Any failure may indicate a bad or incompatible module. To end the test, press the X key and remove the disk...or remove the disk and power the machine off.

Let me know how you fare with this test. If the RAM checks good, I would try this REPAIR to your installation of XP using the Dell Recovery disk that came with the machine.. This procedure will not damage or change your current files or settings...it will just repair or replace damaged system files. You will be asked for your Installation CD and may be asked for your product key. Follow the instructions carefully...print them out if you can. Note: This option is not always available on OEM Recovery Cd's

Once this repair has completed, you will have to download all Windows Updates again.

**The chkdsk /f is actually a command...not a reference to the drive letter. If you choose to run the disk check, use the command chkdsk /r instead.**

wannabe1

[louuu]

thank you so much for your quick and courteous reply. when i go to my sisters house tomorrow, i will do the steps you requested in the order your requested. then ill post the results back in the forum. when this is all resolved, we will gladly make a small donation to your project bootstrap, which seems like a very worthy cause. thanks again for your help and have a nice evening.

[louuu]

hi again. i ran the memory test and it came back with errors on the 5th of the 6 tests that run. i think it was called wsat or wlat. so i removed the memory that i installed 3 weeks ago and ran the tests again, and this time it passed. so it looks like the memory i installed was bad. so should i now test my computer and see if the crashes and problems persist, or should i go onto the next step with the windows recovery? ill wait to hear from you and in the meantime ill try to use the computer and see if any errors occur. thank you.

[wannabe1]

Run the machine for a while. Bad RAM can certainly cause the problems you described. Let me know if the problems persist.

[louuu]

thanks for your advice. ill tell my sister to use the computer for the next day or two. after she does this, ill post back here to let you know the status. if there are further problems before a day or two, ill post that immediately as well. so please keep this topic open until i get back to you. thanks again for your kind help, its sincerely appreciated.

[louuu]

hi again. let me give you an update. with the bad memory out of her system, she has used her computer for the last 2 days. thankfully there have not been anymore blue screens of death or iexplore has encoutered an error and needs to close problems. the only complaint she has is that sometimes while shes on any website page, the screen freezes and locks up and she has to hit contol alt delte to close it. as a side note, she was having some trouble with her spysweeper program that kept popping up. i called spysweeper today for her and they told me it was probably a corrupted file. so i deleted spysweeper and reinstalled it for her and now that problem is gone. i dont know if the spysweeper problem had any effect on her current problem where the websites freeze and lock her out. since we only fixed the spysweeper problem today, ill tell her to use the computer a few more days and then ill give you another update. if you feel theres a remedy to fix this problem shes having or if you have some suggestions as to what may be causing this, please let me know. ill assume for now that you do not want me to run the restore option on windows. ill wait to hear back from you to see what you suggest. thanks again in advance for your kind help.

Edited by louuu, 09 May 2008 - 08:09 PM.

[wannabe1]

Sorry for the delay...I missed the notification e-mail somehow...

I'd let it run and see if the problem resurfaces. I think the bad RAM was 90% of the issue.

What browser is hanging up? Have you tried any other browsers to try and determine if the problem is limited to one browser or whether multiple browsers are affected the same way?

[louuu]

hi again and thanks for your quick reply. her browser is internet expolorer 6 that came with windows xp. she doesnt have or use another browser. ill tell her to use the computer for another day or two and then ill give you an update. thanks again for your good help.

[wannabe1]

Have her download, install, and use Firefox for a few days. During the installation, she will be asked if she wants to import her favorites from IE...have her do that so she can surf the same sites using both browsers.

If the problem does not occur using Firefox, a simple upgrade to IE7 may fix the problem. If the hangs occur with Firefox, too, we'll have to look elsewhere for the problem.

[louuu]

hi again. after a few more days of my sister using her computer, it appears that we didnt have to take any further steps to solve her website sticking/freezing problem. after removing the bad memory and then later uninstalling and reinstalling her spysweeper program (which was having major problems), it seems everything is back to normal and theres no more sticking/freezing on the websites, or problems with spysweeper anymore. so i want to thank you for your great help as you really were fantastic in getting my sisters computer back to normal. im going to go to paypal and send you a $10 donation for your project bootstrap cause as a way of showing my appreciation. take care and thanks again for everything. ps - just wanted to let you know that youll see the $10 donation coming from lou.ebay, so you know its me, louuu in the geekstogo forum. take care.

[wannabe1]

Thanks for the update!

And thank you for the donation...it will be put to good use.