[Danielle Tharp]

My cousin just gave me her Dell Dimension E520 with windows Xp sp3. They haven't used it in a while because it would keep restarting for no reason. I ran malwarebytes and it found 11 infections so I removed them. I've tried to run avast antivirus but that's when it started going to the BSOD. As far as I know the computer would simply restart at random, but she never mentioned getting the BSOD. It does not tell me which file is causing the error. The first one I got was 0x0000008E (0xC000001D, 0x804FA1C9, 0xF76E3AD8, 0x00000000) and then 0x0000007F (0x0000000D, 0x00000000, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)
On another note, even though I've changed the boot up sequence, every time the computer restarts it says that it couldn't boot from the floppy and tells me to push F1 or F8. It should be booting from the HDD since I made that the first boot up. There isn't even a floppy drive to boot from. So I'm not entirely sure what that is all about.
Any help would be appreciated.

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They haven't used it in a while because it would keep restarting for no reason. I ran malwarebytes and it found 11 infections so I removed them. I've tried to run avast antivirus but that's when it started going to the BSOD.

I would dare to say you haven't gotten rid of everything.

It should be booting from the HDD since I made that the first boot up. There isn't even a floppy drive to boot from. So I'm not entirely sure what that is all about.

I would suggest taking the floppy drive completely out of the boot sequence.
Make the cdrom the first boot device and then the hd. Make sure to save the settings before exiting. Let me know if that fixes the boot issue.

[rshaffer61]

They haven't used it in a while because it would keep restarting for no reason. I ran malwarebytes and it found 11 infections so I removed them. I've tried to run avast antivirus but that's when it started going to the BSOD.

I would dare to say you haven't gotten rid of everything.

It should be booting from the HDD since I made that the first boot up. There isn't even a floppy drive to boot from. So I'm not entirely sure what that is all about.

I would suggest taking the floppy drive completely out of the boot sequence.
Make the cdrom the first boot device and then the hd. Make sure to save the settings before exiting. Let me know if that fixes the boot issue.

[Danielle Tharp]

I took the floppy out of the sequence and now it comes up saying Floppy Diskette Seek Failure and tells me to push F1 to continue or F2 to go to setup utility.

The computer restarted again and this time it came up saying Driver 1 not found: Serial ATA, Sata 1 and then the usual Floppy Diskette Seek Failure, etc.

This time as soon as it loaded up the BSOD popped up. At the very top it said : Driver_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

And then at the bottom it said:

Stop: 0x000000D1 (0x00000030, 0x0000000D, 0x00000000, 0xF56CC613)

HSFHWBS2.sys - Address F56CC613 base at F56A6000, Date stamp 3FB8D436

Edited by Danielle Tharp, 10 March 2012 - 05:57 PM.

[rshaffer61]

OK there is another place in the bios to shut that off. Look around as I believe it is in the General area where it shows the drives.

[Danielle Tharp]

I actually went to the device manager and disabled the floppy drives. It still came up though. I went ahead and enabled it again. I was debating on whether or not to delete them completely since there is absolutely NO floppy drive. For some reason I can't help but think it would still pop up. very weird...

[rshaffer61]

In the bios you can take the floppy out of the boot sequence but you must also disable floppy drive seek.

[Danielle Tharp]

Ok..you'll have to tell me how to do that

[rshaffer61]

To change Boot Sequence in your BIOS

Reboot the system and at the first post screen (where it is counting up memory) start tapping the DEL button
This will enter you into the Bios\Cmos area.
Find the Advanced area and click Enter
Look for Boot Sequence or Boot Options and highlight that click Enter
Now highlight the first drive and follow the directions on the bottom of the screen on how to modify it and change it to CDrom.
Change the second drive to the C or Main Drive
Take the floppy out of the boot sequence. Then look in the general area where it shows all your drives and see if it has the floppy drive seek enabled. If so disable it.
Once that is done then click F10 to Save and Exit
You will prompted to enter Y to verify Save and Exit. Click Y and the system will now reboot with the new settings.

Hopefully you have already put the XP cd in the drive before all this. If everything is setup correctly you will get a black screen with the following message in the upper left corner:

"Push Any Key To Boot To Cd". When you see this then push any key and the cd will take over. Then follow the prompts or if you need assistance we will help.

[Danielle Tharp]

OK I found it and took care of that problem. No more problems on load up with the floppy or any other drive. I do not have the XP disk.

I was wondering if you saw my post at 5:13 about the information given to me on the BSOD? I had edited my post around the same time you posted.

Edited by Danielle Tharp, 10 March 2012 - 06:48 PM.

[rshaffer61]

Yes and below is the explanation of that error.

0x000000D1: DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
(Click to consult the online Win XP Resource Kit article.)
The system attempted to access pageable memory using a kernel process IRQL that was too high. The most typical cause is a bad device driver (one that uses improper addresses). It can also be caused by caused by faulty or mismatched RAM, or a damaged pagefile.

First off lets check the memory to make sure if that is causing the error or not.


If you have more than one RAM module installed, try starting computer with one RAM stick at a time.

NOTE Keep in mind, the manual check listed above is always superior to the software check, listed below. DO NOT proceed with memtest, if you can go with option A

B. If you have only one RAM stick installed...
...run memtest...


1. Download - Pre-Compiled Bootable ISO (.zip). If you prefer to use the USB version then use this link USB KEY
2. Unzip downloaded /memtest86+-4.20.iso.zip file.
3. Inside, you'll find /memtest86+-4.20.iso file.
4. Download, and install ImgBurn: http://www.imgburn.com/
5. Insert blank CD into your CD drive.
6. Open ImgBurn, and click on Write image file to disc
7. Click on Browse for a file... icon:



8. Locate memtest86+-4.20.iso file, and click Open button.
9. Click on ImgBurn green arrow to start burning bootable memtest86 CD:



10. Once the CD is created, boot from it, and memtest will automatically start to run. You may have to change the boot sequence in your BIOS to make it work right.

To change Boot Sequence in your BIOS

Reboot the system and at the first post screen (where it is counting up memory) start tapping the DEL button
This will enter you into the Bios\Cmos area.
Find the Advanced area and click Enter
Look for Boot Sequence or Boot Options and highlight that click Enter
Now highlight the first drive and follow the directions on the bottom of the screen on how to modify it and change it to CDrom.
Change the second drive to the C or Main Drive
Once that is done then click F10 to Save and Exit
You will prompted to enter Y to verify Save and Exit. Click Y and the system will now reboot with the new settings.


The running program will look something like this depending on the size and number of ram modules installed:




It's recommended to run 5-6 passes. Each pass contains very same 8 tests.

This will show the progress of the test. It can take a while. Be patient, or leave it running overnight.



The following image is the test results area:



The most important item here is the “errors” line. If you see ANY errors, even one, most likely, you have bad RAM.

[Danielle Tharp]

I just happen to have 2 sticks of ram. I took one out and now I'm just waiting to see if the BSOD appears. It just sort of randomly happens so I'll get back to ya' in a few hours!

Its been 2 hours and it hasn't restarted or had the BSOD yet. Could I have possibly gotten that lucky and picked the correct one the first try? Is there a possibility that it could be the port that is messed up and not the stick? I'm going to put it back in later and try another port. If it messes up again at least then I'll know its the stick. Could I get super duper lucky and have it be the port?

Edited by Danielle Tharp, 11 March 2012 - 02:53 PM.

[rshaffer61]

Possible only one stick is bad.
Slight chance it could be the memory slot that is the issue
Actually being the port would be the worse of the options as that would indicate a defective motherboard. Much cheaper to replace the memory to be honest.

[Danielle Tharp]

Well I put it back in and it went ok for a while and then it started to noticeably restart for no reason and the BSOD started popping up. So I took the memory stick back out and wouldn't you know it the monitor I was using went up! lol So I finally got another monitor and I'm going to see what happens now that I took the stick back out. I THINK the BSOD stopped popping up but it still restarted a couple of odd ball times. But I'm going to sit and play around on it and see what happens.

[rshaffer61]

Yeah it sounds like a bad stick of memory is your culprit. The restarts could be something that was caused by the bad memory being reinstalled.

[rshaffer61]

Are you still having problems with your issue?
It has been 22 days since your last response and I was wondering if the issue has been resolved?
If so can you explain how it was resolved so others may be able to fix it if they have the same issue.
If not please let us know and we can continue with helping you to resolve the issue.