[jamiemac]

Ok I am really stuffed. My HP Pavilion zx5000 (xp home sp2) regulary blue sreens on me, often (but not always when I pick it up or turn it upside down. most of the blue screens are 0x0000000A IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL. (have also had 5 other blue screen codes which I can not remember). No idea where to start on fixing it so have been battling on until today.

On restarting after a blue screen I got a message about system32 being missing and did I want to auto repair the registry file. So I said yes. The result is that on starting outlook (office 2003) it runs the outlook setup wizard and asks me to set up a new profile.

Scanning my hardrive for PST files finds my August 2005 back up but there is no trace of anything more recent. Last used outlook successfully yesterday October 2 2005. I can't believe I am going to lose all my September emails which I spent a lot of time refiling!

Help please?

Many thanks.

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sorry to hear about your email...but unless those emails are stored on the server as well....then you may not have them anymore....but those bluescreens need to get fixed...

you say the bluescreens happen when you physically move the machine?

[dsenette]

sorry to hear about your email...but unless those emails are stored on the server as well....then you may not have them anymore....but those bluescreens need to get fixed...

you say the bluescreens happen when you physically move the machine?

[jamiemac]

News flash,

I just found my lost pst file. It was labelled with the wrong date which perhaps suggests some form of registry corruption. So assuming that is fixed I would love to sort these bluescreens.

Yeah it defintely seems to be related to physical movement. If I keep the laptop on a table, its pretty stable. Its a laptop I was given by a friend who tells me it has never been droppped. Its just over a year old.

[dsenette]

if you feel safe doing so...open the sucker up and see if anything obvious jumps out at you.

also run this

http://www.memtest86.com/

[jamiemac]

Ok I tried downloading memtest but i just can not figure out what to do with it? My laptop does not have a floppy drive so I copied the 4 files to blank DVD. But it does not boot from on restart. Any ideas?

[dsenette]

well, most machines don't boot from dvd's well,
http://www.memtest86...t86-3.2.iso.zip <---this is an .ISO image that you can burn to a CD, not a dvd...a cd-r or rw or whatever...just as long as it's a cd not a dvd....then you should be able to boot from it....but you have to burn it as bootable

[jamiemac]

Cool, thanks for replying so promptly. How do I burn it as bootable?

[dsenette]

what burning software are you using?

[jamiemac]

ok dude. i was able to run memtest . after 8 hours no errors so i changed mem option to all mem and i got thousands of errors. does this mean im screwed?

[jamiemac]

Hi are you there dsenette?

[dsenette]

it might, try doing the test again with only one stick of ram at a time in the machine (i know this takes a while...but if you have one good stick of ram then that means you only have to buy one new one)

[dsenette]

you should also open the machine and make sure the ram is seated properly

[jamiemac]

Hmm Ok well here is the latest. Turns out you can only access one ram stick of the two installed. I did a restart with the stick removed and it showed ram at 256 (instead of the usual 512Mb). But when I then picke dit up, guess what, BSOD! (code 8E and mention of ati2cqag.dll which I believe I have seen before. So looks like it must be something else thats loose. ?

I'll try the memtest again but can you tell me about that "all memory' option. I know the full 512Mb are working as there was a significant reduction in response time when I removed the 256 stick.

The laptop is out of warantee, not sure how to open up this laptopany further?

[dsenette]

that ati dll is for your video card, check the video card..if it's onboard (which it probably is....) then...you may have a problem....and i think that all memory may have tested your video card memory as well...which would make sense