XP BSOD on boot always

[bwells]

Thanks for your services.

I just got a Blue Screen Of Death on a 1 year old Dell Inspiron 530, running XP, SP2. Never had a problem before. Tonight, my wife started Left 4 Dead 2 and it went to blue screen and rebooted. I saw another thread here very similar (http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread250395.html) and read the suggested link to Microsoft but it is really not any help since I cannot boot to windows and I am not using SP1.

I cannot boot to any option (safe mode, safe mode command prompt, last known good, etc). Always get the same BSOD. I disabled auto-reboot and do not see any specific cause. There is no program identified. The message just starts at the top with page_fault_in_nonpaged_area and at the end, it says

Stop: 0x00000050 (0xEC6B738D, 0x00000000, 0x8AEA508C, 0x00000002)

I ran the Dell utilities for memory test and system test and no problems were found.

I unplugged the network and printer. I only have USB mouse and keyboard (USB are the only ports on the system).

I booted to the XP CD and ran chkdsk /R and no problems were found.

I check the beep.sys just in case and it is the same size and date as another on a working system. No virus here.

I use Kaspersky and it updates its virus list daily. I occasionally run spybot and adaware, but not recently. I do not have auto-update enabled for XP.

I am contemplating doing a manual system restore from the recovery console. I am contemplating trying to disable the video driver from the recovery console but since I cannot even boot to safe mode command console, I doubt that will help.

Since the problem started when we ran an OpenGL game, I figure it might be graphics-related. But we have played that game several times before with no problems. Plus that Microsoft link you sent for the other thread suggested disabling the video driver.

Of course, I am ultimately thinking about doing a system repair since it does not seem to be hardware-related. But as you said in your repair thread; I need to figure out what is causing the problem before I do a system repair.

[Adamsappleone]

Try this to see if it helps;
Boot from the windows XP CD, press the "R" key to start the recovery console. Select your windows XP installation from the list, and enter the administrator password if needed.
Enter the command: "fixmbr" (without quotes) at the input prompt and confirm the next question with a "Y" (without quotes). Use exit to restore the computer.
You can also try "fixboot" using the same method as described above.
Let us know the outcome.
BTW, welcome to Daniweb

[bwells]

Thanks for the idea. I ran into odd things from the recovery console. I tried to add a record to the boot.ini using chkboot /add. It came back and said it could not find a bootable system! Yuck!

So this afternoon, I got a 2nd internal SATA and plan to copy the "C" partition to another disk so I have a backup of my entire system for the next time this happens.

The other thing I did was re-seat my memory. And presto! The memory must have been loose or had dirt inside the contacts because as soon as I pulled and replace the memory SIMS, the system went back to working normally. Even though the memory testing worked fine, the memory still was the source of the problem.

So Now that my system is working again, I have my fingers crossed that it will continue. At least if I see that error again, I will know to get some new memory before trying so many other things.

Thanks again for your help and great advice. I will keep Daniweb on my desktop because I am sure this will not be the last time I have this kind of problem!

[Adamsappleone]

Glad to hear you got it fixed and that you posted your fix.
May be of help for someone else in the future.