Faulty NIC or faulty RAM?

gnolan

Looking for some advice here.

My primary problem with my Fujitsu Siemens laptop is a bluescreen with a memory parity error message that occurs quite frequently. From googling i've noticed that this can be down to a number of things; mostly faulty RAM but also video cards and NICs.

To give some background, i thought this was originally a problem that occurred when the laptop was picked up in a specific way. I brought it in to be serviced and the hard drive was found to have a huge amount of bad sectors on it --> hard drive replaced. Bluescreen problems persists.

I have also had the problem occur when watching youtube videos, leading me to believe it may be a video card problem?

I have also had it occur when scrolling down through a large .pdf file. RAM??

But what has me thinking it may be a NIC problem is while listening to iTunes from time to time, i notice the music slow and stutter slightly only to notice that the wireless connection has disconnected and it then reconnects within a matter of seconds. When i get the bluescreen, it is usually accompanied by the millisecond of music repeat on loop, sounding just a drone of whatever the last note was (if that is in any way clear).*

So it really could be anything. I have tried to run memtest86 but i can't seem to boot it from a USB even though i downloaded a USB-specific file from the site. Are there any other stress tests for RAM and also for NICs.

I'd really appreciate some help on this one. Thanks.


*i have had the bluescreen when not listening to iTunes

woolymammoth

what does the event log show?

gnolan

woolymammoth wrote: »

what does the event log show?

I'll have to check next time, never thought of checking there. Is that the same as "Event Viewer". And will it be under System Events i should be looking?

woolymammoth

haha! cr@p. ya, i was in my own world then. Event Viewer it is. you'll be looking for anything interesting at the exact time you find a bsod.
how you get there will depend on your windows version. but you'll be looking at both system and application events.

gnolan

Thanks. I'll post it up next time a get a bsod

gnolan

Ok. I haven't had a bsod since i last posted here but i have had the regular wireless network disconnections that i spoke of earlier.

In the Event Viewer there is the following:

gnolan

Had another bsod last night, nothing in the event viewer however. Happened when watching video online.

woolymammoth

it could be RAM, graphics, network, the cpu & chipset.. any number of things really.

You haven't mentioned what kind of PC you have! can you tell me if you're up to date with updates? did it start after some updates? What service pack are you on? have you tried downloading and installing the lastet and greatest drivers for the chipset, wireless, graphics, etc.?

Another thing you can do with troubleshooting, is to selectively start services when the computer starts. These options are in msconfig (start > run > type: msconfig > enter). You have 3 options, Normal, diagnostic & selective. Normal loads all services. Diagnostic only loads like a skeleton crew of services, and selective will load whatever's ticked under the associated tabs. This is useful because if you start up in diagnostic, and nothing crashes, you can be sure it one of the services that's causing the trouble. Then, you can selectively start up, adding a handful of services at a time to figure out which one it is (if it's any of them at all!).

try looking for any other events immediately around the same time you get a bsod. Also, if you can, try and see what the bsod error code is. that should help i identifying what's crashing.

gnolan

Its a Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Si 1848. When the laptop went in to be serviced in September all drivers were updated.

I have considered starting the computer with barebones services and hardware running, but the bsod is so intermittent that that would not really help; for example, i posted on the 28th Oct that i had just had the bsod, and then it didn't occur again until 4th November, and that with all services and hardware running.

This was why i was hoping there might be some kind of stress test software i could use like memtest to see if it would throw up any errors for RAM, graphics card, NIC and so on.

Also, sorry, i didn't realise i hadn't posted up the error code with the bsod, an oversight on my part.

***HARDWARE MALFUNCTION
CALL YOUR HARDWARE VENDOR
NMI: PARITY CHECK/MEMORY PARITY ERROR
***THE SYSTEM HAS HALTED***

I have been having this error for about year now intermittently, no hardware has been altered (including RAM) with the exception of a new hard drive. This was replaced because it was believed to be the problem. It turns out the problem is elsewhere.

woolymammoth

sounds like a type of memory error to me, whether it's with the RAM, graphics, or CPU memory, i'm not sure. If it's not the RAM, it could also be the ram slots. Possible it's a hardware fault elsewhere too. I'm guessing the laptop is no longer under warranty?

There's just something about Fujitsu Siemens computers i've never liked..

gnolan

You'd be right to think that its out of warranty. Anything i can do test the different types of memory?

woolymammoth

to be honest, none that i'm familiar with. maybe someone else here will be familiar with one. I'd try running a search for cpu cache test or graphics memory test, something like that might throw something useful back at you.

gnolan

Can someone tell me where the bluescreen dump files are located on a system running Windows XP SP3?