QUESTION: I've experienced what appears to be the computer equivalent to 'running a fever' on my new HP Pavilion N5425 laptop, which runs on Win XP (build 2600). The HD is formatted with NTFS, and my system runs with 256MB of RAM. The system was obtained new in Dec 2001.
On multiple occasions starting a few days ago, various applications have crashed, including Windows Explorer. The error messages usually say: 'Instruction at 0x77f67f26 referenced memory at 0x00620064. Memory could not be written (or read).'
I've looked a few help sites that have dealt with this, the most useful being: www.tek-tips.com/gviewthread.cfm/lev2/67/lev3/70/pid/621/qid/27217 . The contributors to that message board reported various causes and various possible solutions, mostly on Win2000 systems. I've tried a few of the listed solutions suggested on these message boards, such as selecting a different default printer and having Adobe Acrobat Reader open in its own window instead of opening in Internet Explorer.
Symptoms:
Most crashes occur when trying to open or select very large .bmp and .jpg files I've created recently on an Epson scanner, i.e. less than 3MB. Older large 5MB files created two weeks ago don't cause these crashes When the scanner TWAIN driver attempts to create a new file for use by EPSON Film Factory after it scans a document/photo, the TWAIN driver generates an error message saying that: 'There is not enough space available on C:, or the disk drive may be broken'. There is currently 10.5GB available on the18 GB HD. When the same image was scanned into Adobe Elements, using the same TWAIN driver, it was able to save a small 2MB file. Windows XP Event Viewer reports multiple events that reference ntdll.dll, e.g.: Faulting application explorer.exe, version 6.0.2600.0, faulting module ntdll.dll, version 5.1.2600.0, fault address 0x00003207. For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp. (Note that the fault address is not consistent) Remedial Attempts:
Norton SystemWorks 2002 (for XP) was run repeatedly, without identifying any significant items Desktop image was replaced with a smaller sized file, and background resident apps were removed to lower memory requirements Norton Disk Doctor was run. It identified incorrect Indexes (e.g.: Index entry 00031803.map in index $130 of file 10709). I permitted Norton to run the recommended repairs. Some minor program upgrades were uninstalled, with no affect on this problem. A major upgrade to Windows Media Player for XP couldn't be uninstalled, as no uninstall file or program was provided, and it doesn't appear to be registered with Windows 'Add/Remove Programs' in Windows Setup (for reasons unknown, it was also unregistered with Norton Cleansweep 2002). Windows System Restore could only take the system back a day or so, and didn't eliminate the problem. Any light you can shed on this PC illness (which Microsoft doesn't appear to be addressing) will greatly prolong my sanity.
Regards,
H. Zilber
ANSWER: Thanks for the very detailed description of the problem, it makes diagnosis much easier.
It would seem to me, based on the memory error messages, that what you are experiencing is either failed RAM or a failed motherboard itself. I would recommend, as this laptop is brand new, to contact HP about your issues, since your hardware should still be under warranty. They'll either have to replace some components or the whole machine.
Dependable Deborah
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