What the hell?! Dumping Physical Memory?

[AgentSun]

okay, i'm online and all of a sudden, quite randomly, i get the dreaded BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH. it tells me that an error occurred and that it is dumping my phyiscal memory...

i'm freaking out in my heard because i've never seen this before!

i restarted my computer (it didn't tell me how to restart and i wasn't sure how i could restart since ctrl+alt+delete wasn't working, so i ended up disconnecting it) and now it seems to be fine? i don't know what could have caused this and all the evidence online points to hardware but i don't know, cause this isn't an old laptop.

anyone help me?!!

[Nikole]

i wish i could help you. but i will say you are not alone.
is your computer a dell? my husband's is and it did that over and over and over again. he had to call dell about 1200 times and threaten to get a lawyer for them to replace the hard drive. even though we paid for the service plan ... ~very angry~
anyway, it's only dumped the physical memory once or twice since he replaced the hard drive a few months ago. although now it gives him a different blue screen of death ... i'd like to throw that piece of junk into a river. it's not even a year old yet!

[MrVesham]

Need the stop error tag and offending file (if it's there). The tag be in all-caps with underscores. Like:

IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

The file will generally be the only filename in the stop (blue screen) error.

[faustus]

what OS are you using?

[MrVesham]

Oh yeah! True. I assume everyone's in XP Pro. =P

[AgentSun]

it said IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL and i do have XP Pro.

[LT Garrix]

Dumping physical memory is a feature of XP that sends a log of what the computer was doing when it crashed to Microsoft for analysis so that if it's a bug they can either fix it or tell the owner of the offending piece of software/data of the bug.

Many times when a MS computer crashes a file in memory becomes corrupt. Reboot solves this problem because the file is reloaded into memory.

When the computer is done dumping physical memory, it will begin to reboot and then will prompt you to do the online crash analysis. No personal info is sent to MS at this time.

Welcome to the blue screen of death club. I would run chkdsk, in the "start-run" menu, to make sure that you don't have any corrupt partitions if you haven't done so lately and it doesn't prompt you to. Right now I'm on an NT machine so I can't provide anything more specific.

[BillFrugge]

When you get the BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death) you should see some information at the top of the screen. The important bit begins with STOP and is followed by about 5 sets of numbers. Most important is the first set of numbers. Those are crucial to determining the failure.

What causes BSOD? Anything. Sorry to be blunt. Don't immediately blame the manufacturer. It could be corrupted files in windows, failing Hard Drive, or memory. Most problems turn out to be memory related. Bad memory can corrupt the files on your hard drive.

Nikole: You should have received a diagnostic disc with your Dell computer. Let it do it's thing. The hard drive was probably not your problem. If the diagnostic program reveals an error, Dell should replace the motherboard. (I assume it's still under warranty) I prefer to replace the motherboard/memory before I go to the hard drive.

I just solved a problem on one of my machines where it would just restart. No blue screen. No error messages. Nothing. It would restart and then tell me that it has recovered from a serious problem. I let it do it's thing and transmit the data to Microsoft. This time, it came back and told me to test memory. It even gave me the utility. I found a bad memory module, replaced it, and it is running smoothly.

[FrelledProwler]

I would look into memory issues. It could be a sign that part of your memory is fried or is about to. EM (eletromigration) issues are common in memory chips. If it continues to happen swap out your memory modules one at a time. If you have your BIOS setup to scan memory before boot up it can sometimes catch the issue, this is a slower boot, but may help.

[BillFrugge]

You should find a record of that BSOD in the event log...

[Saajak]

My work computer used to do that. It would go to the BSOD, scroll REALLY fast through a bunch of numbers, then I'd get the "Beginning dump of physical memory" message and the computer would restart. It didn't happen on any consistent timeframe, and the techs were dumbfounded (the techs we had at the time weren't the brightest, it was usually easier to fix the problem yourself). Now these computers were so old they were bordering on ancient, so they weren't overly concerned about fixing it either. Eventually it happened again and froze in the BSOD and "crapped out".

[Third EYe]

I'd ignore it until it won't start no more.


It is becoming more and more apparent that they never really fixed the buffer issue. I've never seen the blue screen of minor irritation (death would imply it won't restart) on XP. I'm gonna take a leap, then tell you what you think........



OK, leap is over. I think you may have some hardware problem, probaly as BillFrugge (if that's he's real name) said.

Lets hope your model is obsolete, so you can get an upgrade free of charge.

[Silk]

I used to get them so much that I started to call them Frellical Memory Dumps (only, I didn't use the word "frell").

[BillFrugge]

I'd ignore it until it won't start no more.

I actually prefer having smoke roll out the top. It's a blatant obvious clue as to the problem. :D I just hate working on intermittant problems. I can't reccommend it, but I'd like to just short out something and tell the manufacturer that it is dead. (Not that I've ever done that...)

But, yeah, ignore it until it becomes a problem. One incident may be a fluke. If it starts to do it once an hour, then you'll be able to narrow it down.

OK, leap is over. I think you may have some hardware problem, probaly as BillFrugge (if that's he's real name) said.

Real name? You mean that 'Third EYe' isn't your real name? To paraphrase G'Kar on 'Babylon 5:' "No one here is exactly whom he or she appears to be." :cool:

[Paul Cousins]

okay, i'm online and all of a sudden, quite randomly, i get the dreaded BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH. it tells me that an error occurred and that it is dumping my phyiscal memory...

i'm freaking out in my heard because i've never seen this before!

i restarted my computer (it didn't tell me how to restart and i wasn't sure how i could restart since ctrl+alt+delete wasn't working, so i ended up disconnecting it) and now it seems to be fine? i don't know what could have caused this and all the evidence online points to hardware but i don't know, cause this isn't an old laptop.

anyone help me?!!

Before you have a heartattack, your stick of RAM might be going bad.

I have a motherboard with a similar issues, swapping the ram stick from slot 1 to slot 3 solved the problem.

There are a couple of possiblities that something (besides the OS) is wrong.

[MrVesham]

Before you start randomly buying parts, though, you really need to research the logs (right click My Computer, hit Manage, play around in there for a few hours, you'll find it eventually!). Usually google is your friend with these, just stay away from those "pay us money to find the answer to your problem!" sites.

Memory is a likely culprit, but it could just as easily be a bad speck on your HD, HD going completely nuts, processor on its last leg (yup, they got legs), system file or driver getting corrupted because of an abrupt power down during a power failure, power supply going bad, body of a dead spider connecting traces (no kiddin', I've seen it), popped capacitors on the motherboard finally causing havok, etc.

Since it only happened once, it's likely just a fluke. If it happens again, write down the time then get the registers from the logs.

[BillFrugge]

Dead spider, eh? I trust you've seen the old 'snake in the power supply' report?

Capacitors? Yeah. I've seen that a lot. For anyone that doesn't know what those are, the culprits look like little tin cans on the board, and the bad ones have a bulge on the top. If they're bad, you need a new board. (Nice technical description from an engineer, eh?)

Yes, the event log is valuable. It doesn't always tell you what happened, but with a BSOD it will tell you why Windows halted. MrVesham's instructions are the easiest way I've found to get there, but you may have to do that from the start menu on Windows XP. You're looking for 'System Tools,' 'Event Viewer,' and ''System.' All of the entries are by date and time by default.

Before I'd go running off to the store to buy new memory, try reseating it. Unplug the computer and wait a few minutes. Grab a hold of the cabinet to discharge any static electricity. You'll find two levers on the memory (one on each side) Just pull them outward, and the memory will come out. They're keyed, so they'll only go back in one way. Push it back in, and make sure the levers lock it into place. Remember to plug the computer back into the wall before turning it back on. (You'd be surprised at how often that happens...)

[Paul Cousins]

Before you start randomly buying parts, though, you really need to research the logs (right click My Computer, hit Manage, play around in there for a few hours, you'll find it eventually!). Usually google is your friend with these, just stay away from those "pay us money to find the answer to your problem!" sites.

Memory is a likely culprit, but it could just as easily be a bad speck on your HD, HD going completely nuts, processor on its last leg (yup, they got legs), system file or driver getting corrupted because of an abrupt power down during a power failure, power supply going bad, body of a dead spider connecting traces (no kiddin', I've seen it), popped capacitors on the motherboard finally causing havok, etc.

Since it only happened once, it's likely just a fluke. If it happens again, write down the time then get the registers from the logs.

If it is the hard drive, companies like Maxtor have free downloadable programs which can test to see if you hard drive is starting to malfuction.

[MrVesham]

Dead spider, eh? I trust you've seen the old 'snake in the power supply' report?
Yes! I have. Also heard some other fauna-related computer mishaps. But... I only have my little spider story. Nothing too amazing. It was on my sisters computer a few years back. It didn't trash the system to unfixability but it did destroy some memory. The spider was basically crunchy-fused to one chip and the center of the chip had this nice little charred pinhole right up through the top. I still have that stick around here. Not the spider, though. =P

[BritAngie]

I'd ignore it. At work we run windows NT(yes we have pc's that old!) and Xp machines and the NT machines sometimes get the blue window of death with that message. Just ignore it. It's just your pc trying to crash and as it passes out spewing gibberish. Our works pcs from new have had this happen to them and haven't needed to have anything replaced as yet so I wouldn't panic too much. If your ram or hard disk are starting to die you will know about it in other ways..

[Teraad]

Capacitors? Yeah. I've seen that a lot. For anyone that doesn't know what those are, the culprits look like little tin cans on the board, and the bad ones have a bulge on the top. If they're bad, you need a new board. (Nice technical description from an engineer, eh?)


You don't necessarily need to get a new mobo. When this happened to mine I couldn't afford a new mobo, so I went to Radio Shack and bought new capacitors and soldered them on. The damn thing took nearly 6 hours to complete because the RAM sockets got in the way and I had to work around it. I finally got it working at 4 AM, 2 hour before I was supposed to be at work.

It still works to this day in my secondary computer. Too bad Abit is the only company to acknowledge that it had problems with a 2002 batch of capacitors.

[BillFrugge]

You don't necessarily need to get a new mobo. When this happened to mine I couldn't afford a new mobo, so I went to Radio Shack and bought new capacitors and soldered them on. The damn thing took nearly 6 hours to complete because the RAM sockets got in the way and I had to work around it. I finally got it working at 4 AM, 2 hour before I was supposed to be at work.

It still works to this day in my secondary computer. Too bad Abit is the only company to acknowledge that it had problems with a 2002 batch of capacitors.

Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. I tried it recently, and there must have been more problems with that motherboard. I've got another where the caps were fine, but the board was still dead. (These were Soyo motherboards.)

Abit, eh? One of the companies around here used HP Vectras, and I was always having to go in and replace a board. At one point, I trained one of the staff to open the cabinet and check the caps. Gateway sent us out on a couple of recalls, too. One of their boxes would just lock up in Windows 98, and they had the problem with the caps.

I've never decided what the problem was. It could be a power supply problem, using lower caps than needed, or just age of the caps.

[Third EYe]

I have been using Soyo boards for awhile now. I had one memory port fry on my, terrible sight. I like them ok, but I'm thinking of switching to something a bit more robust, which is sadly more expensive as well. Tyan perhaps.

[Teraad]

From what I could gather, there was a huge shipment of bad capacitors from China in 2002. A slight error in manufacturing led the capacitors to die prematurely either by leaking or exploding.

But if the mobos you're dealing with are newer, I'm not sure what could be causing them to die.

[BillFrugge]

I have been using Soyo boards for awhile now. I had one memory port fry on my, terrible sight. I like them ok, but I'm thinking of switching to something a bit more robust, which is sadly more expensive as well. Tyan perhaps.

I had two matching Soyo boards for awhile, but the first one died some time ago. (I think October of 2002.) The second one just died about 2 weeks ago. I got them at the same time.

I'm running 2 Shuttle XPC's and three DFI motherboards. I'm preparing to replace one of the DFI boards with an Intel 865PERL board. It looks like I'm Intel all the way...

[Third EYe]

i had 2 soyo P4X400 ultra platinum and it's one of those that the mem port blew. My wife is still using the other one. I'm using another soyo board now, newer, but not better. I'm looking foward to replacing it.

[BillFrugge]

Mine were Soyo SY-6BE+ with a built-in DMA. Without adding another DMA card, they'd support 8 drives each.

My DFI boards are CS62-TC. It's a nice board, Intel chipset, and they've been reliable. The only problem I have with it is that it only supports a maximum of 512 MB of memory.

The Intel 865PERL board has built in audio, supports 4 GB of memory, and has two SATA ports with built-in RAID 0. I've found a 2.8 GHz P4 with Hyperthreading for $180 at Computergate, so I'm looking forward to bringing it up. (It's going to replace a 1.3 GHz CPU.) I paid $160 for the board at CompUSA, but I wish I'd looked around -- Computergate has it for $100.

[Third EYe]

Pricewatch.com (http://www.pricewatch.com/)

You need to go here and look first, I found the motherboard you are considering for 85 bucks.

[BillFrugge]

Yeah, I didn't even think about it until later. Looking, I've found it for $71. Ouch!

I'm glad I didn't buy the cpu from them. ($279!)

[MrVesham]

The oldschoolers already know this, so this isn't for them. Never trust a lowest price on Pricewatch or Pricegrabber without checking out the store through:

http://www.resellerratings.com/

[Paul Cousins]

The oldschoolers already know this, so this isn't for them. Never trust a lowest price on Pricewatch or Pricegrabber without checking out the store through:

http://www.resellerratings.com/

How about www.bizrate.com ?

[MrVesham]

If ya mean as a reseller review site, it's fine too I reckon - just a little jumbled and not as straightforward. I just prefer Reseller Ratings because it doesn't have as much of that marketing-department-driven happyfun-salesman vibe. But mainly because the referred sales/individual items part is separated from the reseller review part. Plus... PW and PG have better product categorization (PW especially - a lot better).

There's no good reason not to use em all, though.

[Ouroboros]

Just a suggestion but make sure you run a good virus scan. I had a problem like this a while ago and it was due to some worm that would broadcast shit over my then dsl connection when I was online and crash my memory as a result.

Try this one, if there's something there it'll find it.

housecall.antivirus.com

[Paul Cousins]

Just a suggestion but make sure you run a good virus scan. I had a problem like this a while ago and it was due to some worm that would broadcast shit over my then dsl connection when I was online and crash my memory as a result.

Try this one, if there's something there it'll find it.

housecall.antivirus.com

This can be easily, first have no major programs running, next check with "Windows Task Manager" set to "Processes" tab, and click the CPU tab. If "System Idle Process" is not on top and at 99%, then it could very will be some spyware and/or software virus on your computer.