scaramanga_goldengun

From time to time, I get this weird computer problem. This usually happens every now and then when I go to turn off my computer, but once or twice it happened upon start-up. The screen instantly turns blue with MS-DOS print, and it says something about "BAD PHYSICAL DUMP" or something like that, and there's about 5 or so paragraphs of text explaining what it tried to do and what went wrong or something like that, and then that it's trying to restore it or something (I'll write what it says exactly next time it happens). However, the keyboard or mouse does not work during this. If it happens when turning off the computer, I have to unplug it from the back to turn it off, but if it happens during start-up, I can turn it off by pressing the power button, and in both cases, nothing is ever altered or erased or anything, if anything, it's just a minor inconvenience to me. Any guesses as to what this may be (until I write up exactly what it says)?

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The Man With The Golden Gun

PC eye

This is most likely the hard drive being examined after a bad shutdown or a program that crashed and the auto dump of memory took place. Memory dump files are useless at this time and date and can be deleted. If and When you see this again look for a counter showing how many seconds are left. That will point to the disk checker at work and let it finish. On the next normal startup after a proper shutdown that shouldn't appear.

scaramanga_goldengun

Here is exactly what I see at the screen:

And here's the thing: I have no idea what the numbers mean, all of my drivers are updated, and I'm not sure how to do the BIOS things. And like I said before, this doesn't happen every day, but just a few times a month.

__________________
The Man With The Golden Gun

Ignorantguy

An 8E indicates a memory issue. Either a faulty module or an incompatible configuration. Can you provide us with your motherboard model and ram? If you have other ram modules you can test with try that first.

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Asus A8N32-SLI
AMD Athlon X2 4400+
2 eVGA 7800GTX SLI
2 gig Geil DDR400
Enermax Liberty 620w PSU
2 Hitachi Deskstar 250 gig SATA-II
NEC DVDR/RW 16X DL
Silver Thermaltake Armor case
19" Samsung SyncMaster 930B

scaramanga_goldengun

Motherboard (mainboard = motherboard?): Intel 915GV Express
Ram: 1GB DDR2

If I'm not giving the right info, where do I find it?

__________________
The Man With The Golden Gun

Ignorantguy

Intel 915gv express is your chipset, not your motherboard model.

Download this and run it. select mainboard tab for the model there and select SPD for the memory mfgr.

Also, how new is the computer? has been happening since you got it? If not then its most likely a bad module. Use 'process of elimination' to determine which module it is, then replace it.

__________________
Asus A8N32-SLI
AMD Athlon X2 4400+
2 eVGA 7800GTX SLI
2 gig Geil DDR400
Enermax Liberty 620w PSU
2 Hitachi Deskstar 250 gig SATA-II
NEC DVDR/RW 16X DL
Silver Thermaltake Armor case
19" Samsung SyncMaster 930B

PC eye

With DDR2 installed it's a newer model board. The advise often given when seeing initial problems is to update the bios with the latest version available. Sometimes information is lost in the bios programming. Bad ram will usually set off an audio alert with a series of beeps heard when first powering up.

Often these errors can be seen when there is a driver clash or hardware incompatibility problem to resolve. One software offers a free tryout for some many days to identify any specific problems found. The program is found at a good site for updates as well as freewares and sharewares. ErrorExpert does seem to receive high ratings and can be downloaded at http://www.errorexpert.com/download.html