Need more help with my Dell

[Richard Sinkler]

I am now getting this blue screen of death error message. It has happened 3 times in the last half hour. I recently had to replace my primary hard drive. I had to change the CMOS battery as I was getting a “system battery voltage low” message on boot up. The one thing I noticed was, Trend (Titanium Maximum Security) would give an error about it’s malware something or other had a problem and had to close. Not long after, the blue screen and message below would come up. I took all my memory modules out (2-1gb and 2 51mb) and only put the 2 - 1gb modules back in to see if it happens again and I can rule out those modules as being bad.
A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.

If this is the first time you’ve seen this stop error screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears again, follow these steps.

Check to be sure you have adequate disk space. If a driver is identified in the stop message, disable the driver or check with the manufacturer for driver updates. Try changing video adapters.

Check with your local hardware vendor for any BIOS updates. Disable BIOS memory options such as caching or shadowing. If you need to use Safe Mode to remove or disable components, restart your computer, press F8 to select advanced startup options, and then select safe mode.

Technical information:
***STOP: 0x00000008e (0xC0000005, 0xBF80CBA7, 0xA66F1AF4, 0x00000000)
***win32k.sys – Address BF80CBA7 base at BF800000, date stamp 48025F2A

Beginning dump of physical memory. Physical memory dump complete. Contact your system administrator or technical support group for further assistance.

[Bryan Garvey]

Hi Richard


Do you have the Service Packs installed for Windows XP. Also were you using your keyboard at all when the Blue Screens occurred?

Cheers
Bryan

[Pete Nicholls]

Restart in Safe Mode. Once Safe mode has started, goto your start button and then run. Type in msconfig and go to the startup tab. UN-check all nonessential startup items including VGA drivers. Hit apply then ok. The system will restart. Allow it to start normally. If this gets you into windows manually add one or two startup items at a time allowing the PC to restart each time. You'll know which item is causing the problem by following this proceedure.

[Richard Sinkler]

Since I had to re-install Windows Xp, I went to Windows update and updated the service pack to SP3, and some other updates so everything should be current. I don't recall what I was doing at the time it crashes, but I was getting some errors from my anti-virus software that it had to shut down, then withing 10 - 30 seconds, here comes the blue screen of death.

I found some info on the internet by Googling the error, and there was some mention of RAM problems. I removed all 4 of y memory modules, and just put back the 2 - 1gb modules and things have settled down. Hasn't crashed since. I am going to power down and put the two 512mb modules back in and see what happens.

[Bryan Garvey]

Hi Richard

Your error message can be related to memory as you suggest. I would also disable and then re-enable your virtual memory incase of a corruption.
To disable Virtual memory:

1. Right click My Computer and choose properties
2. Click the Advanced tab
3. Under Performance click settings.
4. Click the Advanced tab.
5. Under Virtual memory click change
6. Click no paging file
7. Click OK
8. Restart the computer

To enable Virtual memory:

1. Right click My Computer and choose properties
2. Click the Advanced tab
3. Under Performance click settings.
4. Click the Advanced tab.
5. Under Virtual memory click change
6. Click System Managed Size
7. Click OK
8. Restart the computer

Your Blue Screen message also made mention of "Win32k.sys"
This may have become corrupt.
Go to C:\WINDOWS\System32 and rename the Win32k.sys file to Win32k.old and then close the window. Now go back to the system32 folder and you will have a new and non-corrupt Win32k.sys file.

I hope this helps.

Cheers
Bryan