Hi there,

I bought a laptop recently (after years of putting together my own desktop systems ) with Windows XP and lots of software pre-installed...

Anyhow, a few times a day, it blue screens displaying the words "BEGINNING PHYSICAL MEMORY DUMP" and then a whole page of other stuff.

Alright, so I have two questions:

(1) Literally, what is happening? I went back to the place at which I bought it and was told that "It looks like it's holding some memory and then dumping it"

(2) Any ideas on how to fix it?

 

Reformat the whole drive, but back up any files you have on it first. After you reformat, reistall XP and other apps. If it continues to happen then i would have to say your hard drive has a damaged disk.

 

You're experiencing what us developers call a core dump. If you aren't a very technical person, you are probably best off doing what amazon said and reinstall everything. I would first make sure you have all the patches and updates from Microsoft's web site...they may have a fix for it. If the patches don't work, you either have to take it somewhere or re-install the operating system. Good luck and feel free to pm or ask questions in this thread if you need any more help.

Nick

 

You can turn that off (the memory dump). It won't do squat for the blue screens though.

 

I've been unistalling/re-installing drivers for the past couple days and have intermittently stopped using different programs in hopes of pinpointing the problem to no avail

I have a feeling it's a hardware problem...which sucks...

 

I have Win2K, but XP might have the same:

Right-click "My Computer", select "Properties"
Click the "Advanced" tab
Under System Failure, de-select "Automatically Reboot" and select "none" for Write Debugging Info.

When it blue screens again, get the info on the screen, ignore the columns of numbers, just the text stuff.

 

Cool....I'll report back with what it says

 

The BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) usually occurs when there is a conflict with hardware, software, a memory chip issue, old or wrong drivers...the list is endless. Next time it crashes copy the Stop code from the blue screen then go to www.microsoft.com click on support and go to the Knowledge Base to start trouble shooting the error. Windows NT was nortorious for BSOD's. The main stop error will be the first code..in this example it is 0x0000000a. Also there should be a brief desricption of the code. This one is IRQ_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL. It will also help you trouble shoot .

 

Great info... I've had my laptop dump on me 8 times this year

 

doesn't this also have to do with this new "worm" virus going around?