PAGE FAULT IN NONPAGED AREA - partmgr.sys blue screen?

[slightlyhuman]

working on a dell latitude C600. it had 2x128MB so-dimms in it. before i ran into this error i threw my xp cd in there formatted and got about 90% of windows installed then the BSOD hit me. ever since then i can't get it to boot of a CD without giving me this BSOD. i've tried each so-dimm separately and even threw in a 64mb so-dimm by itself and the same thing.

the summary of the message is a 0x00000050 with a message "PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA" and file name "partmgr.sys

i can take a picture.. i thought immediately the ram was corrupted but i'm not too sure after trying to switch both sticks it came with and the 64mb stick that works in an older laptop i have..

any idea?

 

[slightlyhuman]

It's been a longgg time since I've used memtest86. Can't you run this without going into windows? I can't get it to install windows so can someone link me or tell me how to test my memory without having an OS installed?

 

[RebateMonger]

It is possible this is a memory error. Yeah, you boot a PC with a CD with Memtest86+ installed (as a bootable ISO) and let it scan your memory overnight.

A failing video card could also cause this problem.

I had a similar error (0x00000050 PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA) bluescreen yesterday with a Windows OS installed in a Hyper-V virtual disk (VHD). In my case, it was almost certainly a physical or logical error on the disk, since the memory is ECC and not likely a cause of the failure. All the other virtual OSes (on other physical disks) are still running fine.

The server eventually rebooted, then it forced a chkdsk and found many errors. Then it rebooted again and the whole partition was gone.

Sooo...I'd recommend running a couple of disk diagnostics programs against the disk and see what they report. If the disk has a readable file system, you could also try a chkdsk /r after the disk is attached to a working PC.

I'd also run Memtest. If the disk and memory are good, you'll have to start looking harder.

 

[dfnkt]

A windbg session with the .dmp file from %systemroot%\minidump would probably do wonders.