PC Hardware

Guest

(Forgive me if this post appears twice on the group. For some reason my
first attempt yesterday didn't appear.)

I wrote to this group back in July regarding a crashing problem I am
having with a Thinkpad 600X.

First, here are the specs on my machine:
600X (Type 2645-9ZU, PIII 650MHz speedstep)
512MB additional RAM, IBM labled (ie: two 256MB DIMMS)
DVD player, 3Com network card
BIOS has been upgraded to latest version

The problem I am having is that about once a week I experience a
complete crash; the screen turns blue for a half a second with a few
lines of text in the upper left, then the initial boot-up screen
appears with words "IBM" and "Thinkpad" in opposite corners of the
screen. At this point it doesn't actually re-boot, it just stays on
this initial boot-up screen. I have to turn it off off then on again to
initiate a re-boot.

I thought the problem might be bad RAM so I ran Memtest86+ once
overnight (6 complete passes total through the memory). No errors were
reported.

One of the people who responded back in July (GomJabbar) suggested that
I press F8 on boot-up and select 'Do not restart on system failure'
(see copied post below). However, I don't see this option when I press
F8. I am running Windows 2000. Here is what I see after pressing F8:

"Windows 2000 Advanced Options Menu
Please select and option.

Safe Mode
Safe Mode with Networking
Safe Mode with Command Prompt
Enable Boot Logging
Enable VGA Mode
Last Known Good Configuration
Directory Services Restore Mode (Windows 2000 Domain Controllers Only)
Debugging Mode
Boot Normally

Which one of these should I select so that I can read the error message
the next time I see the BSOD?

Any suggestions are welcome.

-Jonathan

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: GomJabbar
Date: 12 Jul 2005 10:03:35 -0700
Subject: Re: Thinkpad 600X Crash Problem
To:

I used Windows 2000 on a 600E in the past with excellent results - well
at least for a Microsoft product ;).

You should press F8 at the beginning of the boot sequence, and when you
get to the screen that has the Safe Mode option, select 'Do not restart
on system failure' (worded something like that). Now the next time
your 600X crashes, you'll get the Blue Screen Of Death (BSOD). There
should be an error message on the screen that may give you a clue to
what's going on.

An anecdote:
I recently loaded some software, did a Windows update, and a Norton AV
update. I rebooted to do a virus scan in Safe Mode, and as the OS was
booting up, it suddenly restarted. I could not get to Safe Mode even
after several tries. The computer would boot up normally however. I
was shocked. I thought if the computer would boot up at all, it would
be in Safe Mode. Anyway I did the above and got the error message on
the screen. I Googled the error message, and it gave me a clue that it
was one portion of a software package I had just installed. I
uninstalled just that one portion, and then I was able to boot up in
Safe Mode again.

Gary L. · Guest

On 9 Oct 2005 07:37:55 -0700, jfklein@shaw.ca wrote:

Guest

On Sun, 09 Oct 2005 22:48:32 GMT, Gary L. wrote:

Guest

Thanks to both of the posters for the advice.

Regarding the ethernet card, mine is an older 3Com wired card
(megahertz 3CXFE575BT), not wireless. I used it for a year and a half
with a 600E also with Win 2000 with no problems. But the 600X has a lot
of hardware differences from the 600E so it could be the root of
problem. I'll keep it in mind.

Personally, I liked the 600E a little better. The screen was brighter
(I think they dimmed it a bit on the 600X to conserve battery life),
the keyboard had a softer feel, and the build quality of the case
seemed better. For example there seems to be a slight difference in
shade in the black color used for the plastic cover doors for the
various connection ports and the black color for the metal case of the
computer. With the 600E the shade of black was more consistant. But I
like the 600X anyhow for the better performance and the same simple
square shape. What a classic design!

-Jonathan

Lars@fake.com wrote:

Atrios · Guest

Gary L. wrote:

lauraking@gmail.com · Guest

I was having the same problem with my 600X and I initially thought I
was going to need to test all the RAM, especially since it got to the
point where my computer would not turn on. After opening the case and
reseating the RAM I had in there, I havn't had any problems, though
it's only been a few weeks. You might pull out your chip(s) and give
that a whirl.

Guest

I switched around the RAM chips between the two slots about a week ago
and so-far no crashes. However, the problems has been very sporatic,
sometimes not crashing for a couple weeks. I'll have to give it a month
to have a good level of confidence that the problem is fixed.

lauraking@gmail.com wrote:

EM · Guest

lauraking@gmail.com wrote:

Guest

I had another crash today.

But since I had cleared the option in Windows to automatically reboot
on system failure I was able to read and copy down the jibberish on the
blue screen of death (thanks to Gary L's advice).

Here is what the jibberish said.

<start quote>

*** STOP: 0x00000050 (0xFC3BA8A1,0x00000000,0xBC94116C,0x00000000)
PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA

*** Address BC94116C base at BC93E000, Date Stamp 41afde9e -
Fastfat.SYS

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

<end quote>

I really have no idea what all of this jibberish means. The only clue I
can think of is related to the fact that the file name Fastfat.SYS is
mentioned. Since FAT is a type of hard drive format, I am thinking that
perhaps the problem might have something to do with the hard drive
(although mine is NTFS formatted, not FAT). Also a previous poster
(Adrios) mentioned he has a somewhat similar problem that turned out to
be a bad hard drive.

Does anyone here have any advice on what the problem might be and what
the next step shoud be towards solving it?

-Jonathan

jfklein@shaw.ca wrote:

Peter T. Breuer · Guest

In comp.sys.laptops jfklein@shaw.ca wrote:

Guest

Peter T. Breuer wrote:

GomJabbar · Guest

Guest

On 29 Oct 2005 23:23:16 -0700, GomJabbar wrote:

Wacky Wizard · Guest

A quick google for PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA found this result on the
MS site:

"This problem occurs because the driver for the USB Universal Reader
from Lexar Media, Inc is not compatible with Windows XP."

Further reading point to other possible causes but I guess its a
starting point.
CU

Atrios · Guest

Went back to your original July post to confirm that you reformatted
the HD and did fresh install of Windows 2000. This is right approach
but sometimes doesn't catch everything.

Your initial take was that you had bad RAM but most of your tests seem
to indicate that it was clean. The problem may not be in physical RAM
but in the virtual RAM swapfile on the disk. I've had more time to go
back and look at my old HD that wasn't working. It did have a lot of
bad sectors but the data was intact for the most part. I'm guessing
that if you have similar issue to me then your swapfile is corrupt.
This explains why you get a different page fault error each time. If
the swapfile is corrupt on the disk then when it pages it in and tries
to read the address location it bombs (BSOD).

If you still have the HD from the 600E you may want to try using it
with a fresh Windows 2000 install. Then you can run diagnostics
against the original 600X drive. One of the early posts mentions the
ultimate boot CD (http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/download.html). The
tool that I mentioned for IBM-Hitachi HD - Drive Fitness Test is on
there. If your HD manufacturer is someone else (Maxtor, Seagate,
Western-Digital, Samsung, etc.) they are also there. These tools also
include utils to fix the problem. The only manufacturer that I know
that does not provide these tools is Toshiba but you might be able to
use one of the other third party tools.

Regarding the formatting; if you used Windows to format the drive it
sometimes doesn't catch all the potential hardware issues. The above
mentioned tools are better for validating health. There are also other
third party monitoring tools that will run in Windows such as HDDLife.

Hope this helps,
Atrios

jfklein@shaw.ca wrote:

	PC Hardware Forum Index -> Laptops	All times are GMT
Page 1 of 1