Windows XP balls up

[trentsteel]

Page file error or something it seems, blue screen of death says "page error in non-paged area" each time I start up Windows XP and when i try to reinstall XP on any of my 2 hard disks

I really don't want to format my drives as I have no way to back them up, and I cannot access one of them on Windows 98 as it is NTFS

Is there any way around the error or a way to access an NTFS drive using Windows 98?

[Shaun]

Have you run chkdsk /F on the drives concerned?

[Stuart]

That error can indicate faulty RAM. If you need to access your NTFS drives under Windows 98, there is a utility at http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/fr.../ntfsdos.shtml that will help (look for the Win 98 version though)

[Paul]

How many sticks of RAM have you got on your mobo? If its more than one try taking one out to see if the problem goes away, if not put it back in and remove the alternate stick.
If you have only one stick installed it looks like its gone a bit sick

[trentsteel]

Originally Posted by Paul

How many sticks of RAM have you got on your mobo? If its more than one try taking one out to see if the problem goes away, if not put it back in and remove the alternate stick.
If you have only one stick installed it looks like its gone a bit sick

2 sticks of RAM, I'll try that later...if it turns out to be that then is there any way to prevent it in future, and why does it only affect Windows XP? Sorry for questions but I'm a little annoyed, every 3 months or so my computer packs in

EDIT: Just looked at the NTFS for windows 98 site, need to copy files from the NTFS drive beforehand Nooooooooooooooooooo!

[SMHarman]

It shouldn't only affect XP, but all os's, though if you are running on a really old os, like 98 it may not be able to address the faulty ram.

Prevent in future by buying quality ram?

Are you doing something specific at the time it packs in? My Laptop was delivered from dell with faulty ram. You wouln't know until you were doing some heavy processing / ram intensive stuff, when the BSOD would appear. This was because of the 512Mb card, the first 340Mb addressed fine, so if the session used less than 340Mb of ram it was fine, once apps needed more than that it crashed.

There are some RAM testing apps out there, Dell have one on their diagnostic CD.

[Paul]

XP can be very fussy as far as system critical hardware like RAM is concerned and will take no risks if it even thinks the hardware is faulty. I had a similar fault with my home PC and removing a defective RAM stick cured it. As to stopping it occuring again, keep your PC clean, away from magnets etc and buy good quality RAM, apart from that there is very little you can do.

[Salu]

http://www.memtest86.com/memtest86-3.1a.iso.zip

for a memory tester that is a bootable CDROM

[trentsteel]

Right its not the RAM unless both sticks are faulty, so it looks as though I'll have to go for Plan B and set up a second computer, which I've been meaning to do for a while anyway, and then transfer the drive into new one and so on and so forth...I think it will be sorted in time for Christmas anyway

[horse]

Reading NTFS in DOS.

Doesn't help with the initial problem but it is possible to copy any files you want to save using the boot disc available from here,

http://www.bootdisk.com/txtfiles/readntfs.htm

I've tried it myself and it seems to work well.

horse

[Paul]

Originally Posted by trentsteel

Right its not the RAM unless both sticks are faulty, so it looks as though I'll have to go for Plan B and set up a second computer, which I've been meaning to do for a while anyway, and then transfer the drive into new one and so on and so forth...I think it will be sorted in time for Christmas anyway

How old is the RAM in question? Mine was brand new when it developed the problem.

[trentsteel]

Originally Posted by Paul

How old is the RAM in question? Mine was brand new when it developed the problem.

Both only a few months old, oldest dates back to just before Christmas just gone, and both were from different places and are different makes etc.

Horse: the program doesn't work, too many partitions it says, thanks anyway

[philip.j.fry]

To get access to the files, download a bootable Linux distribution and burn it to CD, you can get small versions (~50mb) and you can put it on a CDRW so you don't waste a disk. Then boot into this and you will be able to read your NTFS partitions and move the data over to the fat partitions where you can recover it. Just make sure that the distro you download is using a 2.6.x kernel.

[dilligaf1701]

Or you could use a 'run from cd' version of linux (eg knoppix or mandrake move)- that'll read your ntfs hdd's.....

edit - arse - beaten to it

[Buzzby]

You can always use ntfsdos, here's one site with a free download.

http://www.ntfs.com/products.htm