E1705 BSOD

My E1705 Inspiron w/all the bells and whistles, less than a year old,
throws up a BSOD (not Windows) about once a week. It says "Hardware
Malfunction, Call your hardware vendor for support, NMI Parity
Check/Memory Parity Error, The System Has Halted". I have reseated
everything that will reseat and swapped the memory around. No
difference. Ran all the F12 diagnostics which passed too. Before I
contact our friends in the east and am told to format my hard-drive has
anyone else run into this? It came originally with XP media with the
Vista upgrade, but not caring for any of that it has XP Pro sp2 on it.
Of course that will cancel any hope of support unless I reinstall the
media edition package which I'm hoping to avoid.
TIA, RJ

RJ wrote:
My E1705 Inspiron w/all the bells and whistles, less than a year old,
throws up a BSOD (not Windows) about once a week. It says "Hardware
Malfunction, Call your hardware vendor for support, NMI Parity
Check/Memory Parity Error, The System Has Halted". I have reseated
everything that will reseat and swapped the memory around. No
difference. Ran all the F12 diagnostics which passed too. Before I
contact our friends in the east and am told to format my hard-drive has
anyone else run into this? It came originally with XP media with the
Vista upgrade, but not caring for any of that it has XP Pro sp2 on it.
Of course that will cancel any hope of support unless I reinstall the
media edition package which I'm hoping to avoid.
TIA, RJ

I had the same problem on my XPS700 a year ago (when it was new). The
problem wasn't the Dell memory, which isn't parity checked to begin
with. It could be any memory, e.g., video card, PCI card, etc. I never
isolated exactly where the problem was, but it disappeared completely
after I replaced the video card and removed a Pinnacle TV capture card.
I'm using the video card in my XPS410 with nary a hiccup. The capture
card I'm not so sure of - I reinstalled it in my XPS720 (the former
XPS700) yesterday because I was having problems with a USB capture
device and had a couple of spontaneous reboots. No NMI hits, however.

I would *not* reinstall Windows - you don't diddle the software to cure
a hardware problem.

PS: Check the Dell Support site to see if they have updated diagnostics
for your E1705 - they did for both the XPS700 & XPS410.

HTH

"RJ" wrote in message
...
My E1705 Inspiron w/all the bells and whistles, less than a year old,
throws up a BSOD (not Windows) about once a week. It says "Hardware
Malfunction, Call your hardware vendor for support, NMI Parity
Check/Memory Parity Error, The System Has Halted". I have reseated
everything that will reseat and swapped the memory around. No difference.
Ran all the F12 diagnostics which passed too. Before I contact our
friends in the east and am told to format my hard-drive has anyone else
run into this? It came originally with XP media with the Vista upgrade,
but not caring for any of that it has XP Pro sp2 on it. Of course that
will cancel any hope of support unless I reinstall the media edition
package which I'm hoping to avoid.
TIA, RJ


This error may not be related to your RAM at all, but rather a
PCI/PCIexpress card or device (video, mini-pci wireless card, etc.).

Could be a driver issue for any one of those devices, especially since your
RAM passes extended (Dell) diagnostics.

Stew