Error: NMI Parity Check Error

[Pandaren]

Today I saw something I haven't seen in Windows in a LONG time: a Blue Screen of Death.

Here's what it looks like from a site by a guy who had the same error:

http://simone.seeto.com/NMI_error/index.html

I had just finished upgrading Windows XP to DirectX 9.0b so I could install the lastest Catalyst 4.4 drivers for my new Radeon 9100. I ran 3DMark2001SE and decided to play the demo to see if everything was kosher.

Everything was fine until my computer started to play the 2nd half of the demo (lobby scene). All of a sudden the system bluescreened and gave me the NMI Error. I reset and ran 3DMark2001SE again and the demo ran without problems.

I have run 3DMark a few times and have not had the same error. Any clue as to what might be wrong?

I have put my machine through memtest86 and 24+ hours of Prime95. I am 99.999% sure that the CPU, board, and RAM in this box are stable.

 

[Mark R]

This indicates a hardware problem - usually the RAM.

This is only seen with ECC or parity RAM - this type of memory is able to detect when it has been corrupted (due to a faulty chip, power glitch or cosmic ray). When the CPU receives a signal stating that the RAM is corrupt then it shuts down the PC immediately (so that corrupted information is not saved to disk).

If your system does not use ECC memory, then it may be your CPU - ECC is standard on the internal cache, so its possible that corruption of the cache triggered the error.

Consider running a RAM testing program such as Windows Memory Diagnostic (WMD) or Memtest86, but sometimes these errors indicate a one-off malfunction which can occasionally happen, rather than a genuine hardware fault.