Fatal Errors and BSOD's with WinXP

[Praey]

Hi,

I'm new here so I hope I am going about asking for help the right way. I have, for awhile, been getting Fatal Errors and Bluescreens followed by a system restart when running any program. Only a few, IE and Trillian included, don't cause either of those. Programs that do cause it are more or less any game, Winamp, and I think once or twice with MS Office apps. I checked the Event Viewer in the Administrative Tools and could find nothing that would point me in the right direction but I did see that an error occured with drwtsn32.exe. I turned off the auto-restart when errors of this type occur and recorded, so far, one fatal error message while running WC3:

FATAL ERROR!
Program: C:\program files\warcraft iii\war3.exe
Exception: 0xC0000005 (ACCESS_VIOLATION) at 001B:6F0509DB
The instruction at '0x6F0509DB' referenced memory at '0x01000007'.
The memory could not be 'read'.

I'm running an Alienware Area 51-m laptop that I got back in March of this year and have been experiencing these problems since about April. Nothing out of the ordinary happened that would cause something like that, to my knowledge. Recently I did have a couple trojan infections but got rid of them quickly. I don't believe they caused any serious damage, if any at all.

I'm not sure what to do to solve this problem but it is reoccuring and is starting to drive me up the wall. I'm hoping someone here could point me in the right direction.

Thanks,
Praey

System:
Alienware Area51-m Laptop
Windows XP SP1
Intel P4 2.8
1GB DDR 3200 RAM
ATI Mobility 9600

 

[MrChad]

Run Memtest86 to rule out a failing memory module. The test will take a while, so you might want to run it overnight. If you get any errors at all, it's almost certainly a RAM or motherboard issue.

Oh, and welcome to the forums

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: Praey
Hi,

I'm new here so I hope I am going about asking for help the right way. I have, for awhile, been getting Fatal Errors and Bluescreens followed by a system restart when running any program. Only a few, IE and Trillian included, don't cause either of those. Programs that do cause it are more or less any game, Winamp, and I think once or twice with MS Office apps.

Please follow the steps in my .sig, and if you'd like, send me the .cab and mini dump files from c:\windows\minidump, and I'd be happy to look at them....

 

[Praey]

Thanks so much. I am going to run Memtest86 tonight and will also email any .cab and mini dump files.

Thanks again.

 

[dclive]

Hi Praey,

Please re-read the URL in my .sig and follow those directions. You need to update all drivers, update Windows with all updates, and run the MPS Reports utility. Please read the entire URL post (the top post).

Thank you!

 

[Praey]

Oh! I see now, sorry about that. I read it over but don't have time tonight. I will work through it asap.

Thanks!

 

[Praey]

I think the drivers for the MOBO may have fixed it but I'm not sure. I'll have to see if any problems arise now. For now, though, I'm calling it fixed. Thanks for the help guys.