NMI: Parity Check/ Memory Parity Error -- System crash

Hi,

I'm on my second notebook and 3rd screen from dell. Four times now, I have got this error message that crashs my entire system:

*** Hardware Malfunction
Call your hardware vendor for support
NMI: Parity Check/Memory Parity Error
*** The system has halted ***​

I've googled for the answer, but with little success. Can anyone speculate what the problem is? I after market upgraded my HDD to an Hitachi 80G 7200RMP and the memory to G.Skill 1G DDR 2 (two of those).

Is this motherboard issues or bad RAM? Needless to say, if anyone has every had any experiences will Dell, they have been terrible so far. I will never deal with them again.

HELP!

 

It is the RAM. Does it do that with the factory installed Dell RAM?

This sounds more like a G.Skill issue rather than a Dell issue.

 

I just got the same error today while only viewing powerpoint documents. It's also happened before to me. I just restart and it's fine tho. I haven't touched anything in my system so i wouldn't think it would be his g.skill memory..

 

Thanks for sharing guys

What should I do? This has happened twice now while watching heroes online, and 2 other times just doing normally word processing stuff.

 

This happens to me too. I have a E1705, about 2 months old, and it started happening about 3 weeks ago. Has 2gb of memory, installed by Dell, I ran memtest on it and it passed fine, the only thing ive done is flash the 7900GS bios to overclock, but if it crashes, my machine is generally either idleing or just using media player or something, hasnt done it playing games. It can go days too without a crash, then one appears.

 

I have 3 replacements and the 3rd one which i'm using is 1 month old. All 3 have a problem with BSOD.

BSOD crashes every single 2 weeks or so. After it crashes the first time , it'll crash again after about 20mins when i restarted. IT's a permanent period and it's really weird. It's not the RAM like everyone thought. I think it's the video card and it isn't cause people outhere using x1400 and 7900GS both crashes.

Final conclusion, no solution for it. Call Dell anyway to get a replacement. If you give them 3 chances and they can't fix it, demand for refund. That's what i'm going to do. Go for some other models / brands laptops out there.

The system randomly crashing makes me nervous and if it crashes when i'm doing important project and buy things online.. the whole process will be ruined. It's really sucks.

If more and more people complain this, dell will notice and make an investigation on it.

 

Thanks mate,

I put the original RAM from Dell back into the computer and it still crashed. Obviously, this isn't a RAM issue. Dell thinks it is the HDD, but I don't think so. I'm also using the x1400 video card so maybe you are on to something there.

Unfortunately, Dells just want to keep sending me components to plug into it. Next week, I'll ask for a new replacement computer. If that doesn't work, I'll try to get my money back from them, but they never give me any of my demands.

If anyone else has gotten this error message, please post!

 

I've heard about this error but have yet to actually see it. This error has to do with anything that has memory on it. It may also be bad settings (i.e. bios set for ECC memory when non-ECC is installed). So the RAM, Video Card, or Processor is likely culprits as they all have some form of memory. Also if you had added any new devices they may be causing it. The 3 that I mentioned though are the most likely ones. The error is so vague though that it makes it difficult to diagnose.

P.S. - The error is just as vague in Windows 2000 and in Vista whenever it does occur.

 

I wonder if its connected to software we have installed?

 

Pretty sure it is not the software.

For me, I have had the problem 6 times now, 4 recently while watching Streaming Flash Video online from youtube, break, or nbc.com. The other 2 times were just completely random.

And once again, for me, it isn't the RAM.

 

Its happened to me more often than not streaming something too. Very strange indeed.

 

bump this thread.

Of course , this is the strangest hardware problem I've ever seen. Unluckily it hits the new Core2Duo line of Dell.

I don't know if any users out there owns system that does and does not crash at all.

 

My System:

Core 2 T7400 @ 2.16 HGhz
XP MCE (fully patched)
ATI X14000
DDR 2 RAM 2G --> (DDR 512 from Dell)

15.4 XGA w/ True Life
Sound Blaster Audigy
Intel Pro Wireless
​

I've been doing a bunch of word processing for finals and no crash. But I guarantee if I'd watch some streaming flash video, it would crash.

I wonder if we can find commonalities between our computers crashing and our hardware.

 

My specs : Core 2 Duo 5600, XP MCE, 7900GS, DDR2 533 ram from Dell ( 2gb), 120gb 5400 HD.

I was reading another forum that suggested it might be the nvidia drivers from the dell site, I was using them for a while, and had crashes, i switched to the ones on the nvidia site 2 days ago and no crashes since, will keep this updated if i get another blue screen.

 

whatever man I tried ways and different drivers of ATi , it wont' work. I bet it'll crash on ur system in a week or 2. Something wrong with Dell's computer hardware.

 

Typically Dell...they were supposed to send me new RAM and a HDD cause that's what they thought the problem was, and they delayed my shipping! Just typically crap from Dell. I don't see how anyway could have good experience with them.

I'm calling to get a replacement lappy tomorrow. I'll keep this thread updated with the progress of the new one.

Thanks everyone!


@khanhfat: Do you notice it crashes more frequently when watching video (not DVD thought) online?

 

Mostly when i'm online , like 100% of the time My lappy online. I dont' know which hardware problem has error. But its strange man, on my 3 systems i got replaced, it crashes every single 2 weeks of using.

new notebooks aren't good as my old 1100. . I'm calling Dell this thursday and see what r they gonna do about it. I'd not accept any parts replacement and repair, it won't change a thing. And it's a waste of time doing those diagnosistic thing.

PS: they sent me a new pair of RAMs the system still crash.

 

Still no blue screens here since switching to the nvidia drivers rather than using the ones on the dell website.

 

I have ATi video cards so that' a big problem. Dell suggested to replace my motherboard, hopefully the cause is the mother board. If i get another BSOD again after repair, Dell will have a hard time.

 

So Dell sent me my third system the other day and it had the wrong components in it. I was supposed to get a Intel Dual Core 2.16 and they sent me a 2.0.

They have had over 3 chances with me and they have fail each time now. I wouldn't recommend anyone doing business with them.

@tehnewguy, where do I get these nvidia drivers and which ones exactly do I use for the ATI x1400?

 

If u have an ATIX1400, defenitely there is NO way to change switch drivers to make it stop crashing. I tried omega drivers but it didn't work, still crashing. My friend has E1705 but he don't know which graphic card he got , i think it's an INtel one , cause he told me he bought it for under 1000$.

Is there any users out there has Blue Screen Free computer that works flawlessly for more than 1 or 2 months?

Update: I sent my Dell for repair, hopefully get it back soon on 3rd Jan 07. They will replace my motherboard, i dont' know if it'll fix the issue or not. I'm looking for free upgrades this time . Intel motherboard for Dell sucks. After this experience, I wont' believe in Dell 's laptop much.

For NVidia www.laptopvideo2go.com

 

Well....after weeks of fighting with Dell and more disappoints with no response in my request to be refunded, I believe I will be filling a class action lawsuit. Apparently many people have been plagued with this problem on the e1505.

If you have had this, please post a message in this thread.

Cheers.

 

I got the memory error once a few days after I had upgraded to Windows Vista and since then everything has been running smoothly. I am running the latest Nvidia Drivers from Laptopvideo2go, vista 9746 64bit

 

You're lucky guy. Flash Gordon is right. we must do a Law Suit against dell b/c of their defective software driver /hardware conflict problem.

I don't know how to tell Dell this serious problem though. This should be like another RECALL besides the battery thing. Dell seems to ignore this. I also check Dell Oulet website, there were a lot of E1705 with ATI x1400 card in refurbish. The 7900GS E1705 were not there as many as ati, which means that there must be a problem with ATI drivers and hardware that causes those blue screen.

Some screen shots heehe

 

Exactly which driver is it that I (we) need for the ATI x1400 from laptopvideo2go?

If anyone want a USA branch of tech support in Utah, I will give you the name and number of the top representative, just PM me. I'll release the info publicly in a few days once I get done with it. Call them and complain!

 

Just an update that im still crash free after switching to the official nvidia driver. I wish i had an answer for the ATI users, it does seem to be a driver issue rather than a hardware one though.

 

Update: I swaped my current video card for another x1400 so I'll wait and see what happens.

 

Just got mine back from repair depot. They DIDN"T CHANGE OR UPGRADE ANYTHING. They wrote in the letter like: need to replace HDD, right now we don't have those instock. We will contact a rep and send to you replacement HDD. I was so mad. They didn't replace the motherboard as said like the technician told me. I'll write a letter for my rep and demand for a refund or replacement. I can't keep this computer any longer. I'm looking to change another laptop, this Dell won't work with me this time.


Flash Gordon what does this supposed to be mean? " If anyone want a USA branch of tech support in Utah, I will give you the name and number of the top representative, just PM me. I'll release the info publicly in a few days once I get done with it. Call them and complain!" - my English is not so good to comprehend this. Does that mean that you're making a law suit for this problem?

Btw, Swapping another ATI video card doesn't work. I told you that I've had 3 replacements and all 3 crashes after 3days and 1 day of using.

@ Tehnewguy, please keep on update on this thread about the status of your computer after switching to new driver. I hope it's a problem with software. About ATI driver, only ATI OMEGA works with Dell E1705. The original driver from ATI.com won't be able to run this card.

 

Ive had my 2ghz e1505 core duo x1400 since about may... and ive probably gotten this error about 20 times. When it first started happening I contacted dell... and was instructed to use the Windows CD to 'repair' my install... they said the problem was caused by the way they write HD images instead of installing all the apps themselves...

Dont know if it will resolve the problem or not... I didnt get it again for a few months so never tried the repair install... but it might be worth a try if this is bugging you. Im fairly certain that its not memory... even though thats what the error suggests.

 

May be it's just luck man... Hardware of Dell laptop should compatible with windows and other stuff, not like this . It's been crashing too much.

 

Hey everybody, I just found this thread, but I'm having the same problem.

I have an E1505 with the ATI X1400 video card, and I got the notebook in July. It's run absolutely fine until two days ago (Dec. 28) when it crashed with the Parity Check/Memory Parity Error message.

I rebooted the computer and it was fine all the next day, then it crashed again, same message, late last night. Today, it's been fine so far.

Both times, crashed while I was on an Internet forum, nothing graphics or memory intensive.

 

It sucks. I get it quite frequent. I don't know why. Could it be a bios issue?

Does dell know about this?

 

Dell absolutely knows about this and I encourage everyone of you to contact them


Call them and complain!
Please post your results.

I replaced my video card and streamed 10 desperate house wives video from abc.com with no problems. I haven't had any crashes since replacing the card.

This issue is NOT:

hard drive failure
RAM memory
or Operating System​

I'm convinced it is the video card, as this is the one component we all have in common

 

Iv seen this happen on a family friend's laptop. He bought it from Small Business. Anyway he had the motherboard exchanged, hard drive, ram and none worked. I swapped parts out of his system to test and couldnt find anything wrong. I did some research and apparently it is a video card problem. He got really fed up so he called customer support for either a replacement video card or a full refund. To cut the story short he got a system with 7900GS and didnt have the problem again.

 

I have watched the development of this thread and have decided to add my PC into the mix.

I have a 9400 it has a 7900GS with the default Dell drivers (84.69) installed and i get this crash had it about 5 times in the last 2/3 weeks. Had the laptop since Nov 4th 2006.

But its an odd one first time it crashed while it was left alone downloading off utorrent (for about 5 hours, 20 hours up time) so i thought that was the problem that and NOD32 so i did some messing and disabled NOD32. Second time about 35 hours uptime, 3rd time 25 hours, 4th time 20+ hours again all while dl'ing off utorrent and left alone. So i thought that was the reason so last night i was just surfing the web and it crashed while i was using it and i wasn't using utorrent this time! it had been up for about 50 hours as well!

Now this is the odd bit i play a lot of BF2142 (3+ hours at a time) and it has never crashed in that to date!

I have phoned Dell told them the probs they made me to all the tests, i did all of them and they all checked out fine, i did the memtest stuff as well all fine, took ram out added new ram still fine. So its bugger all to do with the ram! I have updated my wireless drivers as i use this all the time i have updated my touch pad drivers, i have tried bios A04, A05, A06 still crashed.

The next thing to try is the gfx drivers from Dells to NV's (84.63, 90.xx) but the reason i don't want to is that the NV ones don't turn the LCD off on the lid been closed i don't use standby i like to leave the PC on dl'ing etc.

Its never crashed for less than 20 hours so far and it feels rock solid but now i am worried as it crashed while just surfing which is a pain.

Bluetooth could be a part of it i have the Dell 355 module?

I am moving to a fresh install of Vista soon on a "brand new" hard disk will try that out.

But the gfx card drivers are my next step, arse!!!!!!


My first post and its long and hard to follow i bet

 

Thanks for information about the post. I have to talk to Dell more bout this issue. I have an ATI x1400 card and I want them to replace me to 7900GS. Only by that way I can switch drivers and other things to resolve this problem. Probably I'll suggest the rep who's following my case to replace the video card.

I just got my laptop from repair the other day, they didn't change a thing! I wrote a letter to Dell and tell them that I want a Refund. Then the technician told me to send to repair again. This time she'll create a special dispatch number for it. But I don't want to send to repair until she confirm and agree to replace my Videocard to Nvidia One.

Should I show this thread to the next email that I'll send to Dell?

Happy new year every1.

 

well, ive been crash free since Dec 10th after switching to the official nvidia site driver from the one posted on the Dell site, it does seem like its graphics card related but with ATI and Nvidia issues that doesnt make sense, unless theres other dell drivers somewhere thats conflicting with things?

 

Do some research on your state's lemon law. Be firm but dont be angry. Also Small Business is usually easier to deal with but if you bought from Home it is useless. Anyway you have to sound like you know what you are talking about so do some research first. If the customer support agent on the phone is balking at something go ask him/her to transfer you to the manager. Call whenever you have a problem since thats why you bought the warranty. Iv dealt with Dell Customer way more than I will ever want to again lol and from personal experience you can ask for a refund on like the 3rd or 4th case. My father runs a hedge fund and its nearly all Dells. Anyway I was getting paid for dealing with this stuff. Its pretty amazing how many Dells screw up somehow -.-"

p.s. Always ask for full system exchange for three reasons: 1) Your chances of getting it fixed is much better. 2) You dont want a Dell Technician especially those on-call ones touching your notebook. 3) You often get some upgrades when you ask for an exchange...some consolation for your troubles lol.

 

Hi everyone,

My first post here I saw this interesting thread so I decided to join and share my story with you and tell something about my experience with this problem last month I got my new IBM-Lenovo ThinkPad T60 T7200 C2D 2.00 GHZ with ATI X1400 1 GIB ram 100 GIG Hitachi 7200 Rpm Hard drive running XP PRO everything was fine system is very smooth exactly what you expect from a premium ThinkPad few days later I added another 512 stick it has the same specs as the one preinstalled by Lenovo on my notebook after the installation I started my notebook everything was excellent but few days later I started getting the BSOD system halted! immediately I talked with my brother who is an IT and he told me to remove the extra ram that I installed and update my Bios to the latest and everything will be fine and I did that he also told me that its best that if I want to upgrade my ram to use the same model from the same manufacturer I said ok after the ram removal everything went smooth for 3 weeks until today! I was watching some videos on www.metacafe.com and I opened my media player 11 and my system crashed! I received the BSOD after that I started my system and it started well I did some searching on Google and I found out this Thread I uninstalled the ATI X1400 driver that I installed from Lenovo restarted my system and went to windows update and installed the driver from there and I’m waiting! I hope it never happens again because I don’t want to lose my T60 from what I read so far I think it’s an ATI hardware problem any advice would be highly appreciated.

Thanks

 

Keep monitoring your notebook and see what will happen. I can't wait to talk to my technician and see will she do anything about it.

As English is not my first language so sometimes I felt hard to explain things in talking than writting. I'll try my best this time and ask for an exchange. NOT a mail-in repair again.

 

Can you give specifics what you did. What divers you replaced it with, urls? And can you keep us updated?

btw, I still crash free after a week and 10 streaming video, but 1 weeks isn't too long yet.....

 

Dear Flash Gordon

The drivers for ATI X1400 are available at

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?sitestyle=lenovo&lndocid=MIGR-62928

And after uninstalling that driver from Lenovo I went to Microsoft update
Run the update and installed another driver from Microsoft its working fine for now
I’m monitoring it please remember that I was crash free for three weeks!!!

 

Just had another BSOD i was reading a forum laptop was on power cord
no battrey installed.

 

I had that error on an e1505 when I first got it, after a format and reinstall, its never happend again, going on 9 months, have you guys tested your ram?
I would first remove one stick, run memtest386 on it, if all goes well, remove it, put in the other stick, run memtest, if all goes well, put them both back in,and run it again. If you are running on a dell install, factory or recovery, I highly suggest you do a clean install

 

It does it with both the NV 7900GS and ATI X1400 cards so how can this be it?

A clean install is another thing to try i know but i am running XP how i like it atm grrghhhhh

If it happen in Vista i will be asking for a complete exchange or refund tbh.

My ram is fine its passed all the Dell tests and the memtest's with one in one out and both in at the same time!


Dell? never again!

 

but Nvidia has better chance of getting Blue Screen Free.

I have 3 replacements, reinstall windows for countless time,with all latest updates from Dell. It's still crash no matter what. I'm looking for refund and get that money to buy 2 other open boxToshiba laptops max out with 7900GS.

 

I see the thread is 5 pages deep now. I just had this happen to me last week. The crazy thing was that it was just download a file. Beyond that it was sitting idle. I had it on the black screen screensaver so the video card wasn't really doing anything intensive. This was an overnight download and I woke up to the BSOD with this error on it. Rebooted and nothing was logged in the event log about it. Looks like it might be a one time incident but we will see. I'm still trying to get it to reproduce.

 

You will get an NMI parity blue screen if you try to put it in S3 standby and have installed ATI Catalyst 6.6 or later drivers...

 

Thank you Stephen

so how to get rid of this problem for good?

 

You have to install either Catalyst 6.5 (from ATI) or use the drivers on Dell web site for E1705. What I did is install just the drivers from Dell and then the latest CCC from ATI.