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

Well I have gotten this error twice on my Inspiron 9400. I ran through Dell's diagnostics to check my memory and it came out clean. I have an Atheros card installed with the 0.107 drivers so I don't know if that could be causing an issue and the latest Nvidia drivers from dell.

Anything else I can test to try to track this down?

Edit: I left my laptop just sitting there when I went to lunch and came back to this error. This is seriously not good. I am trying a different set of graphics drivers to see if that fixes anything.

 

Stay away from the Dell gfx drivers, i have been crash free for over a month now since installing some none nV ones.

As for wireless drivers i have a Intel wireless card so i don't think its that.

 

I switched to non-dell drivers about an hour ago and ran Nvidia's stress test for 45 minutes without an issue. Im now just letting my laptop sit there and see whether it crashes again.

 

This stupid errors takes time to test and take time to crash... The most serious issue I've ever seen that hit a large number of notebooks.

 

So are you using Nvidia drivers, dell drivers, or some other drivers?

 

For those who are interested the following video card drivers helped me "cure" my NMI parity for almost 2 months now

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_mobile_84.63.html

 

Crazy....the Nvidia drivers MADE my 1705 BSOD, and when I reinstalled the Dell ones, I've been crash free for over a month.

Strange that this affects so many different systems for different reasons.

 

I think it's likely due to a bug in the BIOS code, in some API commonly accessed by different device drivers, for example the ACPI interface.

IIRC, this has only happened to me in Windows (both XP and BartPE), but not in Linux. I think there's a possibility that if you upgrade to Vista, it'll go away (because of a new ACPI driver, for example).

 

argh. my laptop just gave me this error after installing laptopvideo2go 100.59 nvidia vista drivers and 9746 vista drivers crashed my system hard.

 

Another Update

More than a month now I'm BSOD free! didn't do any driver update just updated
my T60 bios to the latest 2.0.9 which indicates in Lenovo's website that it cures BSOD!

 

They are Dell drivers but not the ones on the Dell site and they are certified by MS as well!

nVIDIA ForceWare 92.77 for Windows XP/2K 32bit
http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=12177

You don't need to mod them or anything they will install just fine! but as with all none "other" Dell drivers close lid - light off doesn't work

I suspect they are leaked drivers which were certified but just never released for some reason?

I have had them on for over a month and half now with the system been on from 2/3 hours to 5 days with big bouts of gaming as well. Without a problem yet.

 

Well, I just got this error two days ago. (Had the laptop for a bit more than 3 weeks now).
At the time it happened, my laptop screen was on screensaver I believe (I set it to 3 min). I had rome total war open but alt tabbed into windows to check some files.

I was looking at the desktop, which I place right beside it, at the time because I was transferring files from desktop to laptop. (Desktop Wired to Router to Wireless to Laptop) It mentioned some memory error on my desktop and it crashed my explorer and the file transfer cancelled. Then when I tried to see how much of the transfer went through to my notebok (by trying to come out of the screensaver). I got the blue screen with the NMI: Parity Check thing.

It may be a one time freak accident but I'm just sharing my experience.

 

omg.this is really bad. It prevent me from taking a new Dell E1505 or 6400. The solution is do not buy a dell laptop , isn't it ?

 

Thanks for the link. Won't install on a Go 7800 without INF modification. Added the Go 7800 to install the same as the Go 7800 GTX.
Let's see what this does. I usually get one error per day.

 

OKAY! You have all done good research. I have been trying to beat this problem for some time now and with reading this, I think I know the source.

My situation is a bit different. I installed 2 different Atheros wi-fi cards in my M1710... After install, NMI Memory Parity Error. Take it out, and it is gone.

We have done many things to take care of this. Dell released the latest bios which was supposed to take care of it (so it IS a known issue by the way...), but it didnt.

What I see here is people have problems with their Video and Wireless cards. Lets think.... what do both share? THE PCI-E BUS!!!! The PCI-E bus is getting confused when there is heavy bandwidth being shared between the network and Video Card. You dont have to be using the wireless card, it just needs to be on and connected to the router. I was able to notice this when my atheros card was in. I still don't know how to fix, but there lies the root of the problem.

I updated to the latest INF's from Intel's website and ditched the Dell ones. That seemed to help things a bit.

 

My laptop was just sitting there with the Atheros card not connected to any wireless routers (all of the ones at my office are locked down) and I received this error. I am also currently using non-Dell nvidia drivers but I think that this problem has also been seen with ATI video cards. I wonder if it is a PCI-E problem. I have only seen this problem occuring when I am not doing anything with my laptop (it is just sitting at the background).

 

My Broadcom wireless card (Dell 1390) never had this problem though. This problem only started after I switched to the Atheros card. They both use PCI-E.

 

Disable the wireless connection and the wireless connection software tool. I usually keep this disabled til i need to use it. Try this for a few days and see if the BSOD appears.

 

Hey everybody,

I believe this is an ICQ-Fault!
I've had this error nearly every day, but after i uninstalled icq and cleaned my registry from it, this bsod never happened again. Probably it cant deal with dualcore or something. With Trillian instead i've got no problem at all.

That's my solution, probably everyone got his own...
BTW, ive got a T60 with dc 2ghz and x1400.

 

With this problem, it's very risky to update the BIOS. What if the machine crashes during the BIOS update? That would certainly be an RMA, i.e. if it's within warranty period.

 

I was crossing my fingers when I updated my 9400 to the A07 bios.

 

Nope, Trillian won't fix it. I've been running Trillian on my 9400 and I received this error yesterday. I've had the laptop for just over a week, so it took just over a week to get the error.

 

Never used text chat on this PC so it wasnt ICQ or any other.

 

Has anyone seen this problem happen in linux?

 

Just another update, since switching to official nvidia drivers ive been crash free, its been quite a few months now.

 

Congrats!!! I'm done with Dell's computer though. After 8months of using and experiencing BSODs Dell finally give me a refund. No more System exchange.

 

Dell's solution to this problem:

Thank you for contacting Dell Technical Support.

After going through your mail I can understand that you are receiving error messages on your system.

I would request you to run PC Restore on your computer; this will restore factory settings on your computer.

Um...NO!

 

How is it that they can't figure this out? It's obviously been going on for a while now, and through process of elimination, you'd think they'd knock it out. The key is figuring out what piece of hardware all of these notebooks have in common (and that isn't the graphics card). They need to figure out a fix soon or I will be knocking on their door asking for a refund.

 

FYI, I reinstalled XP Media Center last night with a clean install, and that didn't help. Still getting the BSODs.

 

Just an update

I updated to the AO7 bios and as well I also started using the drivers listed above (the 92. whatever) and no BSOD so far. I'll update if I get it

http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=12177

 

I wonder What's Dell doing or are they even trying to fix this issue..

Things we have in common : MOTHERBOARD and a slot for dedicated graphic card.

 

I ONLY get this crash when I am playing World of Warcraft on my Dell Inspiron E1705, with my 7900 graphic card. I want to try the new driver solution ( http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_mobile_84.63.html), however when I'm installing it, it tells me it has not passed the Windows Logo testing to verify it's compatibility with Windows XP, and that it will mess my computer up if it ends up not being compatible. Can anyone here confirm that it is indeed compatible and that my computer is just trying to freak me out?

 

I remember getting that same message myself when I installed those drivers but I just ignored it since I figured that since the drivers were coming directly from NVidia they must know what they are doing... in any case, for me those drivers got rid of my NMI parity error almost 2 months now...

 

are any Vista users getting this error?

(FWIW: going on two months, new + loaded I9400, latest dell drivers = never had a crash)

 

I have gotten the error with the A07 bios in my 9400. Dell is insisting that it is a software error so I must reset my system back to the default when it arrived.

 

All I did was told them about the error (I conveniently got one while on the phone with them), told them I did the extended diagnostics and that I ruled out most driver and software possibilities by reinstalling windows and switching out various drivers with alternate versions to no avail. Within about 10 minutes the guy got a supervisor override and had me send it to the depot. He asked that I keep my hard drive and battery with me.

P.S. - I never actually reinstalled windows but I was about 100% certain it wasn't windows causing the error.

P.S. - The laptop shipped back to me today so we will see what happens. I will clean install windows when it comes back.

 

The install I currently have on my 9400 was actually from my 9300 but I Sysprepped it before the move and then it had to redetect all hardware. Could this potentially cause a problem?

 

Yup, I fear that it could be a motherboard problem.

 

Hmm, well I installed the driver from Nvidia, but I'm still BSODing.

One thing I will mention though about my case. I ONLY get the BSOD while I am playing World of Warcraft, no other time. Recently I have only been able to log on and play for about 3 minutes before the whole thing goes down. Other WoW players also have the same case, only while playing WoW, they will get this message. Also, it only started after a new big patch getting the game ready for the expansion.

If this is a Motherboard problem, how does updating a video game cause such a conflict? The WoW community (from what I can find) still has no answer for it either. People have tried running the game with different properties, reinstalling over and over and over, new hardware, etc.

 

I spent about 4-5 hours actively using my 9400 without any problems. It wasn't until I closed all of my apps and left it by itself so that it would suspend and then caused it to unsuspend that I received the NMI error. Weird.

 

I recently purchased a Lenovo T60 notebook. I have been getting this error ever since day 1. I tried uninstalling the driver but windows keeps installing the regular ATI drivers. After searching through many forums, I finally decided to try uninstalling the regular ATI drivers and installing a third party driver for my computer. I decided to go to www.omegadrivers.net and install the drivers they had on their website. So far, its only been a few hours and i have not gotten an error, compared to getting an error about once an hour. I'm pretty sure its the notebook manufacturer's drivers that is causing the issue and I'm hoping that the third party driver will be able to solve the issue. Omegadrivers.net supports ati and geforce cards but make sure you read the faq section and how to install. Good Luck Everyone. Hopefully this fixes everyone's problems.

I am running core 2 duo 1.66, 512MB memory, ATI x1400 radeon.

 

Another person having this problem - E1705 w/ 7900 Go GS or whatnot.

Once upon a time, I used the default Dell drivers and had this problem fairly often. I switched to regular nVidia drivers and things were good.

Now my problem is that every time I run FEAR not more then 5 minutes into the actual game does this error pop up. Interesting, because I haven't really had a problem with this error for a while. The curious thing is that a game like Supreme Commander, which at one point my system noted was consuming a record-breaking 1.7 GB of RAM (ow, my pagefile!), did NOT exhibit this problem. Oblivion and Prey also did not have these problems (Oblivion did before I changed drivers).

EDIT: The 9277 drivers didn't work (I think that's what they are). GPU temperature was ~ 81 degrees Celsius before crash in FEAR. What's interesting is that on the blue crash screen it was saturated with what appeared to be dead pixels. While I was sure nothing could just 'cause' dead pixels to appear I was worried. At about two-dozen places on the blue screen were large pixels of off-colors of various types. During the reboot, those pixels persisted through the various boot screens but disappeared during the actual windows GUI rendering.

 

I gave up. Even though the Atheros wireless card has better range, I changed back to the original Broadcom BCM4311 (Dell 1390) card. I've had no more BSODs. =)

The sporadically occurring BSODs were just too disruptive to my work.

 

Well I mean, they work, just not within the realms of making the BSOD go away...

 

I have found that the Atheros' card's antenna needs to be on and the laptop unused so that it attempts to "sleep". At that point I get the NMI.

 

I just got yet another BSOD. It has been not more than 5 days since getting the laptop back. I will call them in the morning but not before formatting my drive clean tonight. I'll backup what I can.

The main kicker is this time I will be demanding a refund. They have had their chance.

Oh and in addition to this issue now my power adapter isn't being picked up most of the time. Maybe I'll skip it and go straight to unresolved issues. Do you think I should?

EDIT: One more thing here. My wireless adapter..... was disabled at the time this occured! This rules out the wireless adapter theory someone else had. At least the radio part was disabled

 

I've decided to skip over technical support and go straight to unresolved issues explaining what the ticket was originally opened for and what has happened since then.

Here is what I told them (case 155433945)

 

Below is a comment from a poster on anandtech forum. (You said you disabled the wireless adapter. That's on the driver level. Doesn't stop the BIOS from interfacing with the wireless card eeprom for power management. Basically, the BSODs came from the atheros card not working well with the Dell BIOS. I bet if you remove the atheros card and put the original Dell 1390 card back in there, the BSODs will stop.)

"I can speak with relative authority since I work for a major wireless chip vendor and have been involved in problems such as you describe. The NMI you are seeing is probably the system BIOS flagging an SERR (PCIE unrecoverable error) since it doesn't recognize the PCI device ID, system ID, or subsystem or subvendor IDs when it enumerates the PCI config space. It is doing this because of the fact that it helps the laptop vendor ensure FCC compliance and minimize tech support calls from people who swap hardware like you just did. Please read my previous post for vendor that flag SERR or block against unqualified wireless adapters.

A later BIOS may disable the SERR flag but I doubt it and you won't get support from your laptop vendor either for this. There's no real way around this, and that is part of the reason why I issued my warning as I did above against doing what you just did.

Dell does not assert SERR with insertion of an unsupported wrieless card. If it blue screens, and this were the case, it would be an NMI and there would be no crash trace, as is the case with NMIs.

More than likely, if you look at the crash dump of this dell BSOD and did a stack backtrace there'd be the Atheros or some other driver sitting on or near the top of the stack. If it was an SERR assertion you wouldn't see a driver since the line would be asserted when the config space is enumerated.

I don't think people understand the complexity of PCIE cores and all the bad things that can happen with ASPM power management and all the workarounds that go into making those laptops stable. Just swapping cards and assuming they're going to work is rolling dice."

 

Well I seem to have fixed my NMI BSOD by updating my Atheros wireless card drivers. I had been using the ones that came with the Atheros client software but when I updated to the ones from IBM/Lenovo (ending in 112d) my BSOD's went away. My laptop would get the NMI whenever the wifi antenna was on AND it was about to enter sleep mode. I have let it enter sleep mode about a dozen times in the last day and it hasn't crashed yet.

My problem definitely seems to have been a driver issue.