T60 Blue Screen Problem

Hi, I bought a new T60 2.0ghz, 2.00 ram Windows Vista Home Premium lap top this summer. Everything has been running great up until yesterday, when I began experiencing the Blue Screen problem about every 15-20 minutes. It has happened 6-8 times in the last 24 hours. The Blue Screen says...

***Hardware Malfunction
Call your hardware Vendor for Support
NMI: Parity Check/Memory Parity Error
*** The System has Halted***

Any idea why this is happening. Thanks.

 

You should run memtest86+. You might have faulty RAM.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=142746

 

Can I run it without burning it to a cd?

 

I do not believe so because you need to test your RAM when it is not active. Running off a bootable cd will ensure that very little RAM is in use to run the test.

 

It had been working fine for 5 months, and it just suddenly started happening. It doesn't matter if I am watching a video or surfing the net.

 

It does sound like bad RAM. I had something similar happen - laptop ran for several months, then it suddenly crashed when I was running a game. After that, it wouldn't even start up unless I let it cool down for a while.

Memtest (between crashes) found hundreds of RAM errors.

Unfortunately, in my case, the RAM was integrated...

 

What did you do? How can I replace the Ram? Will I lose all of my files?

 

You will still have all of your files. Just send the RAM back and they'll replace it if it's still under warranty.

If not, you can always look at the RAM Deals here on NBR.

Here are installation/removal videos: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-63959

 

Arkit3kt

I'm sure that the folks appreciate your help with testing the RAM, but I believe that an update, program or driver, etc is creating memory access issues that we are all experiencing. I too have owned my T60 WS since March of 2007 with no issues or BSOD's coming up.

Memory access time issues can occur when the chips reach a higher operating temperature which is what I believe what along with myself ajgarcia and pexilot are encountering. I am lucky to own a second T60 so I have been able to do some additional testing. The other T60 is for biz use and has XP and less options than my Vista Ultimate T60 WS.

I have tested the following scenarios and have found when I have only 1 - 1GB SIMM that I do not have the BSOD with the NMI error happening. When a second SIMM whether another 1GB or 512KB is placed and both of them are in place and heat up then the BSOD comes back.

I have made sure I have all of the BIOS and Lenovo/IBM updates, etc to eliminate obvious conflicts. Lenovo help shows a conflict with the built in wireless card in the 61 series mini cards but nothing for the 60 series computers.

I know that pixelot and myself are running Vista so I am curious if ajgarcia is running vista as well?

=====================
Lenovo T60 WS - Intel Core Duo T7200 2.0GHZ, 2MB Ram - OS Windows Vista U - Hard Drive(s) 1x120GB + 1x100GB

 

He's running Vista. It says so in his post.

 

I guess that our culprit may be with a recent update and something is in conflict. I guess I will continue to do some more homework to figure out what is going on.

I tested overnight the memory that was giving the BSOD with the NMI error in a T60 running Windows XP and there were no issues in the past 12 hours where after 30 minutes or so it would give the BSOD on the T60 running Vista.

 

do you have turbo memory?

 

This person has the same issue I believe: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=92036

I think it might be a problem with your wireless adapter.

 

Arkit3kt,

You are right. My problem is with my slot D-Link Wireless N card. IBM tech support could not identify it and they indicated it was a "Hardware" problem and had me send my computer back. I took my hard drives and put them in another T60 that I have and guess what......... NMI Parity Error.

I did a lot of reading to isolate the problem as IBM tech support focused on the mini pci abg card. I had always told them that I had a "N" card in the PMCIAA slot. I actually had to roll back the driver that Microsoft sent down through microsoft update. My card has the Atheros chip in it and the latest update was not on the D-Link website. I downloaded the previous update and I have not had the BSOD with NMI Parity since then.

 

I'm glad you were able to figure out the problem. Good luck with your system, CliftonParkGMan.

 

I have also shared my experiences with Lenovo / IBM support, Microsoft and Atheros so that they can save many others from the grief I have experienced.

 

eyecon82,

No I do not, but this was a question that Lenovo / IBM support asked me about. I guess my big learning is that "Memory Parity" errors are not necessarily related to memory.

 

I've recently run into the bsod problem. It does so every time now. I've found that if I disable the built in Intel wireless adapter in the bios that I can boot in to Windows XP. I will try to update all the latest drivers tonight. The problem occurred after my machine went into hibernation. It wouldn't connect to the network. After playing around a little and re-booting that's when the problem started. I've already tried the change at http://forum.notebookreview.com/archive/index.php/t-105307.html here's a quote from that thread "The turning point was disabling “Deep Smart Power Down” on the Intel Pro/1000 PL Network Connection".
Does anyone have any other recommendations?

Update: Here's what (I think) solved the problem. I first tried just updating the bios using the thinkvantage utility. It downloaded everything but when I told it to install it went through some gyrations and told me that it didn't install. After a few times doing that I gave up. Then I downloaded the latest wireless card driver and installed it. I re-enabled the wireless card in the bios (Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG) and re-booted. This time it made it a little farther into Windows before bsod. (I still can't find any log of it on my hd) After it said it found new hardware it crashed. So I re-booted and went into safe mode. Uninstalled the driver and re-started Windows. Everything looked good. I figured it would find new hardware and I'd have to re-install the driver. To my surprise when I went into device manager my card was there/installed and working. My ThinkVantage connections app no longer works. But the wireless card works now. I'm currently using the windows utility to connect. Though I doubt I've seen the last of the bsods on this machine based on my experience and others experiences at least I can get some work done now. I may try to re-install the ThinkVantage crap later or maybe not. Can someone give me a good reason why I should use that instead? When I find time I may wipe the drive and install XP again without all the other ThinkVantage stuff.