BSOD

[topspinner]

At least once a day I get the Blue screen of death. I have gotten error messages IRQL not lost or equal to, Bad Pool Caller and PFN list corrupt. Also, the computer just turns off as well. I am running an amd xp 1600+ chip, with 1gig memory. I have run diagnostics on all of my hard ware and no error messages come up. Also, in device manager there are no errors showing.

I called the people that I bought my computer form and they suggested reformatting my hard drive which sounded awful drastic. Any help would be most appreciated, as it is very frustrating being in a poker game and having the system shutdown when you have a pair of aces. The funny thing, is that besides this problem, the computer is running better than it ever has.

[FouTight]

Not drastic. Reformat.

Also, are you on Win 98 or something?

[BBill]

look in the system or application logs instead of device manager for an error message or stop code, you should see something like "Stop 0x000000CE" This is just a sample error code of course.

get "your" stop code and search for it on http://support.microsoft.com
note: this microsoft site prefers you to use IE rather than Mozilla.

[topspinner]

No using windows xp home edition. Seems pretty drastic to me as I will lose all my programs and I do not have disks for all of them. Also, I am not sure if this will fix the problem.

[FouTight]

My serious advice to you is that if you aren't fully prepared at anytime to reformat your computer, you shouldn't be doing anything on it. You should have everything backed up and ready to go, because something bad WILL happen at som epoint that you can't fix.

I assume you've done your updates too?

[topspinner]

where are the system or application log located?

As far as having the system backed up. I do have a backup. However, it is my understanding that I cannot load the programs from backup, is that not correct? I thought you can just reload the data files. I am back up my system to an external hard drive. Also have use acronis true image, to make an image of my hard drive.

[BBill]

in XP home just
- right click on the "my computer" icon
- select "manage"
- select "event viewer"
look at the application and system logs for a stop code:

or possibly you can lookin in
Start -> Help and Support -> Tools -> Advanced System Information -> "View the Error Log"

It should be there.

[stabn]

[ QUOTE ]
Not drastic. Reformat.

Also, are you on Win 98 or something?

[/ QUOTE ]

This is horrible advice in this case. It is much more likely to be ram/heat/motherboard/drivers than it is something that can be fixed by reformatting.

[BBill]

yeah - per the following urls from MS it looks like a driver problem. The 2nd url suggests running the "driver verifier". If your really into fixing it you could follow the steps the suggest:

pfn error

bad call error

[topspinner]

Bill, thanks for all of your help. Turned out to be bad memory. Even though I ran diagnostic test on memory and it showed no errors. I took out one stick of ram and have had no errors for the past day.