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skeptic555

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25 years ago

S

skeptic555

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7355

February 10th, 2002 17:00

"Memory could not be read"

Greetings. My 8100 (256Meg, 1 gHZ, 60G HD) occasionally returns an error such as the following:
"Instruction at 0x73dd1351 referenced memory at 0x00000004. This memory could not be read" followed by the offending program crashing.

This error does not apper to be OS related, as it occured under ME and now XP, and appears not to be application-specific either, as multiple programs have triggered similar messages (although video editing apps such as video wave and pinnacle's Studio 7 seem to cause it frequently). Could this be a bad RAM chip? Anyone have experience with anything similar? Dell gives me the standard "program conflict" answer- but that seems to be the path of least resistance (and least cost) for them, so i'm not sure I believe them... Any and all advice greatly appreciated...
Steve Neruda

  • FI

    fix-it

    1 Rookie

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    Posted February 10th, 2002 18:00

    I would run the 32 bit diagnostics from Dell (especially the memory diagnostics).

    http://support.dell.com/us/en/filelib/download/download.asp?fileid=R35189&format=39183&sid=DIM_PNT_P4_8100〈=EN&lib=13&os=DOS&searchtype=filter&devid=196&type=DIAG

    Jerry




  • J

    Jennirey

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    Posted February 10th, 2002 23:00

    I would also run the segment for video in the dell diags. Might be the rom chip on the video card. what video card do you have?

  • S

    skeptic555

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    Posted February 12th, 2002 02:00

    Thanks for the replies - ran the full diagnostics - including video (Nvidia Gforce2 MX400 - with latest drivers from nvidia), and no errors found. Strange.

    Some weeks ago I was getting error reports using mcafee's diag tool, but I have since uninstalled that program (seemed like the source of many conflicts under ME. Looks like i need to reinstall and run that again to see if I can recreate the errors...

    Thanks again for the advice...

    SN

  • S

    stw2914

    8 Posts

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    Posted February 12th, 2002 11:00

    I have been having the same problem for months...
    8100, 512 Ram, 40 HD, 1700 mgz and I can only open
    up a few programs and the system resources go
    below 25% and systems gets close to freeze.

    Same from Dell...try this, try that..

    Thx for link, will run tests again.

  • K

    Kanuk001

    472 Posts

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    Posted February 12th, 2002 12:00

    It might seem like Dell is taking the easy way out, but typically this type of error IS a software and not a hardware problem. The memory cannot be read because the Operating System has protected it from tampering.

    I would check for out-of-date drivers. I would doubt it is hardware related.

    Which program(s) is/are executing when this error occurs?

    Charles,
    Tag # 6VMY111

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