Thanatos

Hey guys,

I have some major problems with my PC at the moment. I suspect my CPU fan is giving out, because I'm experiencing lockups about a minute into the game. I'm gonna buy a new Zalman fan to take care of that, but there's also a bigger problem too.

I also tried installing new drivers for my mobo as well as a BIOS reflash. Instead of getting a more stable system I got an un-bootable one, hahaha. Every time I start up now, whether regular, or in Safe Mode, or 'Last Known Good Configuration', I get a BSOD and it tells me it got a 'page fault in a non paged area' and that my ntfs.sys has an error.

I'm currently working to fix the situation, which I hope will be as simple as booting from the WinXP CD and performing a repair/re-install of Windows. If not, well I may be out of action for a few weeks as I get my data backed up and then reconstruct my comp.

I'll still be on the forums though because my laptop still works just fine.

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Eroak

Love the blue screen.

Reinstall should work if the ntfs file is banged up. If the file is corrupted it could easly cause a page fault. The repair should fix this issue. If not a reinstall of windows should. If that doesn't, use the repair prompt on the WinCD and use the FIXBOOT and FIXMBR commands. If that doesn't work, My next place to look would be the RAM. Try pulling one stick at a time.

Honestly, Page faults can come from truly anything, a bad cpu, mb, ram, ide controller, or hdd. Mostly the RAM and HDD are the likely issues.

Hope it works out.

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Thanatos

Thanks man - yeah - my suspicion is that the recent BIOS reflash interrupted the boot for WinXP and somehow that corrupted my ntfs file. That's the last thing that changed before I started having boot problems.

Thanks Eroak, FixBoot and FixMBR sound promising - I'll do some reading on how to use those and let you know how they work.

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Acreo Aeneas

You should also be able to check your CPU temp in your BIOS setup cp. If it comes in at over 60C, then it could very well be your CPU HSF.

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Acreo_Aeneas
Former 9th Member

Vortex421

Sorry to hear it. I know what having problems can be like -- my attempt at a reformat and fresh OS install turned into a six-hour ordeal as a master index record for my other hard drive vanished, thus causing Windows to have to rebuild the thing from scratch. When I found out that my partition was no longer accessible as well, I repeated the reformat and fresh OS install, had to fix the master index record again (this time it was much faster), and I'm just now finishing reinstalling all my games.

astrozombie

I had a similar problem about two years ago, BSOD after a few minutes of playing. It ran fine just surfing the web or email. So to fix it I ended up replacing just about half of all my gear in my PC before I found out what it was. Three of the capacitor's (CAPS) had started to bulge at their base and one was leaking. The board was only about a year old.

After some research I found that this is not uncommon, but most start to bulge at the top verses the bottom. Anyway the only fix is to replace the Mobo. If its still under warranty good on ya. If not well start saving your money or break out the plastic for a new one, that is of course if this is your problem.

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"Frag the weak, hurdle the dead."
Good judgment comes from experience…and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.

Thanatos

Thanks for the tips guys. A quick update on where I am right now:

It looks like the problem was a faulty RAM stick. I'm gonna have to get some more DDR, and in the process, I'm gonna upgrade from 1GB to 2GB. Unfortunately, it was the last thing I tested so I went through a HDD format before pinpointing the problem. One lesson learned - try the RAM first since it's so easy to plug/unplug

Some history in case anyone experiences BSOD errors citing ntfs.sys as the problem:
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I knew the problem wasn't my physical hard drive, because I could place the drive in a portable enclosure and then access it with no problems from my laptop. I was thankful for this because I could get all my personal data off the drive.

After unsuccessfully trying Windows Repair installs (even after booting from WinXP CD, I still got BSOD errors), I moved all my personal data off the drive and then fully formatted it by attaching it to my laptop through a drive enclosure.

I tried using this drive for a fresh Windows install and I still got a BSOD! This time, it had a different STOP code - instead of telling me it was 'ntfs.sys', it game me no information at all.

That told me it was a hardware error somewhere else, most definitely. Since RAM was the easiest thing to take out of my system, I removed one of my 512mb sticks and tried booting again. Still got a BSOD.

I then tried replacing that stick, and removing the other 512mb stick. The system then booted just fine and was able to complete the Windows install. I'm now ready to start installing drivers and apps.

Thanks to everyone who tried to help - thankfully it's something simple like bad RAM.

By the way - if you ever need to set up a new computer or want to tweak it for more performance, check out www.tweakguides.net. That dude is awesome.

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Thanatos

Thanks G-Man - good idea.

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