Laptop Crashing

[willby]

Hi
Any help/suggestions re the following problem will be appreciated.
My daughter recently upgraded the ram in her Toshiba Satellite A60 from the original 180 MB to 1.18GB. Since installing the new memory the computer crashes soon after booting up. Initially she suspected faulty memory and returned it to Crucial in the USA who sent out a relacement. Now the problem still persists with the replacement memory.
She is running XP home SP2 with a Celeron 2.8Gh processor. I booted up in safe mode and checked the "system" in control panel and verified that the new memory was recognised ie 1.18GB.
Her nephew has an identical Toshiba and intalled the same additional memory without any problem. His memory was supplied from Crucial UK and my daughters from Crucial USA.
Willby

[rickity]

If it boots into safe mode without crashing then it may be a program loaded on start up thats causing the problem. one way of finding a possible culprit is to stop all programs in startup found when you run msconfig from the run command. If you disable all and it works then re enable a couple at a time until the crash happens it must be one of the ones re enabled.
Another place for clues is the event viewer type eventvwr into the run command and have a look at anything with a red circle and cross through it. double clicking on an item gives more detail.
any program identified could be uninstalled and reinstalled to cure the problem
My money would be on Macaffe or Symantec anti virus programs which dont like changes of memory,
Rickity

[Irish Steve]

Might be worth checking the defrag status, doing a defrag, and after that, as Defrag can't do this in the standard version, deallocating and then reallocating the virtual memory swap file, it's possible that it's trying to change this, but can't, and to go from 180 to 1.8 may well be confusing it more than some.

[willby]

Hi All,
Thanks for all the suggestions. Will let you know the outcome.
Should have added the following error message in my previous post which comes up sometimes before it crashes:
SVChost.exe apllication error
The instruction at "0x7c93426d" referenced memory at 0x00000000. The memory could not be read"
Regards
Willby

[rickity]

now that you have added that wee gem of info, I'd reccommend a reload of xp as the fastest way to getting back to a usable computer. dealing with problems of svchost, is difficult, painfull and very time consuming. There is a fast amount of info on the internet, about svchost, most of it confusing,.

Of course if you can get back to the original config of 180MB and it all works, it might suggest problems with the memory controller ( which is on the Mother board) You might do a google for memtest which is a wonderful utility which will check memory from a floppy ( doesnt even load xp etc) however you do need a bootable floppy on your laptop ( i think you can make a bootable cd which will do the same)

Good luck

Rickity

[DBTL]

You only need to visit www.memtest.org (http://www.memtest.org) and download a suitable test suite, typically for a bootable floppy created by the installation procedure.

Defrag et. al: of no consequence. Some not-so-recent laptops are more finicky about the type of mem than others.

[Irish Steve]

Defrag et. al: of no consequence.

Oh?

In that case, perhaps you'd like to explain why a laptop that was regularly crashing was sorted by clearing the deleted files folder, removing a load of junk from the temp folder, removing the swap file, defragged to get the disc back to having some sensible contiguous space, then reallocated the swap file, which promptly expanded considerably from the size it had been before this was all done.

Ok, ideally the user should have upgraded to a new disc with an extra 20 Gb of space on it, but it wasn't an option at the time, and this procedure sorted the crash issue, and kept it going for the next few months until a sensible upgrade could be taken.

The crash was being caused by the swap file trying to expand and not being able to because of a severe problem with non contiguous space, and the error message was less than helpful as to the real reason. Long experience of working with PC's was the way we found this and resolved it.

[DBTL]

I can cite working professionally with PC's and other hardware from 1984. I've never seen any system becoming cured by defrag, but for more times I can recall the culprit has been a memory chip. Also, a "rotting" memory chip will render any other attempts at troubleshooting a guesswork as the rate and physical location (reflected as the address) of errors on a bad memory chip varies greatly, and the experimenter may develop wrong notions about the cause and effect in his case.

The Memtest tool is easy to use: leave it on for a night. If you get a clean bill of health, your main memory subsystem & CPU cache are ok. Then proceed to system software checking.

[Irish Steve]

I've never seen any system becoming cured by defrag

I have, several times, hence the suggestion.

I would concur with giving the memory an overnight hammering, but the number of people looking for answers to that specific crash address across the net, from a lot of applications also suggests that there may be a weakness in XP that's contributing to this error.

Unfortunately, finding and fixing this may take some time and more detective work before it's finally nailed.

[DBTL]

"Curing by Defrag" I'm afraid is a pseudo-cure caused by the marginally useful areas of the aging disk surface possibly becoming allocated by some less used and less critical data by the reorganisation associated with the defrag procedure.

[willby]

Hi,
Sorry for the delay in responding to replies but my daughter had difficulty getting the memtest to run.
DBTL at present the memtest has been running for nearly a day and there are over 9.5k errors. How do you make sense of this screen as it does'nt come to an end and give a report? Crucial, the memory supplier has asked for a report of the memtest?
Rgds
Willby

[Mac the Knife]

...the memtest has been running for nearly a day and there are over 9.5k errors.

Memtest doesn't ever stop of itself, it just ploughs on until you stop it.

...How do you make sense of this screen as it does'nt come to an end and give a report?

Under the details of the running test is a list of errors (if any). Its usually in red, giving the test number and the memory location that the error occurred at. There isn't a "report" in the sense that I think you mean.

If there are ANY errors then you have a problem. Memtest should run for hours with no errors.

You MUST have a clean bill of health from Memtest. If Memtest is giving errors then NOTHING will ever be stable and it's completely pointless reinstalling the OS or poking around at whatever process svchost happens to be running.

I notice that Toshiba don't seem to sell modules for your PC larger than 1GB and there also seems to be some uncertainty whether the maximum supported is 1.5GB or 1280 MB - maybe that is the problem!

:ok:

Edited to add:

The Crucial advisor does not list a 1.5GB module as an upgrade for the Satellite A60. The maximum module given is:

Upgrade for the Toshiba Satellite A60 Series

1GB Module Details:

* Crucial Part Number: CT405620
* Module Size: 1GB
* Package: 200-pin SODIMM
* Feature: DDR PC2700
* Configuration: 128Meg x 64
* DIMM Type: UNBUFFERED
* Error Checking: NON-ECC
* Speed: 333
* SDRAM Timings: CL=2.5
* Specs: DDR PC2700 • CL=2.5 • UNBUFFERED • NON-ECC • DDR333 • 2.5V • 128Meg x 64


From Crucial

"Start by determining how many megabytes (MB) your computer can hold.

The Crucial Memory Advisor tool has already done this step for you! The maximum memory your Toshiba Satellite A60 Series can support is 1280MB."

I guess that's likely the answer!

PS: "Her nephew has an identical Toshiba and intalled the same additional memory without any problem." - it's possible that it's a different release of the A60 with a BIOS that DOES support 1.5GB - there seems to be some confusion as to whether the A60 supports 1.28GB or 1.5GB and it probably reflects a changing BIOS.

PPS: There's little/no benefit in having 1.5GB as opposed to 1GB in this Tosh - it's not as if you're going to be editing video files!

[willby]

Hi Mac the Knife,
Thanks for the comprehensive and very informative reply. The 1 gig module that has been installed in the offending A60 is the one you have detailed in your post. This was the module suggested by the Crucial web site after it had analysed the machine.
Regarding my Nephew's A60 it was purchased in the same shop and at the same time as my daughter's and his is still operating without any difficulty.
She updated the Bios but this has not helped either. The original 180MB module is not accessible without completely dismantling the machine or I would try it with the 1 gig module on its own.
Anyway she will let Crucial know the outcome of the Memtest tomorrow so it will be interesting to hear what they have to say.
Rgds
Willby

[willby]

Hi,
Sorry for the delay in supplying an update on my original query but the matter was only resolved this week.
Two memory modules supplied by Crucial USA failed the MEMtest and were returned. They sent a third module and said it was from a different batch. It passed the memtest ok and there have been no problems for a week now.
Thanks for all the suggestions and advice.
Willby