***Hardware Malfunction - Call your Hardware Vendor for Support - NMI: Parity Check / Memory Parity

With the new ram, and new video card, plus a larger 2nd
drive - you've increased the electrical load on your
system and the problem has become more frequent. Try
upgrading your power supply - perhaps an inexpensive
Antec 350 or 400 watt smart power supply (add 100 watts
to whatever you used to have) and see if your system runs
reliably and passes the memory tests like it should.
Good luck!

-----Original Message-----
I just bought a brand new 120 GB Western Digital
Hard Drive, NVIDIA
GeForce FX 5200 Video Card, and a ViewSonic G790 19"
Monitor - at a computer
show. I got lucky and they let me out of there for a
little over $200 (ok, I
traded in two old monitors for a total of $35 credit). I
was stupid enough
to lend my PC to a very pre-occupied vendor down there
to install my video
card and my hard drive. I asked him to move my data from
a Maxtor 60 GB Hard
Drive over to my new Western Digital 120 GB Hard Drive
and format the 60 GB.
I reasoned that since he sold the stuff that he should
be able to service
and install it without a problem. He proved me wrong. He
transferred all the
data off of my Maxtor 60 GB Hard Drive and put it on the
Western Digital 120
GB Hard Drive and formatted the old 60 GB per my request.

My luck was about to take a turn for the worse,
however, since he never
got around to installing the video card (how
convenient). He claimed he
didn't have enough time to do it. He also claimed that
he could not remove
the old 60 GB from the computer without first removing
my heat sink and both
of my memory chips. Again, he didn't have the time and
said he needed
special tools to remove it. Apparently, he didn't see
that it was fixed in
place in the bay by mounting plates and screws. I was
glad that the drive I
chose to let him work was used for storage only and
contains no operating
system. At least he did it for free.

Once home, I decide to remove the 60 GB and install
the 120 GB. This
should be pretty routine, but with my luck it turns into
a nightmare. I
manage to get the drives physically swapped by removing
the plastic drive
cover in the front, unscrewing the drive and the
mounting plates and pulling
it out the front of the case. The drives was not
jumpered correctly and
conflicted with one of my CD players. I tried to no
avail to fix the
situation, before finally calling for professional help.
A friend of mine,
who works on computers for a living, agreed to buy my
old video card and the
now empty Maxtor 60 GB Hard Drive in exchange for
getting the 120 GB
jumpered and installed correctly and installation of the
video card. I had
already been confronted a few times with the blue screen
of death, informing
me of:

***Hardware Malfunction - Call your Hardware Vendor
for Support - NMI:
Parity Check / Memory Parity Error - System was halted***

This has been a bothersome issue for quite some
time, but I had lived
with it, falsely assuming that my GeForce2 TI Video
Card, now becoming
increasingly obsolete in the eyes of many, was at the
center of the problem.
Once I had the new GeForce FX 5200 installed, however,
what had once become
a minor annoyance quickly became a major hindrance.
Instead of seeing this
error message every 3-4 days, I'm now seeing it after
only running my
computer for a few minutes. Every time that I try to
load up Unreal
Tournament using the Direct3D method, it locks up. This
error message also
appears almost every time I attempt to view some of my
beloved POV
rollercoaster videos or locks up when I play graphic
intensive games like
MechWarrior 4: Vengeance.

I tested my system RAM several times using Memtest 86
version 3.0 and it
would return over 200 errors around the 320-335mb mark.
It would also lock
up during these tests around the fourth set of tests.
Crucial Technology,
who warranties my RAM for life, happily agreed to
replace it using their
advance return shipment method (I order replacements,
they charge me for
them and ship them, I then return the defective RAM in
their packaging, and
they credit my credit card once I ship them defective
DIMMs). I had
anticipated that replacing the system RAM would solve
the problem, but to no
avail. The problem continues to rear its ugly head,
undeterred even after I
swapped the new and old DIMMs out. Something is not
right here. In fact,
something is very, very badly wrong, indeed. I have been
reading up on this
lately and I find that I am not the first one out there
that's had to deal
with this. I also know that there are a number of things
out there that
could be causing this besides the components I have
mentioned here. Can
someone please help me figure out what is wrong here, so
that I can remedy
this problem?


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