Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[john262]

I have a dual boot system with Windows 7 and a frugal install of Puppy 5.2.8. I keep my Puppy files on a separate partition.

Lately when running Windows I have been getting an occasional blue screen of death with a "page fault in non paged area" error message.

I have tried to troubleshoot it following advice from several websites including Microsoft's site. Apparently this error is often caused by hardware problems such as bad memory. However when I run the Windows memory diagnostic the memory checks out OK. So I'm not sure what is going on.

However I have found then when I boot into Puppy everything seems fine. I am getting no error messages. I'm not sure what happens in Linux if there is faulty memory or another hardware problem. But as I said everything seems normal.

So my question is do you think it is OK for me to ignore this Windows error message and just run Puppy since everything seems OK when I run Puppy? I wonder if this is in fact some kind of problem with my Windows installation that does not affect Puppy. I did backup my Windows system before these errors started happening to an image on an external drive. If I can determine that this is a Windows software problem rather than a hardware problem I could try restoring Windows but I haven't tried it yet.

Any help or comments would be appreciated. Thank you.

[Dewbie]

Did this error first appear as soon as you repartitioned the hard drive and frugally installed Puppy?
Or was it a while after this?

[john262]

Thanks. But no, it happened several months after.

[cthisbear]

Probably because Puppy is so light, you are not

seeing errors.

:::::

I am sure that Hiren's boot cd would give you better results
with testing.

Boot that.
You wouldn't have updated Nvidia drivers.

I am sure that i saw someone mention on Whirlpool


http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/


that if you update...your card plays up.
as usual when I try to see that post it is invisible.

You have cleaned out the dust from your computer????

::

Hirens 15.1

http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd

Download >>>
Click on Hirens.BootCD.15.1.zip >> near bottom of the page.
Unzips to an ISO and other files.

http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download.html

"""""

System Information Tools

Astra 5.50 Advanced System info Tool and Reporting Assistant.

BlueScreenView 1.40 Scans minidump files for BSOD
(blue screen of death) crash information.

CPU Identification utility 1.20 CHKCPU.EXE Detailed information on CPU.

CPU-Z 1.58 It gathers information on some of the main devices of your system.

CTIA CPU Information 2.7 another CPU information tool.
Drive Temperature 1.0 Hard Disk Drive temperature meter.

GPU-Z 0.5.5 A lightweight utility designed to give you all information about your video card and GPU.

HWiNFO 5.5.2 a powerful system information utility.

Navratil Software System Information 0.60.45 High-end professional system information tool.

PCI and AGP info Tool (12-09-2011) The PCI System information and Exploration tool.

PC Wizard 2010.1.961 PCWizard is a powerful system information/benchmark utility designed especially for detection of hardware.

SIW 2011.09.16 Gathers detailed information about your system properties and settings.

Speccy 1.13.276 an advanced System Information tool for your PC.

System Analyser 5.3w View extensive information about your hardware.

System Explorer 3.0.6 Shows detailed system information about processes, startups, IE addons, drivers, explorer, etc.

SysChk 2.46 Find out exactly what is under the hood of your PC.
Update Checker 1.038 scans your computer for installed software and checks for newer releases on FileHippo.

:::::

Testing Tools

Bart's Stuff Test 5.1.4
Long term heavy stress testing storage devices.

CPU/Video/Disk Performance Test 5.7 a tool to test cpu, video, and disk.

Disk Speed 1.0 Hard Disk Drive Speed Testing Tool.

GoldMemory 5.07 Memory Diagnostic Tests.

H2testw 1.4 Check your USB Flash memory cards, internal/external hard drives and network drives for errors with this tool.

HDD Scan 2.8 HDDScan is a Low-level HDD diagnostic tool, it scans surface find bad sectors etc.

IsMyLcdOK (Monitor Test) 1.02 Allows you to test CRT/LCD/TFT screens for dead pixels and diffective screens.

Memtest86+ 4.20 PC Memory Test.

MemTest 1.0 a Memory Testing Tool.

Prime95 25.11 This will detect for errors in CPU or RAM within a matter of minutes if an overclock is not stable, you can run Torture Test (burn-in) overnight to ensure long-term stability of the hardware.

S&M Stress Test 1.9.1 cpu/hdd/memory benchmarking and information tool, including temperatures/fan speeds/voltages.

System Speed Test 4.78 it tests CPU, harddrive, ect.

Test Hard Disk Drive 1.0 a tool to test Hard Disk Drive.

Video Memory Stress Test 1.7.116 a tool to thoroughly test your video RAM for errors and faults.

Video Memory Stress Test CE 1.21 Tests all video RAM accessible by 32-bit CPU address space from a clean environment.

Windows Memory Diagnostic a RAM Test tool.

Chris.

[john262]

Thanks. That's a lot for me to go over.

Yes, I use compressed air to clean my computer's insides.

BTW, I have ATI video drivers.

[starhawk]

Two questions:

(1) is your page file set to a specific size? (If you don't know, then the answer is "no".)

(2) When was windows installed on this system? What version?

Basic thing to know here is: if your system is like 5+ years old, and you've never reinstalled (which you kinda should do at least every 3 years -- although they don't tell you this, but Win gets even more addled than usual if you let it 'age')... your page file is corrupting as it resizes.

Page files are set to change their size as needed, by MS as a bit of a 'misfeature' -- not a proper bug, but something intended as a plus (it only takes up as much room as it needs) that doesn't work right in the end product.

My mother has a 6yrs. old VAIO with this issue. The solution is to set the page file to a 'static' size (does not change) by setting the min/max sizes to the same value. That value BTW should be about 1-1/2 times the size of your RAM. (So if you have 1024mb RAM (1gb) your page file should be 1536mb (1.5gb).)

Good luck! (Of course, if you prefer Puppy, feel free to send Windows packing.)

[john262]

I bought this computer in November of 2009. It came with WinXP (it had downgrade rights from Vista.) Then in the spring of 2010 a got a Wiin7 disk and upgraded from XP to Win7. It's a 32 bit system.

My pagefile is fixed at 3GB. I have 3 GB of RAM. Are you suggesting that I change the pagefile to 4.5 GB?

[Sylvander]

1.

[Burn_IT]

If you look in the Windows\Minidump\ folder you will find a file for each dump.
Zip a couple of those up and post them as an attachment and I will have a look to see if I can find out what is wrong.

[cthisbear]

" My pagefile is fixed at 3GB. "

""""""""""

You can always delete the pagefile with Puppy.

It resets on Windows reboot.

Chris.

[jafadmin]

If I were troubleshooting this I would disable the pagefile and reboot. Try that for a while and see if the system settles down. If it does, I'd look at the HD pretty close. How much free space on the boot partition, etc ..

[john262]

One of the first things I did was run Windows Checkdisk and it found no problems. So I just tried GParted as you suggested and it also found no problems.

I just opened my Windows\Minidump folder and it was empty (I had it set to view hidden files.)

I really appreciate all of the effort that you guys have made to try to help me.

[Sylvander]

1.

[john262]

I might have finally figured out what it was. I had been running AVG antivirus software. It dawned on me that I had recently upgraded it to a new version. The BSOD problem happened after that. I hadn't considered that before because AVG seems to be coming out with frequent updates and I had never had a problem with updates before.

Anyway I Googled AVG and BSOD and got lots of hits. So I disabled it and the blue screens stopped. Then I uninstalled it and replaced it with Avast. That was last night. I haven't got a blue screen since. I have my fingers crossed that it might be solved.

[Sylvander]

NICE!