Diagnose "Memory Allocation Error"

  • Thread starter Thread starter Patrick Page
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Patrick Page

My 5-year old Sony PC running XP Home, turned up the other day with
"oprerating system not found." I first tried my True Image rescue disk and
got this message. Next I tried Sony's System Recovery disk - same result.
Next I tried booting from my XP CD; this caused "Inspecting your
configuration" and nothing else. I get the same result after installing a
known good C: drive. I'm baffled about what to do next.

At this point I'm looking for suggestions of how to diagnose the problem.
TIA for any help
 
Patrick Page said:
My 5-year old Sony PC running XP Home, turned up the other day with
"oprerating system not found." I first tried my True Image rescue disk and
got this message. Next I tried Sony's System Recovery disk - same result.
Next I tried booting from my XP CD; this caused "Inspecting your
configuration" and nothing else. I get the same result after installing a
known good C: drive. I'm baffled about what to do next.

At this point I'm looking for suggestions of how to diagnose the problem.
TIA for any help
Click to expand...

Remove any added RAM. Remove anything physically outside of the PC except
the keyboard. Remove any add on cards. Disable any additional devices
available in the bios. Clear the cmos.
 
Patrick said:
My 5-year old Sony PC running XP Home, turned up the other day with
"oprerating system not found." I first tried my True Image rescue disk and
got this message. Next I tried Sony's System Recovery disk - same result.
Next I tried booting from my XP CD; this caused "Inspecting your
configuration" and nothing else. I get the same result after installing a
known good C: drive. I'm baffled about what to do next.
Click to expand...
At this point I'm looking for suggestions of how to diagnose the problem.
Click to expand...

It's either a bad hdd, bad/ disconnected/improperly seated cabling or
wrong jumper settings. OR your computer is not set to boot from the
hard drive (check BIOS settings). OR Bad RAM, OR your computer is
toast....

I dont like the freeze on "inspecting your configuration",

if this is a desktop (IE not laptop), open it up and check for bulging
or leaking capacitors (little soda cans). If you find any, you've got a
bad motherboard.

SONY is not known for quality. At least the VAIO line sucks badly. I've
seen the corpses. They're damn beautiful, all nice and purple, and
loaded with all kinds of media packages, i wish they were better made.
 
Thanks. I think I've eliminated "bad HD," but will double check the cabling
and cmos settings. I'll also try changing memory cards and inspect for
leaking capacitors. Rsults to follow.
 
Patrick said:
Thanks. I think I've eliminated "bad HD," but will double check the cabling
and cmos settings. I'll also try changing memory cards and inspect for
leaking capacitors. Rsults to follow.
Click to expand...


memtest86+ from www.memtest.org is an excellent diagnostic utility,
it'll at least let you know IF any RAM sticks are bad before you spend
money.
 
Patrick said:
Thanks! Memtest86+ found no errors. Next stop t
<[email protected]> wrote in message
Click to expand...


It gets more difficult from here. Were the capicitors good?

On some systems, if one device on the IDE channel dies, the whole
controller shuts off. If there's something else on the same ribbon as
your hard drive, disconnect it.

Simplify the situation on the other IDE chain (the CDs), as well, if
there's something besides the drive you want to load the OS from,
disconnect it.

Check the connections (again), both power AND data. On both sides.
Unplug and replug.

After this, assume that a component of your motherboard has died (ide
controller), and decide whether you want to work around it, or junk the
machine.

There are 2 possible workarounds. One involves buying a PCI card with
IDE controllers on it. The other involves moving the hard drive to the
secondary ide channel.
 
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