Memory Test Fails to Load

Over the course of a year, I have had many unpleasant hardware problems with my XPS 210. (One so bad that Dell had no choice but to give me a new motherboard). Everything has worked since then somewhat stable until recently.

Over the past few days, I have had a couple of random BSODs when loading windows/using applications. The machine aftwards would fail even POST. My remedy was to reset the power supply switch. This seemed to do the trick for the most part.

Now tonight, I was watching a podcast in iTunes (Though I don't think it had anything to do with it) when I got a BSOD due to a "Page fault in a non-technical area..." I reset the power supply and boot up normally and decided to run a memory check for memory errors. Upon rebooting, the memory test fails to load with missing or corrupt file: \boot\memtest.exe. I boot into safe mode and the system fails again... I looked up the diagnostic light codes from the owner's manual and determined that it was a memory problem (though really I think it is power supply related because I also have had graphic card errors which prob. indicates it isn't supplying enough power to the system's components)

I have ran the memory test tool before (back when I first got the system and had a bad motherboard) and it booted correctly. However, it lagged and failed to complete fully back then. Can anyone think of why these issues might be occuring?

How about burning a copy of memtest86+ and giving it a shot?

Thx. Come to think of it (If I get the system to post again), can you run memtest from the Vista DVD? That was the course of action I was going to take (But now I'll haft to call Dell anyway). I'll try to boot the system in the morning (It's late here) and diagnose the problem with memtest 86 and Dell's hardware diagnostics.

I think so, but I'm not sure.

Best of luck!

I got the computer to come back to life this morning and performed a memory test with Dell's hardware diagnostics. All tests passed without error. Maybe its Vista related then as I've heard Vista w/o SP1 has had several issues with memory corruption. I unfortunanely have a system that refuses to install SP1 even after following all of the recommended troubleshooting guidelines from Microsoft. The system is pre-installed, so I'll probablly haft to start fresh to correct the problem

You can run Window's memory test off the DVD from the recovery options menu.

Well... talking from fresh install with Windows Vista SP1 applied and no BSODs (as of yet)! Now just to get areo working