HP-VL6/8 & Memory Could Not Be Read Error

[Jeffrey Dail]

I have three different HP-VL6, series 8 PC's that are outputing the following
error with alarming freqency: "The instruction at "0x

" referenced
memory at "0x

". The memory could not be read."
These errors are not generated by any single application; I have had them from
MS Access, Excel, and even the Themes app. (Although the majority do appear to
be coming from MS products; particularly Office97.) The PC's use Windows NT
4.0 (Svc Pak 5) for their OS. I have even updated one with Service Pack 6a,
but that has not corrected the problem. At this point, it appears the only
commonality they have is hardware related. Are there any known issues with
these HP PC's and Microsoft software that causes these errors? We have other
vendor's PC's with the same load that do not exhibit this behavior.

I have downloaded the latest BIOS upgrade for this model and will try that.
But I'm curious to know if anyone else has seen these errors as frequently as
I.

Thanks,
Jeff Dail

[Jeffrey Dail]

I did upgrade the BIOS on one of the PC's, and nope, that didn't correct the
problem either.

[Wayne Hudson]

We've had the same problem. We were accessing a Sybase database using Sybase drivers. We've switched temporarily to MSSQL drivers and this works but it can cause other problems. Have you had any luck?

[Jamie Hughes]

Hello,

Sorry you're having trouble with your PCs. You either have an application that isn't allocating and releasing memory correctly or you have a hardware problem. Here are some things you can check:

- Did you install any extra memory in these particular PCs? Is it HP memory? Are all the sticks running at the same speed (70ns, 60ns, etc)?

- Are there any hardware diagnostics you can run on the machines to check for NMIs or parity errors? I don't have the same model here but just go into Setup and look for diagnostics, error logs, etc.

- Have you checked the pagefile settings on these machines? The pagefile should be at least RAM+12MB but 1.5 times RAM is recommended.

- It is quite possible that the pagefile is corrupt. First run chkdsk <> /F /R - where <> is the partition containing the pagefile.sys file. When that is complete, set the Initial and Maximum values for the pagefile to 0, click Set, and reboot. After the computer restarts, go back and set the pagefile to the appropriate settings. This will rebuild the pagefile and get rid of any corruption.

- You mentioned that this is happening mostly when running Office applications. Have you installed the Office SRx updates?

- Are there any errors in the Event Viewer on these machines?

- You mentioned that you have downloaded the latest BIOS - have you installed it yet?

Sorry for the questions but this can be a hard problem to track down and it is very frustrating.

Best regards,
Jamie Hughes

[Guenter Fritz]

I experienced the same problem. After fiddling around for hours I figured out:
problem came up after installing Netscape Communicator 4.73
problem went away after deleting, reinstalling and updating MS Outlook 97
This is not a VL6/8 specific problem, it is mapi related (always check mapi32.dll for having been changed and keep a working spare)
Hope this helps

[Mark Rothrock]

Hello. I just wanted everyone to know this issue is not hardware related. We use Dell machines here, running NT4 SP6a and get the same message at alarming rate. From what I've been able to tell, it has to do with Windows NT 4. The problem first appeared at the SP5 level. The issue also exists in Windows 2000, but SP1 fixes it.

Someone writes:
"It seems to have something to do with the OS (in my case NT4) not setting up a buffer of a sufficient size to cope with the application.??I have now managed to recreate the crash and it would appear to only occur when trying to either print a graphic intense document or when highlighting a large area of text.??It particularly seems that Office is the application that causes these errors (but that may be because thats what I use more than anything else!!!!)"

I don't know the fix, but thought I'd pass on what I've been able to find out so far.

[bwong_1]

We have several VL8 with NT40 experiencing similar problems. However, one of the users is experiencing file corruption when using EXCEL97. Another user has a similar problems but no file corruption. The user experiences when using Windows Explorer and Netscape 4.7. The user had the latest Excel SRx updates but with an older BIOS (H2.01.05). NT SP 5.0 was installed. No errors in the Event Viewer.

As a temporary test, the user is now using an HP Vectra XU which was used previously for 6 months as print and file server and by another power EXCEL97 user for 3 months with no problems. However, after 2 weeks, the user experience the "memory could not be read error" while using Netscape 4.7 but no problems with EXCEL97 so far. This PC has NT40 with SP5 and EXCEL97 has all the SRxx updates.

Is it possible that the external ethernet network could be injecting something into his PC which is causing various applications to respond with "memory could be read error"?