[RESOLVED] Blue screen of death, PartMgr.sys, RAM, etc.

[mendhak]

I'm having a strange problem, which will take some detail to describe.

I've been getting a PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA (blue screen of death) 'caused by' PartMgr.sys every time I attempt to start Windows. I currently have Windows XP SP2 and I always get the latest updates.

I did a bit of searching and it's possible that my PartMgr.sys file is corrupt. So, if any of you are currently on a machine that has a single partition (C drive only), could you please upload your PartMgr.sys file here? You will find it in C:\windows\system32\drivers\

To add to this strange problem though, it might also have something to do with my RAM. I currently have 3 RAM chips in my machine.

Ram1 = 256 MB
Ram2 = 256 MB
Ram3 = 1GB

If I have just 256 MB of RAM in the machine, it will work fine! In other words, I can have either Ram1 or Ram2 in the machine, but not together. Ram3 alone will not work though. Which is why I think it limits itself to 256 MB of RAM.

There have been no software or hardware changes recently that would cause this.

I'd like the 'Reformat your machine' option as a last resort.

To further add to this, Safe Mode (which is what I'm using now) always works. Safe Mode does not seem to care how much RAM is in the machine.

I'd appreciate any advice you guys give me.