Thinkpads Forum

Hi all,

It's been a while since I was last here, and it's good to see the board is still going strong.

In 2007, I bought a T60 from a member here (pianowizard), which I've been using since. I haven't had to repair or change a thing in those 3 years...TP quality, 'nuff said.

However, I recently did a Win XP (Pro) fresh install. I don't know if this is related, but last night and again today the system halted with a blue screen and the following message:

*** Hardware Malfunction
Call your hardware vendor for support
*** The system has halted ***

Has anyone had this before? I googled a little and didn't know much more after. Seems like it's either a hardware problem or a faulty driver. Drivers could be of course since I just did a new install. But after 5+ years, hardware fatigue could also be a cause.

Well, I'm not much of a computer expert (and don't want to be one), but I love this computer and would like to keep it for a while? Anything you'd recommend that I do?

Jan_Hoho wrote:*** Hardware Malfunction
Call your hardware vendor for support
*** The system has halted ***

Are you sure there was no other information? I've seen that one, it's not in the normal BSOD format, but it still always mentioned the Machine Check Exception that caused it.

If your T60 has Intel graphics, disregard the next paragraph.

In my case, it was the graphics driver - it was unstable unless I set it to Optimal Performance. I eventually reinstalled Windows and installed an earlier version of the driver, and haven't had trouble since. This was Windows 7, but the version number of the problematic driver was the same as that of the official Lenovo driver for XP.

Thanks for your reply! You are right of course, there was a specifier. I believe it was: NMI: Parity Check / Memory Parity Error

You need to run memtest86+ http://www.memtest.org/
First on one module in slot 1, then on the other in slot one, swap slots and do it again, then run it on both.

Okay, that's the one I got too. PC Doctor's test found no errors with any configuration of the 3 DIMMs I tested (and believe me, I ran many iterations of the test). Ditto for the graphics memory test.

Besides, regular DDR2 doesn't even have parity checking. Still, no harm in testing the memory just in case.

Jan_Hoho wrote:However, I recently did a Win XP (Pro) fresh install. I don't know if this is related, but last night and again today the system halted with a blue screen

Did you use the recovery discs that I included? If you did, then it's safe to say it's a hardware rather than software problem, unless the discs have been damaged so that certain files couldn't be copied properly. If you reinstalled XP using a retail or OEM setup disc, I think it would be worth trying again using the T60 recovery discs.

If you are going to rum MEMTEST86, do at least 5 cycles.

Yeah, the install was from the recovery discs. I thought that maybe the installation program downloaded and used a faulty driver or something like that, which may have led to the issue.

Naive question:: If the problem is with the memory...would new RAM solve the problem or is it not that easy?


Edit: I actually just read that someone on another board found an external HD to be the culprit. I have used one the last couple of days that I never used with this computer. I never had problems with the drive on a different computer and can't recall if I had it connected when the error occurred the first time, but it might be a lead. I disconnected it for now and will see if the error happens again.