Crashing T60: NMI Parity Check / Memory Parity Error

[norma023]

whenever we saw this issue (at work) on our T60's, it was always the Wireless Card driver at fault, well that and along with Power Management and how these drivers interact with each other.

Updated the Wireless Nic driver and problem never came back.

There's info on it here
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... 67654.html

While re-formatting has helped, I (IMO) doubt you have solved your problem. But if it ain't broke.....

[archer6]

whenever we saw this issue (at work) on our T60's, it was always the Wireless Card driver at fault, well that and along with Power Management and how these drivers interact with each other.

Updated the Wireless Nic driver and problem never came back.

There's info on it here
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... 67654.html

While re-formatting has helped, I (IMO) doubt you have solved your problem. But if it ain't broke.....

Thanks for the valuable info. I will save this for use, in the event the problem returnes. For clarification that hopefully may be of help to someone else that may be dealing with this, I not only wiped the drive and started fresh, but I stayed with XP Pro SP2, as the problem only occured after I had updated to SP3. And ironically at the time, I did'nt think about the SP3 upgrade that I had done a week earlier as it's the first time I've had an issue with a service pack upgrade. However that said, as we all know "upgrade" does not always equal "better". So far since I've reported here last, I have yet to have any problems.

Again, thanks for the info. In the event that it goes down again, that will be the first thing I try.

Cheers!

[norma023]

FWIW

We saw this issue many times on our T60's that were running WinXP Pro with SP2.

Just sayin'.....

[archer6]

FWIW

We saw this issue many times on our T60's that were running WinXP Pro with SP2.

Just sayin'.....

FWIW = It's worth a lot....
Looks like I will be changing that driver now. Any tips or things to avoid, I'm in a bit of a rush but want to get it done now, as we all know what down time is like. By the way, just out of curiosity, why would I go for 14 months on SP2 before encountering this?

Thanks Again!

[norma023]

actually I'm surprised that there isn't a "sticky" on this topic.......

Or maybe this particular issue isn't as mainstream as I've seen it (to be)


Glad to hear you've been up and running on this! I know (about a year ago) we really racked our brains for quite some time to figure this one out. Running PC Doctor numberous times, replacing parts that never solved the issue, etc .......

[archer6]

actually I'm surprised that there isn't a "sticky" on this topic.......

Or maybe this particular issue isn't as mainstream as I've seen it (to be)


Glad to hear you've been up and running on this! I know (about a year ago) we really racked our brains for quite some time to figure this one out. Running PC Doctor numberous times, replacing parts that never solved the issue, etc .......

Precisely, I've spent many hours to this point, running memtest, pc doctor and a host of other testing procedures. So even though it's been fine, I'm going to up date the driver from the link you provided.

[archer6]

The problem has returned: After 2 months of trouble free use (having replacing the ram) my T60 crashed & displayed the BSOD with the message:

"NMI Parity Check / Memory Parity Error"

Quick recap for those that have not read this thread.

2007-73U T60 purchased new Mar 06
currently running XP pro SP2

My T60 operating perfectly until about four months ago, when suddenly the blue screen of death -BSOD appeared saying NMI Parity Check / Memory Parity Error.

Steps I have taken to resolve:
1) Replaced both memory modules
2) "Downgraded from SP3 to SP2, as this occurred about two months after upgrading to SP3
3) Ran memtest (OK)
4) PC doctor (OK)
And a wide variety of other tests that I should have noted but in my haste, did not.

After replacing the memory and running the tests, it operated for 2 months trouble free until today when I got the same error message and BSOD.

I am open for any and all suggestions.

Thanks in advance for your assistance.

Cheers

[norma023]

like I've already mentioned, update your wireless NIC drivers and report back.

whenever we saw this issue (at work) on our T60's, it was always the Wireless Card driver at fault, well that and along with Power Management and how these drivers interact with each other.

Updated the Wireless Nic driver and problem never came back.

There's info on it here
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... 67654.html

[archer6]

like I've already mentioned, update your wireless NIC drivers and report back.

Just finished updating the wireless NIC drivers. All went fast, easy and I'm back up and running.

At this point do you suggest that I update from SP2 to SP3?

Thanks again, for your prompt response and assistance, it's greatly appreciated.

Cheers

[archer6]

like I've already mentioned, update your wireless NIC drivers and report back.

I updated the wireless NIC drivers and all was well until three days ago when the dreaded BSOD NMI Parity Error appeared again.
This time it occurred twice in a a single days worth of computing.

Now I'm about to have a BSOD....heh! Once again, any and all suggestions are appreciated. Windows is such a joy....

Cheers

[Marin85]

What programs do you have installed (both Lenovo and non-Lenovo)?

[archer6]

What programs do you have installed (both Lenovo and non-Lenovo)?

ThinkPad T60 2007-73U

After the first occurrence in Oct 08, I've stripped it down to:
MS Windows XP Pro SP3 with Factory Pre-load

Avast Anti-Virus 4.8
Adobe Flash 10
Adobe Reader 9
ATI Catalyst Control Center 1.2
ATI Hydravision 3.25
Diskeeper Lite 9.0
BlackBerry Desktop Mgr 4.6.xxx
MS Office 2003 SP3 Standard
MS OneNote 2003 SP3
MS Windows Search 4.0
MS Windows Live Essentials 14.0
MS Media Connect
MS IE 6.xxx
Firefox 3.xxx

[norma023]

what kind of wireless NIC do you have? And what version do you now have for your wireless NIC ?

[Marin85]

Since you mention that you still keep the factory preload, it´s possible that some update to some of all the Lenovo apps has screwed up your setup (or even a whole application like the bigger ones like CSS or RR could be causing the BSOD).

Marin

[norma023]

Marin could be right, but if the wireless nic driver actually is the cause, an update of that driver would fix it (in theory).

I'd try out this version from last month if you don't have it
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-70504

[rkawakami]

I'll take a guess that the problem is due to the video memory and/or drivers. If you can run the DOS version of PC Doctor for the T60:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-56222

select the Video Adapter section under Diagnostics and there should be a number of video tests. Prior to executing any of them, you can press the F2 key, arrow down to "Set Pass Count" and press the Enter key. That will enable you to change the number of times the test runs (i.e., a loop count). Once you enter a new loop value, exit the Test Options menu by pressing the Escape key and that will dump you back to the test category window. All of the default tests will be noted with a ">>" next to the blank area (where the test results will be displayed) and you can execute them all by pressing CTRL-Enter. If you loop the video tests long enough, I would assume that would raise the temperature of the ATI video subsystem to a level which meets or exceeds your usage under Windows. If you don't get any errors, then I'd see about changing the video driver. Running PC Doctor for DOS will avoid any Windows driver issue(s) and concentrate mainly on the hardware.

I was not able to determine if the X1400 has any temperature monitoring capability at the AMD/ATI web site. However, this site:

http://www.overclock.net/faqs/108855-ho ... -tool.html

appears to imply that it might (it's not listed as an incompatible system).

[archer6]

I'll take a guess that the problem is due to the video memory and/or drivers. If you can run the DOS version of PC Doctor for the T60:

Thank you for this excellent advice. This is an avenue that I had not thought of, therefore I will perform this work just as soon as my time permits and post back here with the results.

Cheers....

[Marin85]

Just to what rkawakami pointed out: Additionally to the PC Doctor, you may want to run a BurnIn test to exert some good load on the gpu/video memory. If this component is really affected, the BurnIn test should fail at some stage (I suspect I posted somewhere in this thread a link to a similar program...). And in general, if it´s a hardware problem, running the BurnIn test for a couple of hours should result in "bad" behavior like BSOD, shutdown etc. I believe such tests are almost - if not completely - dead sure...

Cheers,

Marin

[norma023]

any updates on this ??

[archer6]

Update on T60 (2007-73U) with persistent problems regarding NMI Parity Error / BSOD

Jan 2, 2009
I updated my Intel Pro/Wireless 3945ABG card - driver to version 12.1.0.14 which was the newest version available from the Lenovo site.

Feb 6, 2009
NMI Parity Error BSOD appeared again.
Ran the DOS version of PC Doctor for the T60 as suggested in a post here. Report came back as all OK. Feeling as though it just had to be a driver issue, I went to the Intel site to find that there was a newer driver available there. Version: 12.2.0.0. so I updated my T60 to that driver, and as of this writing my T60 is performing perfectly.

Thank you to all of you who responded to my post.

Cheers...

[wild_bill]

every time I have seen errors of this sort on a T60, it has been 1 of these 3 causes:


1. bad RAM - have you replaced it with some known good or new RAM chips?

2. overheating - have you physically removed the keyboard, and carefully vacuumed out all the dust around the CPU fan, heatpipe, GPU, & RAM using a vacuum cleaner hose & a clean, new 1" paint brush? (there are instructions on keyboard removal in the hardware maintenance manual which can be downloaded from the lenovo website, as well as how-to videos)

3. CMOS battery - have you checked the voltage? (you want 3.1V or more)


If you haven't done these basic things, then you haven't eliminated about 99% of the causes of a parity error.

[norma023]

every time I have seen errors of this sort on a T60, it has been 1 of these 3 causes:


1. bad RAM - have you replaced it with some known good or new RAM chips?

2. overheating - have you physically removed the keyboard, and carefully vacuumed out all the dust around the CPU fan, heatpipe, GPU, & RAM using a vacuum cleaner hose & a clean, new 1" paint brush? (there are instructions on keyboard removal in the hardware maintenance manual which can be downloaded from the lenovo website, as well as how-to videos)

3. CMOS battery - have you checked the voltage? (you want 3.1V or more)


If you haven't done these basic things, then you haven't eliminated about 99% of the causes of a parity error.

not discounting your own findings, but every time we've seen this issue before at work (I work at a large Univ where we have close to (400) T60's in our building and my dept does 100% of the support of each and every one of them), updating the wireless NIC drivers has fixed it every time. None of which you mentioned was ever done. Since Fall 2007 we've seen around 15-20 of these come in with the NMI Parirty Error BSOD, and none of them have come back in with the same issue after updating the wireless NIC driver

[archer6]

<snip>every time I have seen errors of this sort on a T60, it has been 1 of these 3 causes:
1. bad RAM 2. overheating 3. CMOS battery <snip>

In my case:
1) I replaced both ram modules with a new matched pair
2) I constantly monitor this as a matter of good maintenance
3) Checked it.
I have hundreds of hours now since the wireless driver update and so far so good.

Cheers...

[wild_bill]

norma023 - which wireless NIC are you finding this BSOD on, that is solved by a driver update? Intel or Atheros?

[norma023]

Just checked a couple machines at my desk and they both have the Atheros 11 a/b/g MiniPCI card

[wild_bill]

we have mostly all Atheros too, but this is probably why I hadn't seen this problem before out of the cards, because I now see that the notice about this error on Lenovo.com shown here just concerns the Intel a/b/g card, so apparently the Atheros are not affected.

[Marin85]

Have you tried out using the Intel driver that comes with Windows?

[ibm meister]

I wiped out the system to back to factory within minutes BSOD was back...

[Marin85]

I wiped out the system to back to factory within minutes BSOD was back...

Download and burn an .iso of memtest86+ and then run a few passes of it.

[norma023]

I wiped out the system to back to factory within minutes BSOD was back...

Upgrade the wireless NIC drivers and report back.

By wiping your system to factory defaults means you are now using drivers that are now what, close to 2 years old? Well that was the problem, poorly written drivers from the get-go that have long since been updated.

Like I've stated elsewhere in this thread, the NMI Parity Error BSOD is caused by poorly written drivers for how the wireless NIC (many models) and Power Management interact with each other.

Everytime this thread gets bumped, I'm going to repeat this same suggestion, as I personally haven't seen this particular fix to NOT work on any machine I've worked on that had this same problem.

However YMMV