Saturday 20 April 2019

Getting a STOP error on Vista boot (PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA)


I'm trying to boot into a Vista 64 bit machine and during startup, right after the progress bar starts scrolling back and forth, it BSOD's with a STOP error 0x00000050 (PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA). I have tried the following with no success:



  • Booting into safe mode (same BSOD)

  • Doing a system restore to a previous checkpoint (it says there are none, which is odd)

  • Running a memory test using the diagnostic tool - passed

  • I was able to get to the command prompt with the diagnostic tool and can access the boot drive. I copied off the most important files to another drive.

  • Ran a chkdsk with the repair option - it says it found 5 unindexed files, and fixed them, but the problem remains

  • I disconnected all external components except the keyboard, mouse, and monitor. Problem still remains.

  • I tried just running it with one stick of RAM, then the other, just to make sure it's not a RAM issue. Problem remains.


I think the next step is to completely re-install Vista. Am I missing something?



Answer



Excellent troubleshooting work.


In particular, if you've run the memory test diagnostic and it is passing, then I can't think of any other resolution than reinstalling the OS.


(and even then, I'd be wary of bad hardware based on everything else you've ruled out -- a clean OS install is a good smoke test, because if you can't finish a clean OS install, you almost definitely have bad hardware at that point)


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