🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <kozu0003.769894089@gold>,
John T Kozubik <kozu0003@gold.tc.umn.edu> wrote:
>Why is this happening?  How can I prevent it?  what should I do when it
>does this?

A parity error simply means that the contents of some memory location
did not correspond to a "legal" value for your system.  Parity checking
is a simple but useful means for detecting otherwise "silent" errors
that could nonetheless corrupt your data.

Since your "Summary" line suggests that your PC was not doing this
before, I'd say there are two likely reasons for it.

(1) Sometimes the contacts between chips and their sockets "loosen up";
try reseating your memory chips, carefully (don't bend the pins -- this
is very easy to do by mistake, and a real pain to correct -- if you 
break a pin, you'll have to replace the chip).  That might correct the
problem.

(2) You might have a bad memory chip/module.  If so, once you locate it,
you can replace it.

If your "parity error" message contains a numeric string (could be a
combination of digits 0-9 and letters a-f, since it's frequently 
expressed in hexadecimal), this is identifying the memory location
of the error.  Depending on your PC and configuration, this should
point you to the offending chip.  Otherwise, there's the tried and
true method of swapping two chips at a time until the location moves.
Then you know it's one of the two, and you can swap each of this,
in turn, with another chip to determine which one it is.  Clearly,
if you have the necessary info for your system, using the address
is the preferred method.

You might get more response to this question if you posted it in a 
more suitable newsgroup, like maybe comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.misc.

-- 
Ken Bell  (kenbell@panix.com  -or-  syklb@nasagiss.giss.nasa.gov)