Hardware malfunction

Last night, i was using my laptop and i know my battery has less than one hour of charge. As i was using it, i got a notification that there was only 7% left on the battery, so i immediately closed the program i was using, and turned off the computer (i could not plug it in as we had a power outage at the time, which is why i was using the battery).

Today, i am restarting the computer and i get this message:

*** Hardware malfunction
Call your hardware vendor for support
NMI: Parity Check / Memory Parity Error
*** The system has halted ***

So, before going back to the shop, is there anything i should check, or try?
It is a Dell Precision M90 running Windows 7.

Any suggestion?

About the only thing you could try is to remove and reseat the memory DIMM(s). However, it could also be a video memory error, and if that is the case, you may be out of luck. Can you get into the BIOS?

I think i can get to the BIOS. Can you remind me how?

When i reboot, i have two options:
Continue with system resume (which has not worked yet)
Delete restoration data and proceed to system book menu (i didn't try this one yet)

Pressing the F2 key at the appropriate moment when booting should get you into the BIOS setup. If you can do that, see how much memory the BIOS reports seeing, and whether there are any memory diagnostics that can be activated.

Silly question but when is the "appropriate time"?

Good question. It is whenever your particular computer is looking for that keystroke. The usual rule is to start the boot process, and then either wait until the message asking if you want to enter setup appears, or, if that doesn't happen with your computer, just start repeatedly pressing the key or key sequence (it looks like it is F2 in your case) that gets you into the BIOS.

Since the first screen i get offers me those two options:

Continue with system resume
Delete restoration data and proceed to system book menu

Can i safely use the second one since the first one didn't work? I am not seeing anything else before that mentions BIOS.
Isn't there a key to hit repeatedly to get to it (unless i am confusing with something else)?

If the boot process went that far, then it had already passed to point where you would press a key to enter the BIOS setup.

Did you have this laptop set to sleep or hibernate when you shut it down, or did you perform a normal complete shutdown? If you did have it set to sleep or hibernate, would you lose anything if you just rebbooted it? That is what the second option appears to be suggesting. Note that it likely won't work any better than the Resume option.

OK i managed to get to the BIOS.

Here is what i have:
Memory Info
Memory Installed = 2048 MB
Memory Available = 2047 MB
Memory Speed = 667 MHz
Memory Channel Mode = Dual
Memory Technology = DDR2 SDRAM

NOTE: Due to an amount of memory being assigned for system use, Memory Available is less than Memory Installed.

It looks like the system is seeing 2 GB of memory. If you did not find any options to test the memory (like memory test on boot), then you are left with trying the second option to boot into Windows. If both of those options give the same error, and you tried reseating the memory modules, then the next option would be to try some new memory modules. You could try to create an Ultimate Boot CD and run some memory tests from that, assuming you can get the UBCD to boot.

Link:

http://discussions.virtualdr.com/sho...oot-CD-5-Guide

I'll look into this slowly because it seems like foreign language at first glance.
I'll report back when i understand a bit better and have something.

Already, in reading the instructions, it looks like i am supposed to create a disk from the computer, however, i can't start it any further than the error message i get. Am i missing something? (Probably am)

You will need to create the UBCD disc on a working computer.

OK now that i have that CD made, how do i use it on my laptop?

Boot the problem computer from the CD, then run the memory test first, then the hard drive test as detailed in posts #3 and #4 at the link below:

http://discussions.virtualdr.com/sho...oot-CD-5-Guide

OK, i didn't know how to get out of the first two options posted to be when i started the computer:

Continue with system resume
Delete restoration data and proceed to system book menu

Since the first one didn't work, i figured i could try the second one. And what happened? it proposed to do error checking (or check disk or something). I let it go through it, thinking it could not hurt and might reveal something.

I didn't have time to see the result, and the computer started normally, all by itself. Should i still go through that checking with the CD booting or can i check whatever needs checking from the PC itself? And if i need to book from the CD, do i still need to go through the BIOS?

It wouldn't hurt to boot from the CD and run at least the memory test. To do that, just make sure the BIOS is set to allow booting from the CD/DVD drive.

Running now. How many tests are there to run in one pass??

I don't know the exact number, since I haven't run them in a while. Quite a few though.

OK i left it all night and it shows 9 passes, and ZERO error.
That is good, but then, how to explain the initial behavior?

Now, i'll test the HD.

Following the instructions on the post #4 of that other thread, i got as far as the Diagnosis step, but from there, i got a bunch of data, but could not find anything mentioning the "Short test" (or any other test) to pick from.
The last line i have is

XMS allocated: 2.00 MB, driver size with tables: 7043 bytes
_ (this is the blinking cursor)

I am not sure where to go from there.

If you got zero memory errors, then the memory should be OK. The Sleep or Hibernate save likely was corrupted when you were low on battery power, causing your initial error.

Strangely, it happened several times after i had turned off the computer, thinking it just needed a reboot.
I changed the boot order in the BIOS, rebooted and everything looks fine.
Crossing fingers that it was just a fluke.