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?
Best 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)