Memory errors causing explorer.exe to crash...

Setup....
AMD Sempron 2400+ (@stock)
Infineon 512MB PC2100 (@stock)
Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe
Maxtor 40GB ATA133 hard drive (running on a rounded IDE cable)
Sound Blaster Audigy Gamer
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB w/R360 core
OCZ Modstream 520w Power Supply
Windows 2000 Professional Edition SP4

Well, as of about an hour ago, I've had this suddenly lovely problem with my computer... I keep getting this constant message saying as follows....

Quote:

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The instruction at "0x77fcb333" referenced memory at 0x00000000. The memory could not be "written".

Click on OK to terminate the program.

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Before this, I'd have the occasional problem once every five weeks or so with explorer simply crashing... Normally because of something I was doing... I'm completely befuddled as to what the problem may be... and I'm seriously hoping it's not my memory, but I'm prepared for the worst (although the idea of my rig being down a week does suck).

Any idea what the problem is? Doublechecking for updates through WindowsUpdate is useless, as I'm lucky to last five minutes before she crashes and takes everything down with in, going into a constant loop of crashing....

For those wondering what I was doing... I wasn't overclocking (can't really overclock on PC2100), wasn't tweaking memory timings.... No tweaks, no mods.... I was simply listening to a friend's radio stream on SecondLife.

Thanks in advance for any help....

EDIT: Got me a second message now too.....

Quote:

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The instruction at "0x77fcb6a3" referenced memory at 0x000efff8. The memory could not be "read".

Click on OK to terminate the program.

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Virus?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by peterb

Virus?

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I'll look into that front... I'm not exactly fond of spending my only day off this week reinstalling everything. >.<

Try Trend's housecall (ah - computer might not last that long... You could try reducing the clock speed of the system in the BIOS in case it is a memory problem (underclocking - probably a rude word here :))

I've had that message before... a wipe of Windows sorted it. Try Memtest, or Prime95 to test the memory and CPU.

A quick google on your two error codes threw up these.

0x77fcb333 - http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;908506

0x77fcb6a3 - http://www.mail-archive.com/thin@fre.../msg02761.html

this seems to be something to do with win 2000 sp4 RO1 and printer networking.

Not sure why IE is crashing causing that error, but you may want to download the fix in the first link and see if it cures it.

whispers firefox ;)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by iranu

A quick google on your two error codes threw up these.
...
Not sure why IE is crashing causing that error, but you may want to download the fix in the first link and see if it cures it.

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explorer.exe is the Windows explorer shell, iexplore.exe would be Internet Explorer.

Also, the "instruction at" message is only providing a virtual memory address in user mode for the process so this doesn't give much away without debugging the process or a dump generated from it by Dr Watson.

My guess would be an explorer shell extension (or a "hook") misbehaving - you know those extra options which applications add to the context menu when you right click something?

If it is consistently explorer.exe crashing then I'd suspect it isn't a hardware problem.
I'd look for a pattern as to when the crash can be reproduced, but short of removing all the software which has an explorer extension you might find a live debug is required.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mike_w

I've had that message before... a wipe of Windows sorted it. Try Memtest, or Prime95 to test the memory and CPU.

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That would be a last resort.... My rig on average takes 6-8 hours to get up and running again... Which would basically mean setting aside everything else in my life (like the car I have to fix so I can get to work tomorrow. >.<) so that my computer is up and running again tonight... Besides, I'd have to back up what's on my system, which is what I was going to do last night, oddly enough. >.<

Quote:

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Originally Posted by peterb

Try Trend's housecall (ah - computer might not last that long... You could try reducing the clock speed of the system in the BIOS in case it is a memory problem (underclocking - probably a rude word here :))

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HouseCall keeps crashing, whether I use FireFox or *cringes* IE6.... Underclock.... With that PC2100 RAM, aren't I theoretically underclocking? ;)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Paul Adams

explorer.exe is the Windows explorer shell, iexplore.exe would be Internet Explorer.

Also, the "instruction at" message is only providing a virtual memory address in user mode for the process so this doesn't give much away without debugging the process or a dump generated from it by Dr Watson.

My guess would be an explorer shell extension (or a "hook") misbehaving - you know those extra options which applications add to the context menu when you right click something?

If it is consistently explorer.exe crashing then I'd suspect it isn't a hardware problem.
I'd look for a pattern as to when the crash can be reproduced, but short of removing all the software which has an explorer extension you might find a live debug is required.

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Question though is that if it such.... What could it be? Because I haven't installed anything except for AVG in the past week... I hate it when the computer breaks -right- when you're planning on backing up (was waiting for one final file to download)

Live debug? Aka someone who knows way more than I do looking into it?

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And now, when it goes into a crash loop, it does it for easily 50 times... And my desktop becomes virtually useless. Same with my start menu.

And of course, I don't have enough space on the hard drive to do a 2nd install of Win2K - I've only got 900MB left, hence why I was going to be backing up stuff - to make room on my hard drive again.

Is there a pattern to what triggers the crash?
Opening a certain file type, accessing a specific drive, running a certain app/game...

Yes, a live debug would be launching the process inside a debugger to trap when the exception occurs and see what was going on inside the threads of the process at that time.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Paul Adams

Is there a pattern to what triggers the crash?
Opening a certain file type, accessing a specific drive, running a certain app/game...

Yes, a live debug would be launching the process inside a debugger to trap when the exception occurs and see what was going on inside the threads of the process at that time.

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Firing up Windows triggers it. >.< And now, it's in a constant incessant loop...

I think AVG probably adds shell extensions, if the problem started right after putting that on, it would be the first place I would look.

Dr Watson can give useful post-mortem information on why an application was killed sometimes, you can check the log it creates and see what module the exception occurred in - if you check on the filename matching the module name then you can get the properties (manufacturer, version, etc.) and search for known issues with it.
Or rename that module so it can't load, and see if the problem is still present.

Well, just thought I'd mention I wound up nuking the drive.... Thanks for the help guys....