# Parity Check 2 problem!



## wallacemarino

Hey Guys I'm new here and I'm hoping you can help with my problem.

I'm running an older HP Compaq SFF desktop, 2.7ghz Dual Core HT, 2gb ram with standard onboard 128mb intel graphics chipset. It has Windows 7 installed.

The other day it was running fine, I shut it down in the evening and when I came to start it up the next day I got the "Windows failed to start" message with the option to try starting normally or run startup repair.

I tried starting normally and after the windows logo came up it immediately restarted and gave me a black screen with the message "Parity Check 2". I tried again and ran startup repair, after checking the discs I get the message that startup repair has failed and when I click ok the machine again restarts and passes up the "Parity Check 2" message.

After doing a little reading I got the idea that it may be a ram memory issue, I checked my bios and it is still registering the full 2048mb installed memory and I ran windows memory diagnostics and this does not show any errors.

Can anybody point me in the direction of what might be wrong here? Would I be better posting this in the hardware section, as yet I'm not sure whether it's a hardware problem or windows failure.

Any help much appreciated.

Regards


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## Lance1

Welcome to TSG!

That particular error can also point to a resource problem. Being that you performed a windows memory diagnostic and came up clean I would point in that direction. Do you have any 3rd party cards in any PCI slots? If you do, pull the card and boot the system and see if the problem remains. If the problem does remains, change the ECC/parity BIOS setting to straight parity and try to reboot. If the parity error goes away, and returns when ECC is re-enabled, the chances are you have false parity memory in your PC. The only good solution would be to replace the memory.


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## wallacemarino

Hey there Lance1, thanks for the suggestions. Sorry it took me so long to reply but I didn't have a chance to look at the machine until today. I tried all of your suggestions with no success and was getting mentally prepared to fork out for new memory when I decided to try a windows reinstall as a last gasp cash saving fix and lo and behold it worked! Everything I had read including your post suggested that this was a hardware issue but a full win7 reinstall seems to have done the trick. 

I'm happy that it's fixed but I'm still baffled as to what the problem might have been (could it have been a virus?) If anybody has any ideas as to what caused this annoying issue I'd really like to hear your thoughts


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## vinsanity

sometimes it has nothing to do with the hardware itself. this error as i myself had experienced it is caused by inappropriate driver for your hardware most likely sound or video.  to try and recover your system i suggest run your windows in safe mode and uninstall the suspected hardware driver manually.


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