SQL Server crashing machine

Seems to be SQL Server Manager

[webboy1]

I am trying to install SQL Server 2000 developer edition on one of our office machines, but something strange keeps happening. I have installed SQL Server many times before without any problems, so not quite sure what is going on here.

Anyway, it all seems to install ok. However, when i restart the machine, and everything is loading on startup, just as it gets to the point of automatically switching on my SQL Server Manager, i get a blue screen up telling me that an error has occured and physical memory is being dumped to disk. At which point i have to switch off the machine.

Has anyone experienced this before? If i switch the machine back on in Safe mode, which by default has the Server manager switched off, all works well.

It seems that the SQL Server Manager is affecting something in the system, but i have no idea what.....

Any ideas?

Webboy

[bakedjake]

Any ideas?

When's the last time you ran a RAM checker?

Google for memtest86.

[webboy1]

I have never heard of a RAM checker...

.....so i have never ran one.

What is it? What does it do? Could this be the problem?

Webboy

[mattglet]

if i'm not mistaken, it checks the quality of your RAM (whether or not there are errors on the stick, etc). could be wrong though.

-Matt

[bakedjake]

What is it? What does it do? Could this be the problem?

Matt's right - A RAM checker tests your physical RAM by writing 1s, 0s, and other patterns to every single bit on the physical RAM stick. Usually, a blue screen in Win2K can indicate either buggy software (usually device drivers), but I've often found with SQL Server it will indicate a hardware problem because SQL Server (surprisingly) is well coded. SQL Server tends to use all of the RAM available to it, especially the developer and enterprise editions, so a blue screen can indicate a RAM problem.

memtest86 is a free checker that is very comprehensive, written by an ex-SGI guy who knows quite a bit about the subject.

Try running that on your PC and see if it detects any errors.

[wkitty42]

hehehe, and here i have been running SQL Server as a bad RAM detector all these years :):):)