Physical memory dump? Help please!

Physical memory dump? Help please!

Okay, my brother plays a online game that he downloaded from the internet and while he was playing it for awhile a blue screen came up with a message saying "physical memory dump". This has happened before. The computer is windows xp media edition. How do i fix this/prevent it from happening? Can this problem cause any damage to the pc?


Thanks, BJ

 

Ok thanks Josh , ill check the logs tomorrow. Gone to go to sleep so I can get up early for school tomorrow :zzz:.

 

Make sure it's a honest to goodness real Microsoft error message and not one of those phoney scam ones.
You know like the ones that say your computer is infected with spyware and you need to download this tool to remove it which instead installs spyware on your computer.
Also something you might have him try out is to download a program called Memtest.
Run it and see if it shows that he's having problems with his Ram memory.
Depending on how much memory he has installed you can't just check all of it at the same time.
Say he's got 2048 MB of ram (2GB) start the program and it will ask you how much ram to test.
You can't just go and put the 2048 in the box as you have to break it down into 2 tests at least.
Then let it run for awhile and it will show if you have memory problems.

 

I got a pop up in the right bottom corner of the screen saying low virtual memory. I looked at the settings for virtual memory and it was set to an certain amount, I changed it to let system decide.

@Swmeek, its not one of those phoney messages this time, thank god, I had one of those phoney messages from a virus "av pro 2009" before. I blocked av pro 2009 site and keyword on my router because we got the same virus again after a few months.

 

It might be worthwhile to see if you can upgrade the memory in his computer.
Especially if he's getting VM error messages.

 

Thanks swmeek, ill look into that.