I have recently been having problems with my system after upgrading my OS to XP. In windows 98 my system ran fine and ran all but one of my games. Now in XP anytime I run a game that requires any intensive graphics my system reboots with a Machine check exception. I am not overclocking my Duron processor my memory is fine and the processor is not overheating. My video and sound cards are more than sufficient to run the games and everything has the newest drivers installed.
What I'm wondering is if it is a processor problem and how to find out what the machine check exception code is and how to decode it or if it is an OS problem.

It could be faulty memory, i have known 98 machines that run ok, but then under the XP install you get a failure due to faulty memory chips that cant take the strain of paging for XP. I would download and run memtest86 to check it.

Also, if you are using FAT32, convert to NTFS, but ideally erase all partition information using zerofill from www.maxtor.com and then reinstall windows from there.

In addition check all of your drivers are compatable and ensure you have the latest WHQL versions.

Jake

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Main:
AMD Athlon 2600+ 333Mhz Thoroughbred | 512Mb in 2x 256Mb DaneElec DDR PC2700 | XFX NF2S-ALH with nForce 2 400Pro | Asus GeForce FX5200 128Mb Magic! | Creative 5.1! Live! | Maxtor DM+9 80Gb and Maxtor DM+8 20Gb | LiteON 832S DVD+-R/RW Dual Layer 8x | LiteOn 48x12x48x CD-RW | Full Black server case with 500W PSU | Relisys 17" Monitor | Wireless Optical Mouse | Logitech Surfer | XP Professional SP1

Server: Intel (Oh no!) 2x Pent

Ok I went through my memory again with the mem86 program and it passed that memory test as well as the windiag test. I reformetted and reloaded the os and reloaded one of the offending games... again I recieve a STOP: 0x0000009C (0x00000004, 0x00000000, 0xb2000000, 0x00020151)
"MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION"
error when trying to play the game... Of course this is after a reboot. So is there a way to check the processor machine check exception register? Or again is this an XP problem?

Hello,

Looks like a memory, cpu or cache problem. Read this.' ">http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=329284

You could try running your games in compatibility mode and see if it makes a difference. Here's how I'd do it: Uninstall the game. Reinstall the game but make sure not to use the autorun feature, just navigate to the game CD and right click on the setup file and select Run using win98 compatibility. Do the same when opening the game (Right click and select win98 compatibility).