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System breakdown

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by wayneinreno

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I tried to install a new card into an HP system running XP Home. It has been showing the messgae "PAGE FAULT IN BLAH BLAH BLAH....What is a Page fault? and when I reinstalled the card,as the directions in the page fault error explained, I cannot getthe system to boot. I have to go to safe mode. Also I am being asked to activate windows again.Can any one tell me what the heck is going on here?

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by saihib

First of all, what kind of card did you try to install? The error message "PAGE FAULT IN BLAH BLAH ..." does not exist in the Microsoft Knowledge Base. If you can boot in Safe Mode you can get the system to boot. If you want to know what the heck isgoing on you'd better explain it better.

by thechas

Hi Wayne,

A page fault means that there was a memory or file access error.

Since you triggered a product activation event, I assume that you were installing a new network card.

Office and Windows XP use a hardware based signature of your PCto establish it's identity.
Change too many hardware items at once, Windows assumes that it has been moved to a different PC.

At this time, Microsoft is being fairly liberal in allowing you to re-activate the system.

For more details on Product Activation, check out the article posted at www.aumha.org

With XP, much more so than with W98, you NEED to remove devices from device manager before physically removing them from the PC.

Removing or changing hardware without first un-installing the hardware drivers can cause page faults when the registry attempts to access the old hardware.

Chas

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