Memory Parity Error

[Generation ABXY]

So, my laptop is acting up again...already. I don't think it has even been a month since the last crash (which was somewhere around six months after the first one), but luckily my warranty has expired now. -_-

So, anyway, I got a blue screen twice today telling me - and, sorry, but I don't have the exact phrase - that I had a memory parity error. What is it, and is there any way to fix it with out dropping cash I don't have on some sort of Dell service call?

[Everyone vs Dinosaurs]

First off: Don't even try to talk with dell. I learned much, much more from googling, than I did from those folks.

Explanation: A parity error was detected within the system memory. Parity checking is used to detect memory corruption between the time that data is written to memory and the time that it is read back. See here for a complete explanation of system memory error detection and correction. This error message means that there is a problem associated with the system memory. Depending on the system, you may be told some specifics about what part of memory caused the error.

Diagnosis: There are many possible causes of memory parity errors, some of them only related indirectly to the memory, or even having nothing to do with the memory at all. In particular, a memory error at start up is often indicative of a wide variety of possible problems.

[Seika]

RAM parity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAM_parity) - It's basically the way the computer knows that what is reading from memory is not corrupted.

There's a number of things (http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000376.htm) that could cause this, it would be hard to know exactly what is wrong with out looking at the physical thing and doing some tests.

Try running memtest (http://www.memtest86.com/) for a night, see what it tells you.