Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
• You can press S, which shuts off parity checking and resumes system operation at the
point where the parity check first occurred.
• You can press R to force the system to reboot, losing any unsaved work.
•Youcanpressanyotherkeytocausethesystemtoresumeoperationwithparitycheck-
ing still enabled.
Systems with an AMI BIOS display the parity error messages in one of the following
forms:
ON BOARD PARITY ERROR ADDR (HEX) = (xxxxx)
or
OFF BOARD PARITY ERROR ADDR (HEX) = (xxxxx)
These messages indicate that an error in memory has occurred during the POST, and the
failure is located at the address indicated. The first message indicates that the error oc-
curredonthemotherboard,andthesecondmessageindicatesanerrorinanexpansionslot
adaptercard.TheAMIBIOScanalsodisplaymemoryerrorsinoneofthefollowingman-
ners:
Memory Parity Error at xxxxx
or
I/O Card Parity Error at xxxxx
These messages indicate that an error in memory has occurred at the indicated address
during normal operation. The first one indicates a motherboard memory error, and the
second indicates an expansion slot adapter memory error.
NotethatthesemessagescanvarydependingnotonlyontheROMBIOSbutonyourOS.
Protected mode OSs, such as most versions of Windows, trap these errors and run their
own handler program that displays a message different from what the ROM would have
displayed. The message might be associated with a blue screen or might be a trap error,
but it usually indicates that it is memory or parity related.
Caution
Whenyouarenotifiedofamemoryparityerror,remembertheparitycheckistellingyouthat
memory has been corrupted. Do you want to save potentially corrupted data over the good
file from the last time you saved? Definitely not! Be sure you save your work with a differ-
ent filename. In addition, after a parity error, save only to a floppy disk or other removable
media drive if possible, and avoid writing to the hard disk. There is a slight chance that the
hard drive could become corrupt if you save the contents of corrupted memory.
