Dell XPS L501x, BSOD 0x00000124

usasma · 28 Jun 2012

It depends on what OS you own that can legally be installed.
In most cases it doesn't matter if the system supports that OS - we can usually find drivers that will work.

I'd try a fresh install of XP. Finding drivers is a real pain, but we can help with that. It's important to get SP2 installed ASAP so we can get more details on the devices.

If you don't have XP, then we'll try Vista. We can usually find the appropriate drivers somewhere on the web. Does your Vista disk have SP1 installed? If not, you may want to figure out how to slipstream it into the disk - as that may help to avoid the infamous 3 of 3 boot loop ( Update 3 of 3 Boot Loop )

EDIT: I changed the post as I mistakenly posted advice about another system.

sine · 28 Jun 2012

I can get Vista installed ligit with SP1. I'll search around for Vista drivers direct from the hardware vendors, although some may cause a headache. (such as its sound card) I'll get onto it right away.

usasma · 28 Jun 2012

Let us know what drivers you can't find and we'll see what we can locate.
Zip up and upload the memory dump files from any BSOD's.

sine · 28 Jun 2012

All was going well until I decided to do a restart, not the first one, and now Windows will not boot. It's a blue screen but mini dumps are on and it's set up to not show the error screens. I was monitoring the temps whilst the system was running and they were just normal. I'll try to get the dumps from an Ubuntu Live CD.

I installed all of the drivers minus any NIC and the dedicated vid chip. I had the on board graphics working find with the screen res at full 1080p. I got quite a few blue screens, but it booted fine after and lasted nearly an hour this time without doing it.

EDIT: it will not boot in Safe Mode, the OS is useless now. You mentioned earlier the HDD, could it be to blame for something like this?

sine · 28 Jun 2012

Here's some new Minidumps.

Again, the Windows installation is now nonbootable.

sine · 29 Jun 2012

Okay, I'm starting to think this problem is out of scope for me. Do you think that I should just take the machine into a repair shop?

usasma · 30 Jun 2012

I'm starting to think that there's a serious problem somewhere in the system.
The memory dumps are all STOP 0x124 (hardware).

Have you checked the USB ports to see if any are damaged? How about unplugging the USB headers on the motherboard (that's the wires that lead to USB devices/ports that aren't fixed to the motherboard.

We'll either continue to troubleshoot the hardware issues, or you can take it to a shop.
I'd suggest trying some of the hardware diagnostics on the Ultimate Boot CD (especially a CPU stress test because of the previous overheating issues). The Ultimate Boot CD is free with a google/bing search.

Good luck!

sine · 30 Jun 2012

I'll continue to troubleshoot over the weekend. :)

We originally thought it was an issue with the NIC (that's what the dumps pointed to), since the NIC is on the external header I'll disconnect it and try. (There's a few USB 3.0's, a SATA port, HDMI and Gigabit Ethernet) I'll let you know the result of that.

I'll get going with UBCD as well.

Thanks for all of this, I really appreciate your help.

sine · 30 Jun 2012

Same problem with USB's removed and UBCD keeps getting a kernel panic. Look fit for the bin at this stage.

sine · 13 Oct 2012

Sorry to reopen this old thread. So I still have the same problems with this machines and I have replaced both the motherboard and CPU... what else could be causing this problem? (Tried new RAM and HDD also... no luck)