gjc

I also purchased an Acer notebook, model 2423, in Feb 2006,

and have suffered NMI Parity Error on and off for months.

Of course I downloaded all the diagnostic software I could find that

looked useful. Microsoft has a memory diagnostic, an ISO image

you can use to cut a bootable cd-rom. Then I also downloaded

and used a couple open source solutions.

There was no memory problem detected, not after days of testing.

The machine has been sent back to Acer twice. The first time

they replaced the disk and memory. Of course it did not fix anything.

The next time they just replaced the disk. They don't seem to pay

much attention to the detailed problem reports.

This time I am going to have a long phone conversation with them.

I am no hardware idiot. I have build devices from chips

and written microcode and hardware diagnostics during the era

of mini computers.

So I understand how difficult it is for the operating system to figure out

what is actually wrong, sometimes. The fact that you point to the

network board is interesting. I suspected as much myself, because the thing

does appear to crash more often when it is downloading a large file.

It definitely is possible for NMI Parity Error to be caused by other stuff

on the I/O bus. Microsoft does have some references to that for some

kinds of hardware. It is not always memory at fault.

Oh, I can also get the machine to fail more often by cooling it to 40 degrees,

and then warming it to 80 degrees, which is well within the claimed operating

temp limits. I never use a direct connection to ethernet, always use

wireless.