My main computer locked up while making a crash log last week. The blue screen error said “page fault in non-paged area.” When I tried to reboot it, it wouldn’t even POST. The disk would appear active for a second and then the computer would stop making any progress. The splash screen never came up.

I took it into a local computer shop so that they could fix it. Because of the holiday, they didn’t get to it promptly. While I was waiting through Christmas, I decided that if it was broken, it’s old enough that it wasn’t worth fixing.

I started looking for a replacement computer to buy. I had an selection of parts on Newegg and called the computer shop to pick up the old machine. Much to my surprise, when I got it home, it booted up fine.

I thought that that was quite fortuitous that it worked. I saved about $900 + lots of work in buying a new computer or $125+ if they repaired it.

It isn’t “fixed”, but I’m hopeful that it won’t crash that way again for a while. I need to use a memory testing tool since failing memory is a likely cause of the problem.

It is a massive tangle of cables in the back of the computer. I think I’m better at putting it together again if/when I need to open it up again.