1. Antivirus pogram or backup tool, sometimes is the cause, because when its Vista incompatible.

2. Also, when hardwares are Vista incompatible. So does the corrupted device drivers, BIOS firmware incompatibility, and a corrupted installation of system services.

3. Failed hardware.

Steps to resolve STOP 0x0000000A

1. Remove all external hardwares such as CD, DVD, printers, camera, sound card, network/wifi card, USB stick etc… and confirm they are all VISTA compatible. Dont plug in yet.

2. The next step is to restart the computer, and press F8 immediately when the PC starts to open Advanced Boot Options. Select System Recovery Option, and press System Repair. This starts the repair process of the entire PC.

3. Once the repair is done, plug in all the Vista compatible hardwares. Now click on Start->Control Panel->System and Maintenance->Problem Reports and Solutions. This must find the driver updates, run them. Now the problem must be resolved!

4. In come cases, you still see the error during startup but the windows loads. In that case go to c:\windows\system32
right click cmd.exe and Run As Administrator. Enter mdshed.exe.  This opens up Windows Memory Diagnostic tool. Click on “Restart now and check for problems (Recommended)”. System restarts now to run this tool. This will diagnose all the memory problems as this STOP 0x0000000A IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL is related to memory.

4. b. Making sense of Windows Memory Diagnostic Test Results

If the test fails RAM is failed, i recommend you to get a new memory. Crucial.com is the best place i personally get my memory sticks.

If the test shows errors message “Hardware problems were detected”. The following steps helps,

i. If you have only one RAM, get another one for the test. (other computers or even friends)

ii. Run an Extended memory test (press T on the Tool screen) for both the RAM one by one at one RAM module, keep the others free. This might take a while. If your RAM has errors while the other hasn’t then its an hardware problem. Get a new one. Ram sticks are dirt cheap at crucial.com.

Its good to have all the maintenance tools with Vista compatibility. A good vista compatible antivirus, antispyware and Registry Optimizer Tool will make up for a great arsenal of PC health maintenance tool.

Process Explorer, shows the break down of sub process, showing memory usage of each one, helping you find what actually accounts for more of the overall memory usage of the process.

If in any case you are not aware of a particular sub process, google it to see if its a spyware and fix it.

Click on the image for full screen view. To get an interface like what you see in this image, in the Process Explorer, go View > Select Columns>Process memory tab. Check “Working set size”. Click OK. This will now show RAM/memory usage. Then, in main window, look for “System” process. Expand it, so sub processes are shown.

As you can see from the image above, the problem lies with the svchost.exe while i was expecting AVG module, avgwdsvc.exe to be the culprit. In that case, uninstalling AVG and reinstalling the latest version seldom helps. Looking for an alternative such as Avast or even better a paid one such as Kaspersky helps.

After examining, it seems that svchost should be a process on its own and in some cases it gets nested under system when sub process of svchost accessing that of system.

Researching more, shows that avdwdsvc.exe which is known as AVG Watchdog, a service that monitors other AVG components, to be examined. As expected the problem lies here. Seems like there is a memory leak, ie. more memory usage.

To fix this disable AVG watch dog service. To do that, go Start Button > Run > type services.msc. Find the service ‘AVG8 Watch Dog’, right click on it, click disable. Exit and reboot. By then the problem must be solved if not uninstall AVG.

To prevent high memory usage of processes, its must to have a reliable Registry Optimizer Tool, in addition to a firewall, antispyware and antivirus program. This is because, after a spyware fix, its must to clean its remnant, to avoid invalid registry entries slowing down your PC.

1. Registry maintenance: A registry that is bloated up is the reason behind a slow computer. This is due to the cluttering up by the entries that are of no use. Thus a registry becomes unstable and prone to threats. This is one of the main cause that causes the computer to not to respond to most of your inputs. What’s the remedy? To maintain and re-organize the registry, clean and compact it periodically. How this can be done? With a help of registry cleaner that will defragment and re-organize your windows registry and removes unwanted files and data.
2. Hard Disk maintenance: You might be aware that all your files and data are stored in the hard disk drive.  If a hard disk has too many dead files, it also slows down your computer. As you begin to install large amount of software and programs the hard disk gets acquired a lot number of files, even once you have stopped adding programs recently. This is due to the presence of large number of obsolete files. These dead files are prone to the attack of malwares such as virus and spyware. They destroy your computer! So how to solve this problem? A) Do a regular scan of your hard disk B) Uninstall all the unwanted program with an uninstaller tool that eliminates them completely C) Regular use of disk cleanup tool to clean up the temporary folder and finally D) Performing disk defragmentation to re-organize the hard disk sectors and remove dead sectors. These are the ways to clean up and maintain your hard disk.
3. RAM: RAM is the system memory!  This is the last step – to check your RAM. When you don’t have enough system memory, it will slow down your computer. That is one of the reasons. The other is, when there is a RAM chip failure. To find out a RAM chip failure, you must do PC memory test. This test will confirm the errors in the system memory. When the problem still exists, then it’s better to replace your RAM, probably to 1 GB or more. Even if your RAM is good, I recommend that you increase its capacity for a faster pc performance!

These 3 simple yet powerful ways helps you to resolve a slow computer and boost up your system’s performance, thus preventing system failures, in the long run. A fast computer is a must these days to perform heavy works. So thus there is a need for speed along with clean maintenance and healthy condition of the system, to get the most out of it!

A little issue in the RAM can determine how a PC works. The worst case scenario that it might corrupt all the datas you have stored in the hard drives. So a PC memory test comes in to the picture to fix that problem, so you can prevent those RAM nightmares even before they happen to you!

When there is a RAM problem?

If even after you clean your computer with antivirus and antispyware programs, the computer is still unable to get rid of re-occurring errors, or if the system restore fails even after restoring all the registry and other datas, then there is a problem with your RAM!

How to perform PC memory test?

1. The first method is using a memory tester bootable USB or floppy disk. The tool helps reporting the errors within your memory module. In case if you have multiple memory modules, you need to isolate them and perform test of each of them individually.
2. The second test is performed, after the first test fails. In that case the problem is with your RAM chip being incompatible with the hardware of your computer. In that case the remedy is to take the RAM and perform the first test on second computer. If even that test fails then there is a hardware problem and you need to change your RAM.

Those are how to perform memory test. If you once knew those steps you can get started when ever you sense there is a RAM problem. You can by doing these avoid going to the professionals and save time and money!

If RAM test passes and still there are errors then the problem is with your registry and you need to use a tool called Registry cleaner to scan your computer for errors. You can use the scan tool above this article.