Quoting mdnitoil:

Quote:
One thing we used to do was bounce memory chips around.  Depending on how many pieces are installed on your motherboard, possibly removing a piece and shuffling things around to see if you can isolate a bad piece.  Of course, if you only have a single stick of memory this is a dead end.  Beyond that, you can always go to some of those free web diagnostic sites and run the memory test.  I think they're the standard sequential and then random tests, but each bit will get hit.

Only one memory slot. I tried inserting a different memory stick (little smaller), but still crashing.

Quoting Grendell:

Quote:
I suspect there is an incompatibility with his graphics drivers and DVD Profiler.

zymurgist, are you ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN you get the SAME CRASH information when you try to run DVD Profiler in safe mode? ("DVD Profiler has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience.")

Again, hit F8 repeatedly as your computer boots, and you should get a menu. You did get that menu, right? Select "Safe Mode".

After Windows XP boots in Safe Mode, try running DVD Profiler.

What happens exactly?

Exact same information when I'm running in safe mode. Just to test your theory, I used a PCI graphics card I had sitting around and I get the same error.

Quoting systeddy:

Quote:
zymurgist, try installing WinDbg as a JIT debugger, this will allow you to collect some more information about that odd crash. Download WinDbg from MS (Debugging Tools Download from MS) and install it.

After successful installation open a command lin prompt: Click on Start, Run..., enter "cmd" (without the quotes) and hit enter. A new window with black background should appear.

change the current path to C:\Programs\Debugging Tools for Windows\ (or whereever you chose to install it) by entering "cd "c:\Programs\Debugging Tools for Windows"". Please note the extra quotation marks enclosing the path, this is just to make sure that the cd command finds the correct path (there are spaces in the path which can be problematic sometimes).

type "dir windbg.exe" to check if you have the correct folder, it should list one item found.

now enter "windbg -I" (that is windbg followed by a space, a minus and a capital i) and you should get a success or fail message. If it fails we need to investigate further what's going on, but I assume you'll get a success message.

From this point on, any unhandled exceptions (such like your DP crash) will be redirected to WinDbg first to allow debugging of the problem.

WinDbg isn't exactly user-friendly in usage, but we'll only need a little bit of it.

Close the command prompt by typing "exit" and hitting enter. Now fire up DP. You should see the usual stuff happening, yet this time WinDbg should open up and prompt you for your instructions.

Near the bottom of the window, there is a command line with a flashing cursor. Enter ".lastevent" (no caps, no spaces and a leading point!), then copy and paste the output here if possible.

Followed your instructions and the debugger kicks off. Unfortunately, it looks like its caught in a loop and just continues to repeat the following line untill I right click on DP and select "close".

"(94.2b4): Illegal instruction - code c000001d (first chance)"

I don't get a flashing curser.

Quoting zymurgist:

Quote:
Yes, I've figured out the montherboard - its a VIA C3VCM2, but its not listed on the VIA web site, so I can't seem to find any BIOS update info. Thanks for the old versions, but they won't let me install my old DB. I kept getting an upgrade message. It seems I'm dead in the water.

I found 2 sources for this MB but no drivers or Bios update, looks like OEM boards:
http://www.zyang.net//mainboard/c3vcm2.htm
http://www.hopely.com.cn/English/products_show.asp?id=2793
Did you disable the PNP in the bios? if not try this.
I will come back at the old programs, will un install on the other machine and see what is happening.

Quoting zymurgist:

Quote:
Followed your instructions and the debugger kicks off. Unfortunately, it looks like its caught in a loop and just continues to repeat the following line untill I right click on DP and select "close".

"(94.2b4): Illegal instruction - code c000001d (first chance)"

I don't get a flashing curser.

Do I get this right, the debugging tool crashes too while trying to get the debug info?

Wow, the last time I saw 1D was when I tried to run some SSE2-optimized code on an old AMD K6 which obviously didn't know the SSE2 instructions. Taking into account that DVD Profiler is probably wrapped with some anti-piracy tool, I'd guess it could be that protection going havoc. We've had such with early versions of a software protection we evaluated for some time. This would also explain why the debugger can't get a grip on the crashing process.

Edit: A small glimpse at the dvdpro.exe shows that it indeed seems to be "protected" with something. I don't have the time nor motivation to examine this, it's Invelos' task - I fear we're out of luck with this one.

Notable IA-32 CPUs not supporting SSE2

SSE2 is an extension of the IA-32 architecture. Therefore any architecture that does not support IA-32 does not support SSE2. x86-64 CPUs all implement IA-32, by definition. All known x86-64 CPUs also implement SSE2. Since IA-32 predates SSE2, early IA-32 CPUs did not implement it. SSE2 and the other SIMD instruction sets were intended primarily to improve CPU support for realtime graphics, notably gaming. A CPU that is not marketed for this purpose or that has an alternative SIMD instruction set has no need for SSE2.

The following is a list of CPUs that implemented IA-32 after SSE2 was developed, but that did not implement SSE2:
AMD CPUs prior to Athlon 64, including all Socket A-based CPUs
Intel CPUs prior to Pentium 4
Via C3
Transmeta Crusoe