I've been trying to get my XP machine running. It's a Dell e510, I'm guessing about 5 years old??, I'm not sure.
When I tried to boot up, I first got a series of beeps that appear to be memory related. I checked to make sure that the memory cards were all seated correctly, and after several tries, I finally got the machine to boot up---and then the real trouble started.
I got a blue screen that said it did a physical memory dump to save the computer from damage.
The next time I tried to boot up, I got a screen that said it was checking the file system on C. The type of file was NTFS, and that it was "dirty". Then it ran cksdsk on the files, indexes and security descriptions. After getting through that process, Windows started to boot up only to have yet another blue screen with a physical memory dump.
The technical detail was:
Stop: 0x000000E3, 0x892b0cc0, 0x899c2a50, 0x00000000, 0x00000002

The last time I had used this computer was last summer, and it was working fine. No new hardware or upgrades were installed; the machine was not turned on at all.

It looks like this is beyond my skills: memory I can handle; dirty files I don't know anything about.

It could be the memory.
It could be the motherboard.
It could be the hard drive.
etc.

You can narrow down the possibilities by downloading and running memtest to check the memory and motherboard
http://www.memtest86.com/download.html

There are instructions here
http://www.memtest86.com/tech.html

Memtest can boot off a floppy or off a CD depending on which version you download. You leave it running a few hours (I usually leave it overnight) and if it finds no errors, your memory and motherboard are probably OK.

Other than using memtest, you can try removing all but one stick of RAM (assuming each stick has at least the minimum requirement to run XP, which I think is 64MB or 128MB) and see if the computer runs without errors. Test each stick of RAM individually.

You may need to boot off a CD instead of the hard drive if you had bad memory and it contaminated your XP installation. A Ubuntu Linux Live CD works well for testing, since it allows you to boot from the CD without installing anything.
http://www.ubuntu.com/GetUbuntu/download

That looks to be a file system error -

0x000000E3: RESOURCE_NOT_OWNED
(Click to consult the online MSDN article.)
Various failures involving the NTFS file system cause this condition, as explained in the individual articles below. (All documented causes involve actual bugs in Windows.)

WINDOWS STOP MESSAGES

Some of this is beyond my expertise.
I will try removing the memory-I have four sticks, but I thought I had to remove them in pairs. I can pull one stick at a time?

You should be able to - worse case is the BIOS will complain (and fail to boot).

You should have a diagnostics disc from Dell - run it to see if it can locate the issue.

Yes you can just test each stick at a time if you want also test the slots as they can become faulty and not the ram.

If a problem has shown up on the hdd tho due to a faulty write from memory to hdd it could mean a boogered up operating system, can happen. In which case you might have to reinstall windows after you have fix the original cause of the problem. This is worst case scenario tho. You can always just use the hdd in another computer and back stuff up if you did have to do a format and reinstall but like i said wcs event.

Oh, boy! This is starting to sound ugly. I'll see if I can work on the memory a bit tomorrow.

Inland, I'll look to see if I have a diagnostics disc...I don't remember seeing one.

You may not have received a diagnostics CD, but you may be able to run diagnostics using instructions on ***this page***.

Mary, I would check the battery just in case. I had a lot of unusual problems in December when trying to install one Dell PC anew. At the end I took it to Best Buy, they said it was missing a driver for the hard disk (it was the original hard disk as the software I was trying to install and had installed before without problems). When I brought it back home - blue screen again and a message of weak battery. I took it back and they changed the battery and it is working since. Apparently the BIOS was being reset to change to RAID controls.

I don't know what to do. I know some things about the computer and how it works, but I don't want to mess up the computer totally doing something stupid.
I also know that just to have someone look at the computer will probably cost $100. But it really hasn't been used much at all.
I'll take one more look at it this Friday (my day off)and see what happens. What concerns me is all the different error messages I'm getting. It started as a memory problem and has really escalated. It may need more help than I can give it.
Thanks for all the suggestions. I will let you know how it turns out.

Hi Mary...if you can boot to the recovery console...i believe press f8 to get there....from the command prompt type
chkdsk /X /R

if it is a filesystem problem this will map out bad sectors etc and could get you going

hamer, I can try that. Is there a space before both the slash marks? Or are there NO spaces at all?

chkdsk (space)/X (space)/R

good luck

No success. I can't get the computer to boot up at all right now; I immediately get a 1-3-2 beep code (which I think has something to do with memory) with the numbers 3 & 4 lit up. I took out first one original memory stick (no difference) and then the other original memory stick (leaving the 2 virtually brand new (only 6 months old) sticks in. Again, wouldn't boot up. I'm getting the same error beep code but now the numbers are different.
Since memory cards are about all I want to mess with inside the computer, I guess it will have to go to the "doctor" next week.

It could be one of the new sticks that is bad.
But if any of them are bad, by now your Windows install is probably too corrupt to boot even with good memory. You'd have to use a boot CD to check if it could boot.

And it may be the motherboard that is bad, which would be too hard for you to replace anyway. If you want, you can visually check for swollen capacitors. There's a picture ***here*** for comparison. The capacitors should be flat on top, not bulging. And they shouldn't be leaking. Of course the motherboard could also be bad in ways that don't involve capacitors. But if you see swollen capacitors, it's a good sign the motherboard will need replacing.

Those are definitely Memory errors based on the beep codes -

Dell™ Dimension™ 5150/E510 Service Manual

Let us know how it turns out, hopefully it's a simple fix.

UPDATE:

Good news! My computer is back from the doctor. Only very minor problems--my original two memory sticks were bad; one of the newer memory sticks was not seated correctly, perhaps because the right clip that has a bit of a wiggle to it.
With the old sticks removed and the newer ones firmly seated, it runs (or so I'm told). I'm hooking it up tomorrow, but I'm expecting no problems. I have no idea why I was getting all those dire warnings, but you guys would know better than me if bad memory can do that.

I feel that my $50 was well spent, since now I know that there aren't some major problems to deal with.

Very nice, Mary. Inland did say something about the beeps you were hearing indicating memory issues.

Hope it goes OK tomorrow...