I spent some time digging around, trying to find something that seems to relate to what is going on with your system. And I think I finally found it. My assumption after reading all of this is that HP seems to have some problems with sound cards. Why is not clear. But read the following, and see if you do not come to the same conclusion.
parity check 2
The following is from: http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?67878-quot-Parity-Check-2-quot-what-!-!!!
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Well, this is INTENSELY interesting - looks like it was a PCI card, but the only one in there was a SB sound-card. When I removed the card, and rebooted, the machine boots up(and finishes the XP install in this case), and everything is now fine.
The odd thing is, that a soundcard does not have any on-board RAM, so how can there be a parity error, in a device which has no RAM of it's own?
Card in question is a PCI soundcard, SB CT4810 with Creative CT2518 chip.
ADDITIONAL: After the XP install completed, I put the card back in, and it boots up fine, detects and installs the card, and everything is happy. EXCEPT when I try to play something, then the whole system crashes. I now officially suspect that sound-card as a cause of problems. Will try another card and post results...
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Hokey pokey, mjc - fair comment.
I have just tried an external USB soundcard, and it works fine, and importantly DOES NOT crash the system when you try to play something on it.
The bit that was really throwing me, was the fact that the report was a parity error, and naturally, your first thought is system memory issues, hence my running of MemTest.
Having run MemTest and let it run right through, and no errors reported, it was really starting to confuse me big time, especially as if there really WAS a problem with the system memory, all sorts of horrible things should be happening during the setup process...
Oh well - another day, another dumb computer problem.
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I think there must be a problem with this computer's motherboard. I tried to install a SB Live 24-bit card today, and am getting parity errors again. This time, the system boots up fine, but when you try to install the drivers, the whole system falls over with a BSOD:
*** Hardware Malfunction
Call your hardware vendor for support.
NMI: Parity Check / Memory Parity Error
*** The system has halted. ***
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Hokey pokey, PC Guide boys and girls:
Another box does not have this problem.
I can install the live 24-bit card no problems in another box I have now setup. I have put a sticker on the old box to mark it's PCI slots as "Suspect".
Enough computer stuff for tonight.
I've fixed my FM transmitter tonight also(dead final transistor - no wonder it had no range!), so am back on air enjoying the soundz(if that does not sound conceited!) and a few suds aswell...
...just thought I would check in with the results...
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I also found two other threads talking about the same error, but I do not know if they will help you...
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_xp-hardware/what-does-parity-check-2-mean/9a3c06d0-8538-4496-afbe-10793ea1bab9?auth=1
http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/Business-PCs-Compaq-Elite-Pro/Parity-Check-2-error-on-startup/td-p/5414?notmigrated#.VemlwVVViko