ok, read the million posts about this sick frustrating error. This thing started all of a sudden and blue screens me on normal boot-up. It hangs on the agp440.sys file during all the safe-mode start-ups. I read the many examples, and many of the fixes too. Here are the fixes that I've tried. I ran chkdsk and hoped I would fall into the category of chkdsk fixes, but not to be. I removed my modem card and my nic card for the cable modem and tried rebooting. No change at all. I rebooted from the CD and went to the recovery section, I renamed the agp440.sys to agp440.old...still no change, won't boot to any safe mode. I figured I'm screwed now so I might as well reload the O/S over top and hope I can get on and save some files. I ran the disk, chose the option to repair an existing O/S, and when it started, it came up and said it can't create a folder that it needed to create. Tried it again and it still didn't work, can't create a folder for some reason. So far, I've removed some hardware, removed the agp440 file, ran chkdsk, verified I'm running the latest version BIOS, and attempted to reload the O/S..all won't work. This box is less than a year old, the blue screen references reinstalling hardware/software that I recently put on..which is none FYI. Several have made suggestions to run some software or do other things but that's all assuming that I can log on. HELP ??? anybody have any suggestions ? my video card is a NVidia G-Force 4600ti. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, I'm passing the desperate stage, not sure what to do next.....many thanks

Right, it's your AGP drivers that are letting you down. Find the exact model and version of your mobo, goto the manufacturers website and hunt down up-to-date AGP bus drivers for your board. Good luck.

as you found, there are more ideas on how to solve this problem than leaves on a bush, so a few more won't hurt and here's two more: change the "PLug and Play OS" to yes in your BIOS. this link about your RAM chips looks most promising of all: http://ftp.sandpile.org/post/msgs/20003812.htm

many thanks for the responses you guys...ok, I checked each and every BIOS (Dell Rev. A09)setting and couldn't find one that references anything about Plug & Play, no P&P or any other abbreviation that I could see. Is it possible that my BIOS doesn't have that setting ? The motherboard is From Dell also, I checked their personal support site and sifted through the many applicable downloads for my exact system..and not one references anything about system board or system AGP BUS drivers. I'm about to check out the link about RAM chips now...not sure what's left for me to do. Any ideas how to figure out if I have the latest AGP Bus drivers ? ..Dell does not have that stuff listed...or anyone know where my 'Plug & Play set to YES' optipon is ?..since I can't find it in my BIOS. Any other suggestions ?...still completely frustrated....many thanks all for posting...

ok...now I tried swapping RAM dimms to see if I had bad RAM. I have 4 256M dimms, took one out and as soon as I started up, the system board just started beeping, absolutely nothing displayed on the screen. I tried sevel different combos of chip swapping and every time it resulted in the beeping. Thoroughly fed up, I put all 4 chips back in and booted up..and still get the same beeping noise with a blank screen...HELP, I'm going backwards instead of forward, I reseated the video card, moved RAM chips around and still get BEEPING....completely stuck and exhausted, any ideas anyone ?

Ok....reseated memory chips several times, beeps go away, and now I'm back to the AGP440.sys blue screen/hang error..... have done everything possible other than swap out the video card....any ideas?

back to the BIOS, here's a guide: http://www.lostcircuits.com/advice/bios2/2.shtml