Error when Applying a filesystem on a partition

[Zachery]

Ive been playing around with linux builds off and on for a while now on my small pc (HP Pavilion old one) every time i try to apply a file system the system totaly freezes, ive tried a few differnt times, once it gave me this error

unable to handle kernel NULL pointer deference at virtual address 000000004

Looks like it was 000000004 instead of just 00000000

It happens when i try mkfs.ext3 or mke2fs -j /dev/hda3

[Zachery]

seems to have been bad ram

tahnks for the help