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memory issues

niall

n00b
Joined
Jun 28, 2003
Messages
14
This is driving me nuts like you wouldn't believe.

Starting on friday, my computer started bluescreening at the wierdest times. Nothing changed, i installed a few new programs maybe, that's about it. If i clicked on something random, i might get a bluescreen, or maybe starting some random program, bluescreen. always different ones too. something about IRQ not less or equal, or something complaining about virtual memory, or paging somethig something... So fine, nothing a format/reinstall can't fix!

so i tried out my windows DVD, which crashed during the install. I tried another windows Pro CD i had, crashed at a different point, both with wierd blue screen errors again. Finally, my trusty old 2600 build XP Corp CD worked. While i was installing my ATI drivers, bluescreen again. Strange indeed. So i thought maybe a short in the motherboard. removed it, there WAS a screw in there, so i hoped that fixed it. Nope, a few minutes later, i bluescreen again. and then again. So a friend suggests it's probably memory. So i burn off a bootable memtest CD, and sure enough it's got a lot of failures. I've got 4 sticks of 256MB in there, so i remove 2 of them (leaving the dual channels in the right slots of course). same problem. so i drop it down to a single 256MB sticks, same thing. tried another one of the sticks on it's own, same thing. So ALL my memory is bad? Not quite. I cranked down the FSB to default of 200. Ran the test for about an hour, and nothing fails. So all is well, my friend suggests giving more volts to the ram when i increase the FSB. so i give 2.8 volts, put the FSB back to 230, same thing happens in memtest. dropped back to 220, same thing. So now i'm stuck with a piddly old 2.6GHz, and can't seem to do anything about it. Specs are listed below, and as you can see, the RAM is more than capable of running 1:1 at 230FSB(460DDR, the ram is 466DDR)

Is my ram gone bad? why all of a sudden like this? I would expect Kingston ram to be better than this. is it a mobo problem maybe? I am lost at this point...

P4 2.6C w/ hyperthreading
Abit IC7-MAX3
2x512 Dual Channel kits Kingston HyperX PC3700
Thermalright SP-94 w/ antec quiet fan
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB
NEC 4X DVD burner
3x160GB SATA in RAID 0 array
1x100GB IDE
Enermax 430W PSU.
 
Gah, missed that, sorry. OK, so you have errors, is the RAM bad? Probably, but still needs further testing because it may still be the board. Now we need another machine, to verify what is working and what isn't.

OK, so memtest the second machine to make sure it has no issues. If it's ok, test your RAM in this machine, one at a time. If the RAM test ok, then it's your board introducing the errors, if the RAM still tests bad, your RAM is bad.

All testing should be done one by one, then build up from there to your max RAM. Also reset your BIOS, don't test with any funky settings like voltage tweaks. You may have introduced the error by a bad timing setting or something along those lines.

If you RAM test good on the other board but not on yours (with stock BIOS settings) then you have a bad board.

Good Luck.
 
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