Please help...

[Colt Seevers]

Hi peeps,

/sigh

right here we go.. over the past six months my PC has been, switching itself off. Mostly during hard gaming sessions ie Battlefield 2 but not exclusivley as it's done it with a few other games.

Basically my PC re-boots - but on restart the monitor is just blank.. like no signal (although I don't get the no signal message) Although the PC still boots up as normal, as I can hear the Windows start up music.

Only way to fix it is to use the on off switch at the back of the PC. This cannot be healthy.... Twice now during a game of BF2 its happened and on 2nd rebooting it had wiped my controls / account profiles basically everything, luckily I backed these up from the last time it happened!

It's not temp related, so I think I can rule that out.

Most PC problems I can usually sort out myself via the power of google & boards like this :) But this has got me beat. Over the last year I've upgraded most new parts, or canabalised bits from old machines... which makes me think could something like this be memory related? So last night I left memtest 86+ running for 14 hours. To be honest I don't know what the results were... and I dunno how to get screenies when something like memtest is running so I had to use my mobile! lol Here are the "results":

http://jobbie.games.googlepages.com/DSC00165.JPG


http://jobbie.games.googlepages.com/DSC00166.JPG

http://jobbie.games.googlepages.com/summary.JPG

memory info:
http://jobbie.games.googlepages.com/mem.JPG

EVEREST HOME REPORT (http://jobbie.games.googlepages.com/Report.htm)

Again sorry for the shady pics but its all I could think of! :(

The results from memtest look bad but as I've no experiance on these things I'm unsure... anyway, if anyone can help it would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

Colt

[Virtualbody1234]

I see that you have 3 sticks of Kingston and 1 stick of Corsair RAM.

Remove them all and insert one at a time and run the memtest for each one.

[Colt Seevers]

I see that you have 3 sticks of Kingston and 1 stick of Corsair RAM.

Remove them all and insert one at a time and run the memtest for each one.

Hi VB,

Is this to find out which one is the duffer? How long should I run this memtest for on each stick?

thx for ur help.

[Virtualbody1234]

Yes exactly. It's to find the bad one.

Just run the test like you did but with only one module in at a time.

If the test passes on each one individually then it means that the different
types (Corsair and Kingson) may not be working well together (compatibility).

[Colt Seevers]

Yeah the corsair is the 1 gig stick the kingstons are just 3 x 512MB, I had a feeling that it would come to this... I guess I just needed some confirmation.

Ok, I'll give it a shot later on tonight, and post back with some results, heh thats if I have my mobile phone handy for some more oversized fuzz-o-vision pics. :)

Cheers!

[Virtualbody1234]

I'm glad to help. It's good to see you again. :)

[accat13]

WOW definately a 56k warning post LOL

[lynx]

If there's nothing conclusive from testing the dimms individually, can you give us the SPD details for the Kingston dimms (like your lasy screenshot but with one of the Kingston dimms selected.?

The fact that it is running in Single Channel mode is not good news either. Even though you would be dopping 512MB you would almost certainly see a big improvement in performance if you got rid of the Corsair stick and replaced it with another Kingston one.

[Colt Seevers]

Right, I tried running the memtest again on each individual stick they all seem to check out fine. So I'm thinking as VB suggested the Kingston + Corsair not a happy mix make.

So I went back to using just the 1 gig stick and fired up Point of Existance 2 (a Battlefield 2 mod) on a 64 player server.. dear oh dear it was almost unplayable for the first five mins, due to the lack of memory I'm guessing my PC started using virtual memory on the hard drive... urgh.. I can't play like this :( Also I forgot about the long loading times with such reduced memory!

So as a temporary measure I put in the other 2 Kingstons to bring me back up to speed. So far so good.. but I think I will be getting some new memory soon. As basically i'm back to square one. Although no crashes yet, I feel it will only be a matter of time before it does crash again.


If there's nothing conclusive from testing the dimms individually, can you give us the SPD details for the Kingston dimms (like your lasy screenshot but with one of the Kingston dimms selected.?

The fact that it is running in Single Channel mode is not good news either. Even though you would be dopping 512MB you would almost certainly see a big improvement in performance if you got rid of the Corsair stick and replaced it with another Kingston one.

Hey Lynx! Here's the screenies as requested, am I right in saying that if I get another 512 kingston stick then I will be able to run in dual channel mode? Interesting as I originally bought 2 x matched pair ended up giving my brother 1 of the 512mb stick for his PC when I aquired the Corsair stick. I maybe taking it back and he can have the Corsair one.. heh :) Grrr Bloody memory!! Or would dual channel mode be possible with 2 or 3 x 1 Gig sticks? :unsure:

http://jobbie.games.googlepages.com/mem2.JPG

Again, cheers for the input lads :)

[lynx]

Looking back at your first picture, why is your memory running at 157MHz? I'm not saying that's a cause of the problem, but if your chip timing is by SPD then the kingston ram may well be asking for different timing compared to the corsair.

I think you should be a good brother and swap his 512MB stick for the 1GB, I doubt you'll notice a big difference between 2GTB and 2.5GB.

Better still, sell it to him.

[Colt Seevers]

Looking back at your first picture, why is your memory running at 157MHz? I'm not saying that's a cause of the problem, but if your chip timing is by SPD then the kingston ram may well be asking for different timing compared to the corsair.

I think you should be a good brother and swap his 512MB stick for the 1GB, I doubt you'll notice a big difference between 2GTB and 2.5GB.

Better still, sell it to him.

No idea, mate I thought memtest was testing it at different speeds? It certainly not set at that speed in the BIOS.

Sell it to him? lol fat chance of him buying it, no I think a vist over to his the weekend is in order though, for some "PC Maintenance" I presume dual channel will automatically kick in?

Also your right the performance difference is negligable from 2.5 to 2.

Anyway back to my game, err I mean 'stress testing'

[lynx]

I suspect you are wrong about the bios setting, memtest alter the clock speed, it merely reports what speed is set.

[Colt Seevers]

Its set at 200mhz in bios. Dont make me take another mobile pic! :)

edit sorry it is 400 :) and before that 333

[lynx]

Bet it isn't. :snooty:

[Colt Seevers]

you made me get out of bed and check! :)

http://jobbie.games.googlepages.com/DSC00167.JPG

how much do you want to bet?

[Virtualbody1234]

Can't you resize your pics? Even MS Paint can do that.

http://img243.imageshack.us/img243/6135/dsc00167sg0.gif

[Colt Seevers]

no, i had to go back to bed, giz a break! :P

And now I have to go to work, but any future ones and i will! :salute VB:

Sorry

Edit : back from work all pics resized. Hopefully this will save me from VB going postal.