Urgent Help Required

[Lamsey]

Edit: this problem has now been solved. See post no.15 for details. Thanks to everyone who offered advice.

I have a serious problem with my girlfriend's computer. All of a sudden, it only seems to be able to detect 127MB of RAM when it should find 128. When I try to load my RAM tool (Cacheman), it can't start up, and I get an Out Of Resources error when I try to run most programs.

I think there must be some kind of fault with the top 1MB of RAM, so there's a problem when Windows tries to load stuff into it.

Does anyone know anything about this?

System specs: (It's crap, her mum and dad went and got conned...)

800 MHz Cyrix-III CPU
128MB SDRAM (I think it's PC100 rather than PC133)
Gigabyte 810E motherboard with all sorts of integrated crap.
128k NTL cable modem
Running Windows 98 SE with all available updates and tons of apps.

Please help - things started to go wrong while I was working on the machine and whatever happened will therefore be my fault...


edit: arrgh... keep getting page not found errors when I try to post! sorry about the multiple posts, I thought the posts wouldn't have come up because of the page not found errors. Admins: please delete two of the threads...

edit 2: I see they're gone now - cheers.

[Lamsey]

I would post some screenshots of errors etc., but Paint Shop Pro doesn't work.

Fine, I thought... I'll just use Microsoft Paint...

Uh-uh - even Paint won't run!

IE is the only program I seem to be able to use!

HEEEEELLLP!

[Lamsey]

I've gotten a few errors saying 'invalid read of address FFFFFFFF' - does this mean there's an error reading the top addresses of the RAM?

[random nut]

Originally posted by Lamsey@19 February 2003 - 00:16
I've gotten a few errors saying 'invalid read of address FFFFFFFF' - does this mean there's an error reading the top addresses of the RAM?

Either the program accessed address FFFFFFFFh, or that's what Windows thinks. If it reads memory that doesn't exist, a value of all 1s (eg. FFFFFFFFh) is returned.

[Lamsey]

So is the software screwed or is it the RAM? The fact that almost all programs are doing it suggests to me that its the RAM.

Anyone got any ideas? I don't like to pester RN for his time, God knows so many other people probably do.


edit: I gotta leave the computer now (gotta go home), so don't worry if you don't see me posting.

[Rip The Jacker]

Wow, sounds like your PC is falling apart. If I were you, I would burn my stuff onto CD, then reformat my HD and do a clean install of Windows. Might help you. Just a suggestion.

[mobboss01]

Or sounds like you are working with a bad module. If all else fails, go buy a new RAM module. Better than reformatting their computer. Also, do some searches on RAM trouble on Google.

[sleepnmojo]

did you try throwin in a new stick of ram to see if that fixed the problem?

I've seen it do the ram thing before (-1) but that was by default, not a memory
problem. If its a compaq then i would say throw it away but thats just my
guess.

[sleepnmojo]

Forgot to add, check online for her computer model to see if there were any
problems with it on the manufacturers website. I had a friend who bought
a dell, and they gave her a bad stick of ram. To bad when i found out it was
a day after her warranty expired.

[RPerry]

Have you tried just taking the modules out then putting them back in? mayby one just got loose in its holder? Can also try removing one module at a time then turning on the PC and see if one of the modules has gone bad. would definately try this before doing anything else. Alot of problems can be caused by cards or wires just getting loose.