Random computer restarts...

Athenor

I'm having one of those days, I guess.

I just installed a gig of Corsair value select memory in a computer, upping it to 2GB. Since then, Windows has been crashing/rebooting randomly within a minute or two of startup.

Now, there's quite a few other factors that fit into this:

1) Right before I restarted, 6 upgrades were installed by Windows' service.

2) I was in the process of uninstalling a professional-level sound card, the Sound Blaster X-fi Platinum.

3) When I installed the new memory, I put the old sticks into the second pair of slots, and put the Corsair stuff into the oringla slots.

Now, I am getting an error code about this crash:

BCCode: 10000050 BCP1: FE71943D BCP2: 00000001 BCP3: BA7BCA51
BCP4: 00000000 OSVer: 5_1_2600 SP: 2_0 Product: 256_1

It is aldo dumping out some files: mini111606-05.dmp and sysdata.xml, to my temp directory.


... Of course, after uninstalling my sound card, I haven't had it crash as I type this up. ;-)

Edit: Okay, it just crashed as I went in and tested the on-board sound card. I've fully uninstalled the Sound Blaster, so I'm going to attempt to take that out and see what happens next.

Kadith

Have you tried taking out the new memory and booting?

Athenor

Not as of yet. I wanted to go through the other possibilities first, as silly as that sounds. =P Yeah, yeah, easiest solution first and all that. But the memory seems to be working fine -- the system boots faster, it recognizes all 2 gigs..

edit: This time, the computer crashed the second I went in and tried to test DirectDraw functionality under DXDiag. =/

Sir Red of the Manti

Memtest. If you have bad RAM, this will let you know. Run it after a reboot and let it sit for a bit. If error messages come up after a pass or two, chances are you got some bad sticks.

Athenor

Sir Red of the Manti wrote:

Memtest. If you have bad RAM, this will let you know. Run it after a reboot and let it sit for a bit. If error messages come up after a pass or two, chances are you got some bad sticks.

Yeah, I should really get that on a CD. =/


I pulled out the old sticks, and it seems to be running fine now. I think I may know what happened in the meantime.

The memory in the system was Crucial pc3200 running at 200mhz. We bought Corsair pc3200. My suspicion is that the Crucial stuff was running at 200mhz, and the corsair at 400mhz.. if that is possible. It may not be, which brings me to the second wrinkle:

Someone, somewhere along the line (possibly me, but I doubt it) put a BIOS access password on the computer. In other words, I can't get inside the bios to even look if anything's out of whack. I don't have the foggiest how to fix -this- one, I just know that it will need to be fixed, and the sooner the better.

phoxphyre

Memtest

I can't quote this enough. Memtest is an excellent, and thorough, piece of software... Don't think that you'll need to get into your bios to run this. Let it run fully through at least twice before anything else!!

Test with only your old RAM in, and then only with the new RAM in. Barring faulty memory (which Memtest will reveal) then try with your whole 2GB or RAM in... At this point, do not have it dual-channel! Technically, dual-channel should require RAM from the same batch and brand to work. (Although it does work with different batches to my knowledge, and that is situational...)

And, yes, I do know that this kind of testing will take a long time... I've been in this situation myself, and it took a good day or so to figure out my problem. That's the only way you'll find out if you've got faulty RAM, unless you have (a) a "slave", or (b) want to pay a store...

Okay, from my point of view. RAM cannot run at multiple speeds at once. Your faster stuff will be "slowed" to match the speed of your older RAM. I may be wrong here, but I don't think so...

Best of luck.

Athenor

The dual channel might be the issue.

I want to turn it off.. but I'm locked out.

Anyways. Enough work for tonight.

phoxphyre

Can't help you with that one, sorry!

I don't know if there is a setting that will turn dual-channelling off... All I (think ) know is that the board will select it automatically depending on which slots are used, and the size of the RAM in them. Not sure what it will do if 4 slots are used by the same size sticks, but of different speed (irrelevant), and brand.

/crosses fingers

stigweard

The memories either aren't compatible, or there is a bad stick in there. DDR400 in dual channel mode is notoriously picky and you just might not be able to run with all 4 sticks.