Question, memory dumps... Short out, and troubleshooting

I have a SOYO Utra KT333 and recently i shorted out my computer by messing with it while it was on, yeah big white spark lots of screaming the whole deal. (I also think i might have damaged somthing around the CPU socket when attching my AX-7, there is a little visible phisical damage, but i dont know, nothing got knocked off but i think i might have damaged this little black thing with number on it, its about the size of a head of a half a grain of rice)

Anywayz, i think aroud the same time my computer started randimly dumping phisical memory, giving me blue screens (in win2k) and core dumps, sometimes it would say that files were corrupt when windows was loading, somtimes it owuldnt, I tryed unpluging it and then pressing the power to drain the power, left it for a few hurs, that seemed to help, but not fix it, i had a crucical PC2700 stick of 256 megs, i called SOYO and described the errors, they told me that it was the memory, so i sent the stick back, and YAY for crucial they are sending me a new one.

I have 2 questions,

1. Is this the problem, or is the motherboard the thing that is messed up, becasue i know that soyo has a lot of problems.

And 2. Do i have any risk of damaging this new stick when i put it in IF it is the MOBO that is damaged. What i mean is, if somthing is damaged on the MOBO that damaged the old memory stick, and then i put this one in and it messes it up too. I dont have any way of testing this because i dont know anyone that has a spare stick of DDR laying around.


Thanks,

Matt

when i had memory dumps with 2k it involved drivers. so what i had to do was constantly change drivers till i would no longer get the error. might be the same for your case. it would help if you posted what the memory dump said because then you can get an idea from what it says as well as get information from the ms site. as to your second question, i've had a bad mobo in the past and it never bothered my ram. not too sure if that's the case for all, someone care to share?

i fried a shuttle ak35gt2 mainboard by not seating the ram in properly, and powering up. reseated the ram and pc wouln't post. fried the board somehow. but didn't hert the ram. i am still using it in my new rig now.

the only way it could hurt the ram is if somehow the voltage regulator to the memory dimm is damaged and you get to mutch voltage to the ram. other than that, i don't see a problem with installing the new stick to see if it is the mobo or not!

good luck!