- Joined
- Mar 7, 2004
- Location
- Phoenix, since 03/2014
So, I've had a hideously unstable computer for several months. Couldn't figure out WTF it was. Whenever I played games or did other heavy 3D stuff, I would either crash to desktop or blue screen. Blue screens would typically involve assorted kernel problems or IRQL problems, but occasionally an nv4dll.sys or nv4sys.dll or whatever the hell the Nvidia driver is called. Crashes to desktop were either no messages or error logs at all, or more often than not, access violations (wtf. my keyboard just died, had to go get a new one). Since it was really only during 3D stuff that this happened, I figured it was my graphics card. RMAed it. Same problems.
Alrighty, well quite often everything my computer was doing would stop and it would lock up. I could still move the mouse, but if I kept moving it around, and then clicked a couple of times, it would lock up as well. K, reboot. This would happen several times a day. Since it happened right after I installed my FX 5700 Ultra, I figured it was the video crad, which was when I RMAed, as I said in the previous paragraph. Same problems still present.
K. Well I've never been able to get out of the initial one hour test stage of Prime95, so I knew something was wrong. It's been like this for a couple of years actually, though at least everything in the entire computer has been replaced at least once (not as a direct result of that, but just the normal upgrade process). I thought "WTF, I have a f***ed up processor? Damnit. FFS." So oh well.
So, the other day, I figured I'll finally try to figure out how to run memtest86. I burn it to a cd and get it all loaded up and whatnot, and it starts testing. Cool. All goes well until about the last 2% of test 5, then all hell breaks loose. I get 97,000 errors. WTF!?!? So I wait for it to finish, and then look up the config menu to see what each test is, and it said test 5 was for errors. So I thought, okay, maybe this is normal? It intentionally makes errors to see if the RAM will get it? Well okay no, that doesn't make sense, so I wait for all 8 or 10 or whatever tests get done, and start again. Get to the last 2% of test 5, and boom, 18,000 errors. For f*** sake. Wait for it to finish, run the test again. It gets back to the same spot, and suddenly 83,000 errors! AGHH!! So I say to hell with this, and turn the computer off. I take out one of the only two memory modules, and try again. Gets to the last 2% of test 5......needless to say I pressed the escape key, while the errors were at 126,000 and climbing by several thousand each second. WTF!! K, take that RAM module out, and put the other one back in by itself. Run test. The test goes through three full passes without a single error.
GAHHH!!!!!! DAMNIT. So that one goddamn piece of **** memory stick is what has been plaguing my system for months on end! AGH! I'm ****ed off, but at the same time, relieved. I've finally found the source of a **** load of problems with my box. I haven't started up any games yet (with that RAM module out, I'm at 256MB RAM on Win XP Pro), but I have been running Prime95 and for the first time ever I've been able to get out of that 1 hour test stage. Prime95 has been running for about 16 hours now without a hitch. On top of that, My box has been problem free so far. So here's hoping that once I start my 3D stuff back up, it runs smoothly, thereby meaning it was most probably the damn RAM.
I looked up the blue screen messages and access violations on google as often as I could, and it turns out almost all of them were supposedly causable by faulty memory.
Damnit. Next time errors start showing up, memtest is the first thing I'm doing. I will NOT go through these f***ing headaches again. B@$tard *** memory.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot:
Alrighty, well quite often everything my computer was doing would stop and it would lock up. I could still move the mouse, but if I kept moving it around, and then clicked a couple of times, it would lock up as well. K, reboot. This would happen several times a day. Since it happened right after I installed my FX 5700 Ultra, I figured it was the video crad, which was when I RMAed, as I said in the previous paragraph. Same problems still present.
K. Well I've never been able to get out of the initial one hour test stage of Prime95, so I knew something was wrong. It's been like this for a couple of years actually, though at least everything in the entire computer has been replaced at least once (not as a direct result of that, but just the normal upgrade process). I thought "WTF, I have a f***ed up processor? Damnit. FFS." So oh well.
So, the other day, I figured I'll finally try to figure out how to run memtest86. I burn it to a cd and get it all loaded up and whatnot, and it starts testing. Cool. All goes well until about the last 2% of test 5, then all hell breaks loose. I get 97,000 errors. WTF!?!? So I wait for it to finish, and then look up the config menu to see what each test is, and it said test 5 was for errors. So I thought, okay, maybe this is normal? It intentionally makes errors to see if the RAM will get it? Well okay no, that doesn't make sense, so I wait for all 8 or 10 or whatever tests get done, and start again. Get to the last 2% of test 5, and boom, 18,000 errors. For f*** sake. Wait for it to finish, run the test again. It gets back to the same spot, and suddenly 83,000 errors! AGHH!! So I say to hell with this, and turn the computer off. I take out one of the only two memory modules, and try again. Gets to the last 2% of test 5......needless to say I pressed the escape key, while the errors were at 126,000 and climbing by several thousand each second. WTF!! K, take that RAM module out, and put the other one back in by itself. Run test. The test goes through three full passes without a single error.
GAHHH!!!!!! DAMNIT. So that one goddamn piece of **** memory stick is what has been plaguing my system for months on end! AGH! I'm ****ed off, but at the same time, relieved. I've finally found the source of a **** load of problems with my box. I haven't started up any games yet (with that RAM module out, I'm at 256MB RAM on Win XP Pro), but I have been running Prime95 and for the first time ever I've been able to get out of that 1 hour test stage. Prime95 has been running for about 16 hours now without a hitch. On top of that, My box has been problem free so far. So here's hoping that once I start my 3D stuff back up, it runs smoothly, thereby meaning it was most probably the damn RAM.
I looked up the blue screen messages and access violations on google as often as I could, and it turns out almost all of them were supposedly causable by faulty memory.
Damnit. Next time errors start showing up, memtest is the first thing I'm doing. I will NOT go through these f***ing headaches again. B@$tard *** memory.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot:
