Memory Misery...

so ive been getting BSODS more and more. (dual booting is a lifesaver)
safe bet that xp = fubar, but i wanted to rule out the ram.
i have 4 512mb sticks of crucial/micron modules with infineon chips on them

yanked all but the very first one, needless to say im making friends with the swap file again...

so my question, that stuff was expensive, and if i do find the offending chip(s) is it enough to justify getting some other kind of ram?

theres stuff out there alot faster, alot less expensive and all but -noting the rig in my sig- , is it worth anything other than swapping for new parts under warentee?
ill give you a hint: I paid more for the Ram than any other component...

have you memtested your sticks to find out if all are bad, one is bad, or perhaps one of your memory slots is bad? Cause if you have one or two working sticks, I'd just RMA the bad ones and wait on it

can we do a memtest from a usb flash (smartmedia card and reader/drive)???

i dont have ye' old a: drive or disks anymore

oh, i cant get sandra, prime, or a few of the others to even OPEN due to the fact that none of them want swap...

memtest can be burnt onto a CD. http://www.memtest86.com/

edit: here's for memtest86+ http://www.memtest.org/

ohh, that looks like fun... ill have a go at that burn-to idea... hah, out of non-scratched /RW's... ill try it on Zip...

oh, its making me crazy!
first time around, i misconfigured the bios and i couldnt POST
second time around it wouldnt read the drive,
third time around i remembered i had to UNZIP the freakn' file before i put it on the drive,
and now of course, XP sees my zip 250 as an A:, and wont let me access it...
and of course the file is no where to be found... and i seem to have lost the use of my mouse intermittently while xp tries to install ( for what reason i have no idea) some sort of printer support ...AND antivirus is going haywire funding stuff suddenly...
im sure ive still got BIOS misconfigured, but man, when it rains - it pours!!
i give up for the night...and fleeing back to the waiting arms of linux...

right.
ive got this idea in my head that i can use linux to rule out the hardware....
if i run XP its gotten to the point where i get the big blue "Game Over" about 4 times a day.

Linux ( xandros) behaves nicely. i want to believe that this absolutely rules out hardware -
Is that really the way to tell, or am i somehow fooling myself?