Somehings wrongwith my ram supposingly

[subconcept]

Last night i came home after being away from my comp for two days, and i found it in a dark blue screen with an error. I restarted, and restarted and then like on the third restart it booted up fine and went into windows and was working fine. So then around 2:00 am i went to bed leaving the computer on, I woke up to find it at a black screen with a dash on it. I tried rebooting, turning it off for a few min and booting up again and when I kept doing this my board wasnt posting. So then i figured I would try clearing the cmos, I unplugged the atx cable and removed the cmos battery for 30 sec and then put it back into place. This time when I boot up i got an endless loop of long beeps. In my manual it says that means theres no DRAM or its not being detected.

Anyone know what could be going on, is it possible for ram just to burn out. My current specs are in my signature if that is any help.

Thanks.

[ken257]

Try taking your memory out and reseating it. Sometimes the conection goes down hill and that can clear it up. You can also take an eraser and go over the contacts on the ram to clean it up a bit more if needed. Try this simple step first and let us know what happens.

[Placid]

It is possible for any componet to just fail.

Try removing the memory and putting it back in.

If you can't get a boot then the only real way to find out if it is the memory or not is to use a known good stick.

[subconcept]

No luck, tried reseating with both pieces of ram different combinations, most of the time just booting with one stick of ram. I tried the eraser trick on both pieces and tried each piece by itself same thing.

it was running find before but now all the sudden theres error and win2k hasd crashed once the night before.

is there any way it could have been a virus, i was on some ftps and morpeus before it happened, any way it could be something in the boot sector.

also i only started getting the errors after i cleared the cmos.

any ideas?

[subconcept]

It is possible for any componet to just fail.

About that if it did fail, isnt it unusual that both 256mb sticks arent working or is it possible that something could have happened to both of them?

Arggh i can see if i was actualy removing the ram or doing something when it happened but i just woke up and bam.

[Placid]

Try a software tester.
There is one in this thread.

http://forums.overclockers.ws/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=62903

[subconcept]

But how can i boot up to use the program if I have no ram?

[Placid]

You can't use it then, sorry I forgot you can't even boot.

Only way is to put the memory in a good pc or put known good memory in yours.

They do have hardware memory testers but they are very expensive.

It is possible something else has failed other than the memory or your motherboard could have had a part fail causing a over or under voltage to the memory.

[subconcept]

Hmm im going to try to get down to my cousins on saturday i guess, to see if he can test his ddr in mine and vise versa. ****ty thing is I cant get a ride to the computer store tommorrow cause my parents are away for the weekend and I have no ride. Rahh this sucks too cause i have website jobs to work on. In addition I found out the guy I got my ram off of in september is a bit of an @$$ and he will give me a hard time about it most likely.

Anyway i virus could be causing this?

[Placid]

I guess it could but it would have to be a virus that infected the bios.
Once you turn the power off and unplug the pc from the outlet/clear the cmos there is no other way for a virus to remain that low in the system to prevent a boot.

As for as a virus that can cause physical damage to memory I have never hear of such a thing.

[subconcept]

I hope its not a problem with my board, I know im running a7a266 which as been known to be a little buggy, but I dont think it would be causing that. Its weird since win2k crashed twice that night, and weird that after i tried rebooting it several times when i got home it worked. How do boot sector virii work, can they damage anything real that cant be washed out by clearing the cmos, could it have anything to do with the bios, bahh i wish I had someone near me with a good box that I could test my stuff on.

We had a snow storm last night and I dont know if that could have done anything with the power, but im running a new enermax power supply 431 watt for like 2 weeks and its also on an APC-500 power surge protector, so I dont think its the problem. If it does happen to be my ram that my ram is broken, to get it under warranty (No i havent removed the sticker) do I have to do the whole rma process, or will the store I bought it from do it, I just rma'd my amd processor 2 weeks ago and it took about 8 or 9 days :/

Any Ideas?

[subconcept]

Good news, i found some old pc100 sd ram from my old celeron 433 and got it to boot, so its gotta be the ram.

Going to take it back and see what they say.

ive refered 2 people to going to this place and theyve both gotten their pieces to build there comps there and Ive been going there for 3 years, hes gotta have some respect for a return customer hehe.

[subconcept]

the guiy at the store seems to think its the memory controllers on the ddr slots that arent working and that the sticks of ram are probably good because its highly unlikely for two sticks of ram to die. Is this a known problem on asus motherboards?

Bah looks like another rma.

[ken257]

Can you get the 2 sticks of ram tested? It is the only way to know whats going on.

[subconcept]

Well, I dunno what in the world happened, i tried putting the ram back in last night and it worked oddly enough and the comp is running fine.

Just hope that dosnt happen again.

Thanks for the support guys, appreciated.