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Post by s0n0va on Mar 10, 2009 20:37:00 GMT
Intermittent errors are always difficult to pin down. It sounds like it's either your ram, north-bridge or ram socket. It is most likely a stick of ram. You may want to check the temp of your north-bridge chip. There may be some utility in the BIOS, also some windows programs can do it. I've only seen the socket issue once in a laptop. So as long as you haven't thrown your computer off a second floor balcony, I doubt that's the issue.
If you're comfortable working on your computer you can try pulling out one of the sticks of ram and retesting. If that stick passes the test, swap out the sticks & test again. If you do find a faulty ram module, it should show errors pretty quickly.
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Post by Retribution on Mar 11, 2009 7:55:45 GMT
OK I'll try swapping the ram out, or I might just get another 2gb for 70 bucks, worst comes to worst I end up with 4gb. I put the thing together and have done a couple other comps so pretty happy pulling it apart. At the moment I am downloading SP3 again, (dial up so takes a while), going to slipstream an installation CD then do another reinstall, that way my system will be up to date without me having to go on the net, as I picked up a few viruses in the time it took me to update last time, and one may still be lingering. I also won't install any antivirus or other even-possibly-suspicious applications for a while, and see if i can determine whether this is a hardware issue once and for all. Thanks again for the help, will post this weekend when i have time to do the reinstall and ram test.
Travis
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Post by Retribution on Mar 22, 2009 5:21:45 GMT
So an update... I switched out my RAM with two modules from our other computer (known to be working), reseated the cpu heatsink, and the north and south bridge heatsinks, just to ensure the issue wasn't due to any overheating. I have done a complete windows reinstall, and have fully updated windows, and all my component drivers. I have only installed avira, as it seems to be pretty popular and has good reviews, and I have only installed a couple of apps (office 2003, xfire, NWN, itunes). Have been using the comp for a couple of days so far with no issues, but will have to wait and see. Hopefully this has fixed it, otherwise I will be back ;p. Thanks for all your help
Travis
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Post by Retribution on Mar 22, 2009 8:04:44 GMT
-Sigh- scratch that, problem returned about 5 minutes after the last post. Couldn't even open the my documents folder with only one web page, one xfire page, and one word document open. Any ideas for what I should do next?
Thanks
Travis
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Post by Retribution on Mar 22, 2009 9:34:32 GMT
Sonova - You mentioned using pstools to help debug, I have downloaded them but have no idea how to use them, and can't find a user guideline anywhere.. any chance you could point me somewhere to help me figure out how use them?
Thanks
Travis
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Post by hackenslay on Mar 22, 2009 11:53:47 GMT
I know this is going to sound silly, but are all the screws that hold the motherboard in place tight? These screws ground the mobo to the chassis, so if they are loose will cause intermittent problems like you describe. I had a problem like this 2 years ago and finally figured it out when it went on the blink b/c someone walked across the room.
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Post by s0n0va on Mar 23, 2009 20:09:38 GMT
The fact that your computer ran fine for a couple of days is puzzling. If it was a hardware issue it should have shown up fairly quickly. I like the idea about checking that the motherboard screws are snug. An intermittent ground could cause any number of problems. I ran into a similar problem with my fileserver recently, where the little metal tubes in the ‘d-plugs’ got loose and I thought my raid array had failed. Needless to say, I’m glad that wasn’t the case. I expect that your power supply is at least 350-450 watts, so power isn’t your problem. The ram you switched in came from a working computer, so I think we can rule that out as well. Perhaps you could switch your old ram into that & run a memtest just as a sanity check, I expect it will be fine. So that leaves us with your CPU/socket, north-bridge, and software. Some of the newer sockets have a limited lifetime in regards to insertions so it’s best to leave it there unless there is a very good reason to remove it. Most failed CPUs I’ve seen consistent in symptoms. I will have to look around for a test for the north bridge chip, I’m sure someone has written one. There have been a number of bugs bouncing around the net that blow right past the windows xp firewall. I encountered one several years ago, so I expect they’ve only gotten better. So that is always a possibility. Many of the PSTools commands can be found here: www.ss64.com/nt/You will need to extract PSTools.zip to its’ own folder, then move that folder to C:\ once that’s there, Start > Run > cmd.exe cd \PSTools pslist –t > threads.txt pslist –x > full.txt It may be more than you can post here at a time. You’re welcome to e-mail them to me if you like. I’ve PM’d you my e-mail address. We can get it sorted if it’s a bug, if it’s not then it falls back on a CPU or north-bridge. Let’s just hope that’s not the case. Cheers, Torben |
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Post by Retribution on Mar 24, 2009 5:00:33 GMT
Well, I made the registry changes Kins mentioned, finding in the process that the default was set very low. I have also increased the page file sizes on each drive (was only set for C:, and haven't experienced any issues since (last time I said that the issues cropped up about 2 minutes later), but fingers crossed this time.
Travis.
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