Freezes when testing memory

[jolycu]

Hi all. I'm new here so be gentle! I'm having intermittent freezes that require a hard reset. I have a PC Chips M925LR motherboard, 512 MB ram (64 MB dedicated to video) a 1.7 Ghz Celeron processor, 60 GB hard drive, and a Thermaltake 420W Silent Pure Power power supply that's less than six months old. There is no set pattern to the freezes. All fans are working. I don't think it's a heat issue because it may freeze after being on only a few minutes after being off all night, or it may work for hours and then freeze. I was leaning towards a ram problem or motherboard, but would like your opinions and/or suggestions. I tried running MemTest86, but the computer froze at different points of the test. I tried to run it a half dozen times and it froze everytime. I also tried to run the memory tester from Microsoft with the same result, freeze at different points during the test.

I will probably end up ordering a new motherboard and memory, but I would like to try to troubleshoot this problem for my own education. Could it possibly be the CPU? I may have to add one of those to my shopping list.

Thanks for any and all replies.
jolycu

 

[jolycu]

Forgot to say I'm running WinXP home with all updates.

 

[yelo333]

The crashing could be related to your integrated video running too quickly for the ram. try loosening the timing on the ram(in the BIOS), and/or adjust some of the integrated video stuff. Also, if you have a spare video card, try that.

 

[jolycu]

Thanks for your suggestion yelo333. I've turned the hardware acceleration down a notch on the video and will see if that helps. But would the video acceleration make a difference when running MemTest86 or the MS memory tester? I think both of those are dos based programs. This computer has worked perfectly for several months. The freezing problem has only started in the last month or so.

 

[yelo333]

hmm, the integrated video stuff I was referring to would just be miscellaneous opitons in the bios. MemTest86 would be unaffected by any changes you make in windows, since it loads itself off a floppy or cd at boot, and has nothing to do with windows. If you have multiple sticks of ram in the computer, you could try removing one, and testing with Memtest again. if it passes, swap them out, and try again. it's very possible you have faulty ram.

 

[jolycu]

Thanks, I'll try that. What really got me to thinking about the ram and wanting to test it in the first place was because everytime I tried to use AIDA32 to find out what type it was, it would lock up. Come to think of it, all the other freezes have been pretty random, but doing that is guaranteed to lock it up! I've got some new ram coming in the next few days so I'll try to figure out which stick is bad and replace it with the new. Thanks again for your responses.
Jolycu