Need help troubleshooting bad hardware (RAM/Motherboard)

[scsi stud]

I have a Pentium 4 2.8 Ghz that has been randomly crashing in Windows XP. It either blue screens, or when I am running programs, such as IE or other programs, those programs crash randomly.

The first thing that came to my mind was bad RAM. So I ran Memtest86+ and indeed it detected errors. So I bought another 1GB ram from Crucial and installed it. I then proceeded to re-install windows as some OS elements had corrupted due to the random crashes.

After all that, I am still getting the random crashes. I thought maybe something is wrong on the motherboard, so I went to the BIOS and loaded 'fail-safe' defaults. At that point, the computer wouldn't POST. I had to clear the CMOS using the jumper and then it would start POSTing again. Which gave me a hint that maybe I had a faulty motherboard.

I then ran Memtest86+ again on the new memory, and this morning I saw approx 55 errors on there.

My gut is saying that the motherboard is faulty and needs to be replaced, but what do you think? Can it be bad RAM -again-? or is it indeed the motherboard?

Thanks in advance.

 

[jdjbuffalo]

It is possible that it's a bad motherboard. It is unlikely you would receive a bad RAM chip from Crucial but it is possible. Do you have another computer to test the RAM in? If so, try the RAM from that computer in your current one and vice versa. This will be able to tell you for sure whether it is the motherboard or the RAM.

Is the old RAM still computer? If so, remove that and just use the new one.

Your computer is approximately 5 years old. I'm not surprised that you are having issues. If you can afford it, I would recommend getting a new one.