New build unstable - last thing to swap is ram. Any need to reinstall windows yet again?

[swbsam]

My latest build (media center) has had minor stability issues - blue screens under Vista Media center, the occassional reboot, etc. I've replaced almost everything, from the motherboard to the PSU, and now I still get the occasional blue screen/kernel panic. Since I went initially with cheapy ram (since I don't overclock), I've pulled a 180 and bought expensive, shiny, fast new ram.

I'm going to install the ram tomorrow but wonder if I have to re-install windows yet again. I don't really want to reformat and reinstall my 1 TB drive yet again (5 times so far), but I think it may be necessary - thoughts?

 

[Slugbait]

It could be the RAM, sure. But instability after a clean install, especially after the PSU and mobo have been swapped, usually points to a lack of chipset drivers...they should be installed the first time Windows boots.

Also make sure that after you're finished installing all drivers that there are no yellows in Device Mangler.

Another possibility is that the machine was compromised. For example, if you're using Vista Gold, you should already have SP1 installed before you connect to the Internet. You can get the standalone service pack installer here.

 

[somethingsketchy]

To be certain if RAM is the issue you can use MemTest+ to check your RAM. It is available in any Linux distro (or separately from here, http://www.memtest.org/) download the image and burn it to a cd or dvd. Insert the cd/dvd into your drive and reboot. Once your build is running off of the cd (you'll see a menu screen with some options to choose) select the "Run memory diagnostics" or something along those lines. Once the little program is fully loaded onto your RAM (you can remove the cd/dvd if you want) the program will run. Let that run for 8-24 hours.

If you do not see any red boxes with white text within that period of time, chances are your RAM is a-okay. Red boxes with white text means your RAM is faulty. At that point you could either junk all of them, or if you are patient, take the time and individually test each stick of RAM and see which one is the culprit.

But if you are suffering from stability issues, I would check the voltages for your RAM and make sure the voltages are correct for the RAM.

 

[mindless1]

Please consider that telling us there is a bluescreen skips the most important part - What the bluescreen said. It has a stop code and often a unique error message that may even point to a file.

If you had memory errors the whole time, yes you definitely need to reinstall windows as it is likely to have caused some file corruption. You didn't mention which version of windows but you could run SFC in the interim. Always check memory before installing an OS, though sometimes memory starts out ok only to fail later. It used to be rare but certain BGA memory these days seems to fare worse than the older leaded stuff.

Wait. Nevermind. With 666 posts it is obviously because you are evil. :evil: