Processor, Ram, or Motherboard? Edit....I think it's fixed!

[jcwagers]

Ok.....I was having troubles with my computer last week and took it to the shop. They ran diagnostics on it and discovered that I have a couple of bad dimm slots (slots 1 and 3) but 2 seems to work ok.....or DID seem to work ok. I noticed tonight that my setiathome unit took longer than usual to complete and so I checked the bios. My 1.2 gig Tbird was running at 900 mhz (9x100). I decided to try it back at 1.2 and so I set it and then rebooted. At the windows splash screen, I had about one-third of the screen(the part at the bottom) and the rest was blacked out. I decided to try the memory timings at normal and it still gave the same error. Then I decided to try 12x100 and see if it would work ok rather than 9x133. Same problem with the windows screen. I then put it back at 900 mhz again and I began to get the infinite "registry error" problem again. With every boot it says that the system has found errors in your system registry and fixed them. And then after I restart, it gives me the same error. I'm very unsure what to do. My board(Asus A7V133) has been very stable but perhaps if the dimm slots are going bad it would affect what speed it would run at. I still don't think that the ram is bad as it is PC133 and a 256 meg stick from Micron. The only things that I can think of that might be bad are the processor, motherboard, or *possibly* the ram.
Have any of you had a similar problem to this? I can get a new motherboard but I'm trying to make sure that the motherboard is actually the culprit. Any help would be welcome. Thank you in advance!

jcwagers

System specs:
Tbird 1.2(or at least WAS 1.2)
Asus A7V133
256 megs of Micron PC133 CAS 3
SBLive Value
Radeon 8500 Retail
Netgear network card
Win98SE
Thermalright SK-6 w/80 mm fan
IBM GXP60 40gig hd
Lite-on 16x burner
Pioneer 16x dvd

 

[GAZZA]

Have you got
1) another mobo to try ?

2) another stick of ram to test ?

If it is the mobo then i'm sure you'd be able to have it RMA'd.

Have you also tested and confirmed that those other two memory slots are bad ?

Do you get the same errors if you do use slots 1 or 3 as you now get with slot2 ?

I really don't think it is your cpu though as your able to change the multiplier/fsb easy enuff.

 

[jcwagers]

I don't have another motherboard. This stick of ram that is in the computer came out of my 700 Athlon on a KX133 board(with the ram running at 133mhz) and it performed flawlessly. I tried to format and reinstall yesterday when I got the computer back with ram in slot 3 and after asking me if I was sure I wanted to format it kicked me back to A: and did so everytime I tried to format with the ram in that slot. Slot 1 gave me problems before I even took it in to have it tested. That slot was where I got my original registry error problem. I'm leaning towards just buying a new motherboard(possibly a KT333 board) and somePC 2700 DDR ram. I'm not sure whether to go ahead and go KT333 or stick with KT266A....and PC 2100 DDR. Anyways, thanks for the suggestions Gazza! Anybody else? 🙂

jcwagers

 

[jcwagers]

Ok.....I think I fixed the problem. I guess it was the RAM after all. I got a new replacement stick that I had RMA'd and stuck it in the ORIGINAL slot that was giving me errors and......so far I haven't even had a glitch. The only problem now is that I have already ordered a new mobo (asus A7V333)and new ram (512 megs of Samsung PC2700) thinking that the board was bad. Doh! Now I have to figure out what I'm going to do with an extra board.....because I'm not going to send it back. What to do.....what to do. *scratches head*

jcwagers

 

[GAZZA]

Well if you return it you'll be hit with a restocking fee for sure anything upto 20% .
Probably best to either sell it on the FS?FT forums here or build another pc out of it 😀