Stability/POST problems

[Tarajunky]

I have been experiencing some pretty severe problems lately. My computer had been intact and working fine for about 18 months, and I haven't changed anything recently except for some case fans and the CPU fan. Of course I first suspected heat, but when I boot the computer after running it for a few hours, the temps aren't out of line.

Anyway, at first I started getting random BSOD faults when I was surfing, and it kept naming nv4 dlls as the culprit. So, I uninstalled my GF3 Ti500 and replaced it with a Radeon 32 DDR. That fixed the random crashes, and things were apparently stable for a few weeks. Then I installed an old 3d game that I hadn't played in a while and got a BSOD immediately. When I reset the computer, it wouldn't POST. I didn't have the speaker hooked up, so there were no beeps, but there was an LED code that indicated that the processor was bad. I took it out and cleaned it off, reapplied Arctic Silver and the heat sink, and it started working again.

I have tried lots of other things to keep it running with mixed results, but it still randomly refuses to POST from time to time. I took out all the PCI cards, and a couple of times I got three beeps, which should mean that the RAM is bad. Usually resetting the CMOS allows it to boot, but not always. It only really works at 100 Mhz bus speed now. If I change it to 133 I get all kinds of problems that I never had just a month ago.

I swapped out the hard drive with a new one and installed a fresh XP pro OS. It's no worse, but no better than before. Sometimes it seems fine, in fact I'm typing this on it right now. I only have one 512 Mb ram chip, so I can't really swap that out right now, but I plan to get a cheap chip somewhere and do that. If you have any other ideas, I would appreciate it.

MSI K7T266 Pro
Athlon XP 1800+
512 Mb PC2100 DDR Ram at Cas2
Radeon 32 Mb DDR
Cendyne 48X12X48X CDRW
WD 1200JB with XP Pro
WD 600BB with XP Pro
Enlight Case with 250W PSU

 

[skyking]

Sounds like bad memory. you can test it right now, instead of swapping it. download the pre-compiled version 3.0 for windows, or if you do not have a floppy, do the ISO.
Create your memtest boot disk, reboot the computer, and let it run a while.

Link

 

[Tarajunky]

I let it run overnight, and when I got up this morning it was running a stream of error messages. I didn't notice how many times it had completed before encountering the errors. I rebooted and let it run again, and it successfully completed the full test one time before I rebooted to use the computer. If it had completed the test 10 times and then encountered an error, would it still be considered to be a bad stick, or will any stick of ram eventually have an error with this program? Thanks!

P.S. I ran this at the most conservative stable BIOS settings, since it won't POST if I load up the performance settings.

 

[Green Man]

Did you try and reseat the RAM? I mean pull it out and reinstall it, make sure you press it in hard.

 

[Tarajunky]

Yeah, I pretty much took the whole system apart and put it back together carefully. I moved the ram to the second slot and made sure it was seated well.