Crashed computer – not any more.

[jambutty]

A few months ago my computer took it upon itself to start to crash or freeze at random. I could go days without a problem and then get several crashes and freezes in one day. Most annoying when you’re trying to earn an honest buck on the Internet!

I cleaned out the inside, cleared all the air holes, checked that all connections were seated firmly and it made no difference.

My machine uses XP fully updated and all anti this and that software is also updated as updates become available.

A full sweep for nasties revealed nothing. I tried all sorts of checks but nothing revealed what the problem might be.

My computer has two hard drives, one for the OS and one for my personal data, so I bought a new hard drive, partitioned and formatted it and installed XP from scratch and all the various programmes that I use. Er! No change!

So I went through the process of disconnecting various bits of hardware and this had no result. Then it dawned on me that the only bit of hardware that I hadn’t disconnected was the two sticks of RAM. So I took out one of the 500 meg sticks and lo and behold the problem was cured.

So I put it back and the computer started to crash again. I got hold of some software to check the RAM and it came back to reveal absolutely nothing. As far as the software was concerned the RAM was OK yet with the suspect stick in place the computer crashed and with it out it didn’t. Ergo! It must be that stick of RAM.

My computer has been running for three weeks now with the suspect RAM out and not crashed even once.

Have a look at http://www.jrwhipple.com/computer_hangs.html

[entwisi]

Try memtest86 for checking RAM. It has always found any dodgy RAM I've come across. One thing you could try before throwing the RAM away is to underclock it. I have also seen loads of it that when run slightly under full clock speed goes from dodgy as heck to rock solid stable.

HTH, HAND etc Ian

PS what do you do to earn a buck or three on the Interweb?

[K.S.H]

Have you tried the suspect stick on its own? sometimes they will act strangely in pairs if they are of a different brand. Also worth checking is putting the good one in the slot you had the dodgy one in to check for a bad connection on the motherboard