First my laptop, now my desktop - crashing

[rjmiller15]

I nearly cried a river a month ago when my laptop melted down. After many many hours, I finally realized it was the system board. Now I'm trying to scrounge up $300 to send it back to HP and get it fixed.

Now my desktop is acting up!! I have no idea what is wrong with it. It's homebuilt system, and I just replaced the motherboard AND Cpu a year ago b/c it fried out.

I don't know what info you would need to help me, but the error I keep getting is Dr. Watson's Program Debugger has encountered a problem and needs to close...and then prompts me to hit enter to send a report or not. No matter what option I choose the computer freezes and I have to manually reboot.

I am running Windows XP Home Edition. I have Zone Alarm firewall, Windows OneCare for virus and Windows Defender for my anti spyware.

 

[rjmiller15]

System Specs:

Windows XP SP2
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ 2.0 GHz
1 GB DDR SDRAM
ATI Radeon 9600 Video Card
80 GB HD
120 GB Secondary HD

I will defrag and run the memtest and report back

 

[rjmiller15]

I ran the defraf and virus scan and nothing came up (any problems).

I ran MemTest and after an hour and 10 minutes I stopped it. This is where it was left off:

Tst 2 Pass 0 Failing Address 001c1c64cc 449.3 mb Good-ffffffff Bad- ffffdfff
Err bits = 00020 Count = 30 Chan = 1

Tst 5 Pass 0 Failing Address 0001c1c67a8 449.3 mb good - 7fffffff Bad - 7fffdfff
Err Bits = 0002000 Count Chan = 1

Tst 5 Pass 0 Failing Address 0001d1c6788 465.3 mb Good - 7fffffff Bad - 7fffdfff
Err Bits = 0002000 Count Chan = 1

Tst 6 Pass 0 Failing Address 0001c1c64cc 449.3 mb Good - fff7ffff Bad - fff7dfff
Err Bits = 00020 Count 490 (and it was going up when I stopped it) Chan = 1

 

[schwinn]

I ran the defraf and virus scan and nothing came up (any problems).

I ran MemTest and after an hour and 10 minutes I stopped it. This is where it was left off:

Tst 2 Pass 0 Failing Address 001c1c64cc 449.3 mb Good-ffffffff Bad- ffffdfff
Err bits = 00020 Count = 30 Chan = 1

Tst 5 Pass 0 Failing Address 0001c1c67a8 449.3 mb good - 7fffffff Bad - 7fffdfff
Err Bits = 0002000 Count Chan = 1

Tst 5 Pass 0 Failing Address 0001d1c6788 465.3 mb Good - 7fffffff Bad - 7fffdfff
Err Bits = 0002000 Count Chan = 1

Tst 6 Pass 0 Failing Address 0001c1c64cc 449.3 mb Good - fff7ffff Bad - fff7dfff
Err Bits = 00020 Count 490 (and it was going up when I stopped it) Chan = 1

Looks like you have some bad ram. If you have more than one stick, try to identify which one it is by removing them one at a time until you are left with only good runs from memtest.

Incidentally, it looks like you didn't even pass through a full memtest sequence... make sure when you run memtest that you allow it to at least reach "pass 2" or higher, so that a full test is completed.

 

[rjmiller15]

Even if one stick is good, I will still need to get new memory, so is it better that I just buy 2 new sticks instead of keeping one old and one new? Just wondering. I didn't know if it was important to keep the brand name the same or not.

I will try that, I'll have to do it when I have some free time though as it takes hours to run the test!!!

 

[schwinn]

Unless you run dual-channel mode, you don't need to match memory sticks. Even then, you may be able to get away with just matching memory specs...

If you aren't running dual-channel modes, then it doesn't need to match brand (or specs) as it will need to run a the lowest-common setting for either module.

 

[rjmiller15]

thanks for your help. I will run the full memtest on one stick to determine which one is bad, and then I'll order some more.

Thank you for all your help!