Tons of crashes -- Memory Issue???

[dogus1]

Okay, so I'm having all sorts of crashes in XP, specifically in 3d intense games, though simple games like CivIII will also crash, but it usually takes them a while. I've got lots of logged errors in the Event Viewer, but I don't understand them ...is anyone out there able to translate if I send them to you? I think it's either a heat issue or bad memory. The crashes always point to either the executable of the program or some random .dll that I know nothing of.

If it is bad memory, how do I test this -- all diagnostics I have say my memory is "fine." But I am getting rather sluggish desktop performance, specifically after I exit a game (I would think 256 DDR should not be eaten up so easily).

I have an AMD Athlon 2100+ on a Biostar VIA KTS400 with one 256 2700 DIMM. I have a GeForce 4 4200 128.

All Diagnostics and Device Manager show no real problems.

I am at a complete loss.

 

[fastingsetiman]

Hi.

I'm no mem guru, but to play 3D "intense" games in XP you're going to need at least 512MB of mem. You had to know this. Whether this solves any problems, I dunno. You can't play with 256 tho.

RCH master of light and darkness, 'cause I know where the damn light switch is at.

Raise your glasses against evil forces. Whiskey for the men, beer for the horses.

 

[RobD]

Oh dear, this sounds all too painfully familiar.
I suffered almost exactly the same symptons on my system. I have a XP2200+, Asus A7S333, Radeon 8500 Pro and 512MB DDR 2100 RAM. The mobo & cpu were new, and almost immediatly, I suffered game drop-outs, lock ups and BSOD at regular intervals. Every BSOD gave me different errors and Microsoft's list of solutions to my mini dumps were vague to say the least.

Experience told me it was bad ram, but all diagnostic tests said it was OK, so I didn't know where to turn next.
By a stroke of luck, I had PC sitting in pieces awaiting build for a local business, and I grabbed the ram from that and whacked it into my machine as a test.

Although it was only 256, I had 2 weeks of perfect operation, and immediatly afterwards, went out and bought branded ram.

Moral here is, never EVER buy generic ram, even if it is cheaper (I know, I know!). Always go for branded.
I bought 512 MB Crucial PC2700, and my machine runs like a dream.

It really is worth the difference, and you usually get a lifetime warranty.

 

[upec]

I agree. My friend cannot get his ECS K7S5A working with generic RAM and after replace the RAM with Crucial memory and the system works perfect.

 

[Rellik4]

I have the exact same problem with my machine i built yesterday (sigh), turned out to be the generic ram i bought i think heh, had 1 gig of pc 2700, on an asus a7n8x with 2600 + CPU, tryed putting the 2 sticks into the blue slots, well let the crashes begin, moved my mem sticks all over and the only thing i can get to work is putting 1 stick of 512 in the slot 1 (black colored slot), so now im thinking im going to buy me some branded mem like corsair, learned my lesson, maybe heh, if it works. )) im an everquest player and that thing is graphic intense, but stable now