Built a pc two weeks back. All going well until today. Playing a memory intensive game (GTA IV) and it starts acting up. Screen starts to black out, then has a bunch of colored lines across it then the game crashes. When I could reload it (after multiple reboots), the same thing happened, or it would freeze. Then, firefox won't load, multiple programs upon reboot kick out errors saying they couldn't load, other programs have become corrupt etc. During all this, I'm getting multiple blue screen errors, some memory related (can't recall errors right now). I ran memtest and stopped it during a third pass (about 1.5 hours) and had about 300,000 errors. I haven't tested it further, i.e. pulled one stick, run memtest, if errors, pull that stick and put other back it, run memtest again etc. I will try that tomorrow. For now, do all indications lead to bad memory? I wonder why everything was fine for two weeks until tonight. Is it because the game is so intense that it fried the RAM, or did something else to it? Any suggestions?
I would try one stick at a time like you said. If you only have two sticks of RAM and four slots you can also try them in different slots. If you using dual channel memory, they need to be in the correct slots to work correctly. Do you have the correct timings and voltages set in the BIOS? If not, that could be a problem. First, check the BIOS settings (especially the voltage) and try memtest again. If you need to, set the voltage manually. My BIOS didn't give my RAM enough volts on auto so I had to set it manually. Did you stress test your computer after you built it with something like Prime95? Edit: added more info
Thx for the reply. Timing and voltage are correct. Just logged back into the BIOS to check it. Tried to boot up again and this time upon entering windows and trying to load explorer, I got the memory_management BSOD. Got the paged file in non-paged area BSOD earlier..in addition to the many others that I can't recall at the moment. Will try testing the sticks one at a time tomorrow.
Ok, I edited my post so look over it again when you get a chance. Hopefully others will jump in here to help. Let us know how the one stick at a time goes.
I always look at heat dissipation on the CPU first. No fan/fan not working/overclocked CPU/etc.. That can show up this way. Is the system overclocked? Don't discount a RAM socket issue. You could be simply looking at initial burn-in failure as well. In any event, your error count is rather high. Blue
Thanks guys. I just removed the two sticks to test individually. First stick gives me BSOD and has immediate errors during memtest. Running memtest on second stick now and after about five minutes, no errors to report! I'll let it run for a few hours (overnight), but this is a good sign since I previously received errors right away anytime I ran memtest. I think I may have found a faulty memory stick. If so, I wonder why it didn't act up the first two weeks I had it. Must have had a short lifespan...assuming it is the problem.
Sounds encouraging Fontaine! Although I'm new to the hardware part of computers, from what I understand, most components fail fairly quickly if they are bad. Keep us updated.
