RAM causing crashes and BSOD

[Sinimeister]

Hello there, haven't made my own thread yet, so please be gentle. :tooth:

 

I've never messed with RAM timings before and it will probably be the answer to my problem, but I might as well ask anyway.

 

OK So I built this setup back in August and had it up and running fine (with the exception of having to update the BIOS to have a 2nd stick of RAM in and some minor high load temps due to the dual 6600's over the chipset area). I use the machine for gaming and work mainly.

 

I had the two sticks in the dual channel slots (the orange ones) and it ran fine but with lots of exceptions. Here and there I'd get a blue screen randomly, weird "freezing" when doing common actions where I'd get no response at all, then it goes back to normal. Then recently, I had tried to open this graphics file for work in Photoshop (which I had done before thousands of times) and everytime I would try to open up a file with that extension, I'd get a blue screen (IRQL) or the computer would just freeze and I'd have to shut it off via holding the power button.

 

I was going nuts trying to figure out what happened because I had to finish some urgent work, and I had run memtest for a while and didn't receive any errors. So I ended up formatting and re-installing Windows; everytime I opened the file type, it'd freeze or reboot. So for the hell of it I took out a stick of ram and everything worked normally.

 

Other problems I had were with games crashing at startup or exiting, or mid-game (BF2, FEAR, AOE3).

 

Could that be a RAM setting issue in the BIOS? I bought both of them last year together from Newegg, also.

 

Thanks for reading

[StephenC]

Could be. So how do you have them setup in bios? Timing, voltage? Are you running stock? What are the rated timing and voltage for your ram?

[Sinimeister]

Honestly, I just left everything at default as I didn't have much time to mess with things (was waiting for a free weekend to research all the BIOS settings).

 

So whatever the default settings are, and I believe I set everything in the RAM area to "Auto" just as a precaution. Should I read off the settings?

 

I can't find the rated timing and voltage, is there a main place to look? I've been searching for the past 20 minutes and haven't come up with anything.

 

Would the CPU-Z rates help?

[Sinimeister]

I know it's a stupid question, but I've seen info on everything about my type of RAM around here and this has been my only real question.

 

Bought this stuff a couple years ago and the wallet was already deflated from the new parts, maybe I'll just have to do what everyone seems to do and buy the best RAM available to make things work :/

 

Edit - After looking at the prices of the RAM recommended by most people here, I'd rather try to get this working first to save me $300 or so.

[Sinimeister]

Anyone?

[phucker]

hey try this, stick the ram into the other two slots and see if that works. and does windows recongnize the correct amount of ram?

[red930]

If I understand your first post correctly, this RAM was running just fine previously.

 

You should qualify your RAM one stick at a time with memtest.

[red930]

When you say you bought both of the memory sticks together, were they:

 

1. Bought as a single package matched pair kit?

 

or

 

2. Bought as 2 separately packaged individual sticks?

[Sinimeister]

I've run memtest with either stick in and both sticks in, didn't get an error, just crashes in Windows. I can run 1 stick just fine, but the whole point of having 2 sticks is to use em

 

I bought them individually, same part number and such.

 

I'll try the switching around the RAM, but doesn't dual channel yield a better speed? I wish I knew about this more :/ I had them in the first 2 slots already, along with the 2 orange slots, but still had my random BSOD or restart.

 

I can't seem to find info about the timings and they seem to run just fine in my old PC (P4P800 SE). There's another post about this kinda RAM on here and the guy seemed to just buy a better type of RAM.

 

Thanks for the responses, btw, was getting antsy and was trying to avoid the 'newb' label but I haven't had much success on my own with research and testing.

 

-Edit- Oh and, yeah, it ran fine in the dual channel slots after I upgraded the BIOS back in August, but the weird Photoshop problems and games randomly crashing seemed to occur randomly as I've not added any hardware or modified anything. I am assuming it's the RAM as it's running perfectly now with the 1 GB stick in there now solo, with the other stick in my other PC that's running games just fine with it.

[red930]

@Sinimeister

 

Have you run prime95 Torture Test to check for OS stability?

 

If not you might want to try OCCT for a quick stability test. If it passes OCCT you can then move to prime95 testing for at least 8 hours.

 

If that fails you should seriously consider a clean OS install.

[Sinimeister]

I did a clean OS install recently when I noticed that systematic malfunction when opening files up with Photoshop. That's what shocked me, getting a BSOD in Photoshop right after a long format and clean install of XP. I even got a BSOD when first trying to install XP (when I had both sticks in), but after a reboot it installed just fine.

 

I'll try the prime95 Torture Test, but the software area is where I'm most fluent in, and this is definately a hardware issue that probably has to do with RAM timings, at least from what I can tell from reading other peoples RAM issues and them having similar stories.

 

So run the Torture Test with the 1 stick or with both in dual channel? Mind you, I didn't touch any settings and the default ones might be incorrect for the RAM, right?

 

Everything's been running beautifully with the 1 stick, just killing my system when I have to do projects in Photoshop for work since I work with huge files and memory is eaten like a fresh chocolate cake

[red930]

@Sinimeister

 

Here's a silly question...

 

When you did your clean install did you happen to "tweak" any of the settings in XP?

 

More specifically, did you make a change to your pagefile settings?