Memory Errors?

iviv

iviv

iviv

Soldato
Joined
2 Jun 2007
Posts
6,839
Location
Mornington Crescent
This started off yesterday with a bluescreen while playing WoW, the error being:
MEMORY_MANAGEMENT, code 0x0000001A

Shrugging this off as a one-off, I rebooted, loaded up WoW again, played for about 20 mins before WoW itself crashed, with the error:
The instruction at 0x005595fc referenced memory at 0xffffffff. The memory could not be read.

Downloaded memtest86+ and ran it, only doing one pass, everything was fine. Restarted again, everything was stable.

And today, WoW once again crashed:
crashh.jpg


Once again, talking about Memory, though this time WowError caught it and sent a crash log off to Blizz.

However, all this constant references to memory errors have me rather worried, but memtest passed perfectly fine.

I'm using 4x1Gb modules of geil value ram. PC6400 (800Mhz) 5-5-5-18 running at 749Mhz, 4-4-4-12 timing.

The system's been stable for years, and it was much hotter last summer than this, so I don't think temperature's an issue, ram shouldn't get too hot anyway, right?

But... what could cause these errors to come up?

Edit: Apparently bad things come in groups. Was playing TF2, bluescreened, this time an error with dxgmms1.sys Currently downloading the feb 2010 DX redist, just to be on the safe side. Still clueless as to the issue :x
 
Last edited:
Broken Hope said:
WoW is actually really good at finding instability, that combined with the TF2 crash means you defo have something playing up.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the confirmation ;)

On a serious note, I'm currently giving memtest a proper run, going to let it do a few passes, just to completely rule out memory being an issue. The thing is, its been running Vantage and Heaven recenrly, so I'd have thought those would show up any instabilities, plus as I mentioned, it doesn't seem to be temp, as its pretty cool today, especially compared with days in the past, and last summer's heat wave.
The only thing I find weird is the memory errors when there's nothing wrong with the memory. Could it be the memory on my GPU that's acting up? Or the paging file, perhaps?

The recent dxgmms1.sys certainly implies graphics card issue, but the cards temps are fine when gaming.
 
Definitely run the full memtest, as it sounds like you are doing. Next time it blue screens try and get parameters as well (the bit in the brackets that looks like 00000000,00000000,00000000,00000000)

Having said that based on this thread and what I can recall from the last one it doesn't seem like there is a specific recurring piece of software that is causing the issue. Did this start when you installed a newer OS?
 
So, where do I go from here? Take all but 1 stick out, and run memtest on each stick to see the faulty one? Or is there any info in there which tells me which stick it is? I'm thinking the former :(
 
Ah, right.

Which one's going to be the last stick? Furthest away from the CPU, I assume?
 
Thanks. Chatting with a techie friend on MSN, he's saying it could be because the timings are at 4-4-4-12 instead of the ram's usual 5-5-5-1, could that have anything to do with it? Its not something I've altered myself, its set to 'auto' in the mobo I think, could that have caused this?

Either way, testing that one stick now.
 
What voltage is that RAM specced at? It's usually around 2-2.1v for those timings, will say on the sticks, you may need to manually set it. Tight timings if not ran at the correct voltage can cause errors.
 
Its manually set to 2.1V, wasn't stable at anything less.

Also, is the maths right here? The errors occured at 4263Mb, but 4 lots of 1Gb ram = 4096Mb?

Edit: 3 passec complete on what I think was the 4th stick, nothing. I'll try the first stick after 5 passes.

Edit2: I stuck all the sticks back in, went to bios to find an option to lower the timings back down to 5's... and I couldn't find an option to. Only ram options I could find were for the speed, which is 750Mhz (2x fsb), nothing to do with the timings. Weird :x
 
Last edited:
6 1/2 hours of memtesting on all 4 sticks together, 7 passes complete and no errors found.
Could that mean the first one was a false positive? A mistake? I'm just confused now :x
 
Kinda tricky really.

It could have been a false positive I suppose - or ther error was caused by something else - the CPU for instance.

Then again, since having removed and replaced the RAM it could be that they needed reseating. The P5B should let you change the RAM timings, can't recall off-hand the exact section in the BIOS though.

My next step would be to run Memtest on all the ram for an hour or two, and see if it survives that long. I may take more or less time each time you run memtest to show up an error.
 
Hmm, needing reseating could be a possibility, its probably been knocked around a fair ammount. Also, did sme googling and found this helpful post: http://www.thetechrepository.com/showpost.php?p=54&postcount=2
While its for the P5B-Deluxe, I imagine it would be in the same place for my mobo. The only question I have is... what do I set all the options to?
CAS latency, RAS to CAS delay and RAS Precharge to 5, RAS active to precache to 18, but then what about the others? Does what he says below the pictures sound about right?

From watching the memtest, I believe I originally singled out the incorrect module to test on its own, the third stick was the one throwing up errors, for some reason, memtest was listing the memory pairs as being 0-2048Mb, and then 4097-61xx can't remember the exact values, but meaning that error fell on the third stick. I think I'm going to push the timings up, and then memtest overnight again if I don't get any crashes while playing games today.
 
memtestx.jpg


Goddamnit.

This time, the errors seem to be all over the shop? Rather than one paticular address like last time. Now, I'm confused by this, as the only thing I've done since last time was change the timings, from the 4-4-4-12 that it was running at, to the 5-5-5-18 that they are designed (Though thinkig about it, 5-5-5-15 would probably be better), but either way, the timings are alower, so the ram should be less stressed, and less prone to errors?

I'm just confused now :(
 
memspeed.jpg


That's the timings I had it at for that run.

And I agree regarding something being an issue at any timing, but the first errors were just one stick, the second lots of errors were over a couple.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom