I'd had my previous Windows install for well over 2 (maybe 3) years until about 2 weeks ago when i decided to finally reformat!
I was happily trooping along with my A64 2800 and 3 sticks of Corsair XMS3200 Pro totalling 1.5gb but after the reformat, i was getting all sorts of issues running memory intensive programs, mainly games such as Half Life 2, PREY and even GTA.
I knew it was down to a memory problem as i'd had similiar crashing to desktop and restarting problems when i once had a conflicting RAM chip (MSI don't like GeIL i now know). I did a thorough memtest86 with all 1.5gb still installed and let it run for about 3 hours and it did 4 passes with absolutely no errors.
I figured (after reading a Steam support article) that memory timings had gone a bit funky so i took out the 2 sticks leaving me with 512mb and everything ran fine, no crashes just a bit slower obviously.
I've now put an additional 512mb stick in but whenever i try and put the third one back in the system immediately becomes unstable again!
I'm pretty much a noob when it comes to manually setting up RAM timings but i checked the single 512mb's timings and tried to set the timings manually on the motherboard to make sure all 3 sticks were running at the same speeds (3-3-3-8) but that made things even more unstable (so its currently set to Auto timings with the 1gb in)
Can anybody make sense of this? The only thing that is different after the reformat is that i now have Service Pack 2, i only had SP1 for all those years!
Oh, and i did update the BIOS after the reformat with MSI Live Update but after the unstability i thought it might have been that screwing things up so i used the recovery disc that Live Update created to revert back to the original BIOS version.
Anybody? I'm baffled.
specs;
MSI K8n Platinum
AMD 64 2800+ Clawhammer
2x 512mb Corsair XMS3200 Pro (should be 3x!)
I was happily trooping along with my A64 2800 and 3 sticks of Corsair XMS3200 Pro totalling 1.5gb but after the reformat, i was getting all sorts of issues running memory intensive programs, mainly games such as Half Life 2, PREY and even GTA.
I knew it was down to a memory problem as i'd had similiar crashing to desktop and restarting problems when i once had a conflicting RAM chip (MSI don't like GeIL i now know). I did a thorough memtest86 with all 1.5gb still installed and let it run for about 3 hours and it did 4 passes with absolutely no errors.
I figured (after reading a Steam support article) that memory timings had gone a bit funky so i took out the 2 sticks leaving me with 512mb and everything ran fine, no crashes just a bit slower obviously.
I've now put an additional 512mb stick in but whenever i try and put the third one back in the system immediately becomes unstable again!
I'm pretty much a noob when it comes to manually setting up RAM timings but i checked the single 512mb's timings and tried to set the timings manually on the motherboard to make sure all 3 sticks were running at the same speeds (3-3-3-8) but that made things even more unstable (so its currently set to Auto timings with the 1gb in)
Can anybody make sense of this? The only thing that is different after the reformat is that i now have Service Pack 2, i only had SP1 for all those years!
Oh, and i did update the BIOS after the reformat with MSI Live Update but after the unstability i thought it might have been that screwing things up so i used the recovery disc that Live Update created to revert back to the original BIOS version.
Anybody? I'm baffled.
specs;
MSI K8n Platinum
AMD 64 2800+ Clawhammer
2x 512mb Corsair XMS3200 Pro (should be 3x!)
It was still running smooth as too. 
