Bah.
Right, so, this PC has been acting up for ages, and it's never been quite right. Finally found out the other day that the RAM was dodgy - one stick quite spectacularly failed memtest, with an awful lot of errors. So, I've sent that stuff back off to OcUk for replacement, but I nabbed a new 2GB set of the same stuff (OCZ Platinum) for cheap on This Week Only, so I'll have a grand total of 4GB (less the 512Mb on the graphics card, I'm still on 32-bit) in the PC when the replacement stuff comes. Job done. Put the new stuff in today, and all is well. Right?
Wrong. Apart from being attacked by a small, but very fast, little spider that had made its home on my IDE cable, and then accidentally pulling out the SATA cable without noticing, the installation of the RAM went fine. Then I powered the PC back up and its display wasn't working. At all. Tested the screen with another computer (this laptop) and it was fine. I'd had to take out the graphics card to fit the RAM, so I tried taking it out and putting it back in again. That seemed to solve the problem, and all was fine.
Until I loaded up Windows and it began restarting itself randomly all over the place. I've memtested this new RAM, but memtest keeps locking up after a random amount of time, usually less than a minute. If I sit there pausing memtest at regular intervals, it seems to go fine, but I've not got the patience to pause it and let it go again every 5 seconds for a full pass. So far, no errors have showed up other than the lockups.
I've tried running OCCT, but the computer restarted almost immediately. Same goes for 3D Mark 06. I've also tried Prime95, which is running on it just now. On the first option (the one which states little RAM is tested), the PC is stable for a fairly long time before it restarts. On the third option ('Blend', I think, the one that states lots of RAM is tested), the PC restarts immediately. I've got the case open, and the RAM was majorly hot to the touch after trying the Blend test, much hotter than the CPU HSF or graphics card. It's running Prime95 just now, on the first option, and it's been going for around 10 minutes so far without crashing, which is longer than it normally manages.
Another wierd thing: this RAM apparently runs at 4-4-4-15. But memtest reports it running at 5-5-5-15, and I can find no option to change this in the BIOS. I don't see why running slower than normal should be a problem, but I don't have a clue what's up with this PC. I don't even know if it's RAM related or not, hence this thread going under 'General Hardware'.
System specs are:
E2180 @ stock 2Ghz
Gigabyte P35-DS3P
2GB OCZ Platinum - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-072-OC
ATi HD2900 Pro 512Mb
All running on a brand new fresh Windows install. The computer has now been priming for over 10 minutes, coming up on 15, and it looks fine, so I'm going to guess this isn't processor related. Over to you folks, if you can help.
Thanks in advance
tTz
:edit:
Meh. Spoke to soon, system shut off right after posting that, but it didn't restart, I just got a plain black screen. Monitor didn't go to sleep mode either, dunno what that was about. None of the components feel especially hot. Turned it off and back on, and it just restarted as soon as it hit the desktop.
Right, so, this PC has been acting up for ages, and it's never been quite right. Finally found out the other day that the RAM was dodgy - one stick quite spectacularly failed memtest, with an awful lot of errors. So, I've sent that stuff back off to OcUk for replacement, but I nabbed a new 2GB set of the same stuff (OCZ Platinum) for cheap on This Week Only, so I'll have a grand total of 4GB (less the 512Mb on the graphics card, I'm still on 32-bit) in the PC when the replacement stuff comes. Job done. Put the new stuff in today, and all is well. Right?
Wrong. Apart from being attacked by a small, but very fast, little spider that had made its home on my IDE cable, and then accidentally pulling out the SATA cable without noticing, the installation of the RAM went fine. Then I powered the PC back up and its display wasn't working. At all. Tested the screen with another computer (this laptop) and it was fine. I'd had to take out the graphics card to fit the RAM, so I tried taking it out and putting it back in again. That seemed to solve the problem, and all was fine.
Until I loaded up Windows and it began restarting itself randomly all over the place. I've memtested this new RAM, but memtest keeps locking up after a random amount of time, usually less than a minute. If I sit there pausing memtest at regular intervals, it seems to go fine, but I've not got the patience to pause it and let it go again every 5 seconds for a full pass. So far, no errors have showed up other than the lockups.
I've tried running OCCT, but the computer restarted almost immediately. Same goes for 3D Mark 06. I've also tried Prime95, which is running on it just now. On the first option (the one which states little RAM is tested), the PC is stable for a fairly long time before it restarts. On the third option ('Blend', I think, the one that states lots of RAM is tested), the PC restarts immediately. I've got the case open, and the RAM was majorly hot to the touch after trying the Blend test, much hotter than the CPU HSF or graphics card. It's running Prime95 just now, on the first option, and it's been going for around 10 minutes so far without crashing, which is longer than it normally manages.
Another wierd thing: this RAM apparently runs at 4-4-4-15. But memtest reports it running at 5-5-5-15, and I can find no option to change this in the BIOS. I don't see why running slower than normal should be a problem, but I don't have a clue what's up with this PC. I don't even know if it's RAM related or not, hence this thread going under 'General Hardware'.
System specs are:
E2180 @ stock 2Ghz
Gigabyte P35-DS3P
2GB OCZ Platinum - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-072-OC
ATi HD2900 Pro 512Mb
All running on a brand new fresh Windows install. The computer has now been priming for over 10 minutes, coming up on 15, and it looks fine, so I'm going to guess this isn't processor related. Over to you folks, if you can help.
Thanks in advance
tTz
:edit:
Meh. Spoke to soon, system shut off right after posting that, but it didn't restart, I just got a plain black screen. Monitor didn't go to sleep mode either, dunno what that was about. None of the components feel especially hot. Turned it off and back on, and it just restarted as soon as it hit the desktop.
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