PC started locking up ??? Is it RAM ?

Heliospherez · 29 Mar 2007 at 18:30

I have a Shuttle running XP SP2 & recently when it powers up, the display will become all garbage, then it will lock up. This can happen at the windows flash screen or the XP logon screen.

I'm assuming one of the RAM sticks is faulty, as I can remove it, and the problem disappears. I'm just curious as to how this can happen, as the RAM isn't stressed / overclocked and has only been installed for about 5 months (Samsung PC3200 512MB DDR)

Could it be something else causing it (possibly too much power drain) - as I have all expansion slots full and all the drives populated as well as a very power hungry graphics card?

Zefan · 29 Mar 2007 at 18:32

What PSU have you got?

Heliospherez · 30 Mar 2007 at 09:58

64 Bit AMD Athlon 3000+.
About 2 years old - Also never overclocked

RaiderX · 30 Mar 2007 at 10:05

PSU = power supply not CPU

Heliospherez · 30 Mar 2007 at 12:35

Sorry was very tired this morning.....

The Shuttle has a 240W. PSU - Its an N85G4

Its powering an AGP NVidia WinFast 7600 GT with 256MB of RAM, a Sony IDE DVD Burner, Seagate SATA drive, 3 USB devices, PCI Wireless card, Mobo & the CPU listed above.

PC-M Vip3r · 30 Mar 2007 at 12:47

If you havent installed anything new into your system and its been running fine for 5 months then it is probably the RAM however it could be the Hard Drive or even the IDE/SATA connection on the MoBo for the HArd Drive. I had this problem with my desktop.

Try some different RAM if you can, if the problem is still there then it could be your HDD. Even then one of the RAM Slots could have died. Try swapping around in different configurations.