Problem PC

Auraomega · 19 Jul 2011 at 00:45

Well, just had an interesting error message. Was about to watch some old skool Doctor Who (don't look at me like that!) when my screen started glitching... ohnoes I thought. Reboot system and I'm greeted by the black screen with just a cursor (I soon became a curser myself). Reboot into Memtest and I see a slew of errors faster than I can read, so I decided to reboot into Windows Memory Diagnostic on a whim and was greeted by:

(excuse the poor quality, my real camera is elsewhere...)
'The memory map contained ranges that extend above four gigabytes'
I wish

I have 4gb in this system and I've run Windows Memory Diagnostics before on this system and have NEVER seen this message before, and as soon as it started running I got the slew of errors I saw in Memtest.

I'm beginning to give my CPU and long hard stare as the memory mapping I would assume is part of the IMC? I feel like I'm finally getting somewhere with this problem.

Auraomega · 19 Jul 2011 at 14:30

Just took the CPU out and checked it over; no physical damage, no burn marks and all pins appear to be making good contact... the motherboard however didn't look so good, a couple of the pins are bent. I don't have the steady hands required for bending them back into position nor a good enough eye to see if they were touching, so I whipped my macro lens out and took a couple of photos to check out.

Doesn't look promising...

Had a play with a pair of tweezers (inb4 sig) and I appear to have moved them slightly and they definitely aren't touching now.

Unfortunately I don't think I'll ever be convinced the issue is gone and there is no way of proving it was this... ironically I'm now hoping for a crash so I know it's NOT this, ARGH!

Auraomega · 19 Jul 2011 at 15:23

Yes, but that's no indication unfortunately as it can be problem free for months and then start up again. The system has however been crashing more regularly than usual so hopefully, if the problem persists, it'll rear it's head again in the next couple of days.

Auraomega · 7 Sep 2011 at 23:16

The problems have started again. Random crashes, corrupted files, system turning on but failing to POST.

Time to get in touch with Intel...