Strange memory errors

Gatsby

Gatsby

Gatsby

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Joined
28 Nov 2004
Posts
951
Recently I started having a number of problems; games crashing, downloads corrupted, programs refusing to start up and general instability. This rig was stable before this and I hadn't changed any hardware or software of any note. Its also not overclocked in any way and temperatures are fine.

My system is:
Core 2 Duo 6300
Asus P5B Deluxe
Nvidia 7600GT
2GB Corsair XMS2 5400 (2x1GB)

I ran memtest overnight and sure enough come the morning I had over 650,000 errors and it was still climbing. I stuck the memory sticks into the other two memory slots and in the first 15 minutes I got over 4000 errors and it was climbing rapidly. However when I tested each stick individually neither of them produced any errors after an hour of testing :confused:

Any ideas what this means? I'll run the test on one stick overnight and see what happens but it seems strange that they error so fast together but not individually.

Edit: The errors are the same regardless whether the sticks are in dual or single channel mode. I tried raising the voltage from 1.9v to 2.0v and it lowered the number of errors (from a few thousand to a few hundred in 15 minutes). Also the errors consistently occur only in test 7, no idea if that means anything or not.

However both sticks are still fine individually :confused:
 
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Well I left one stick running memtest overnight and this morning it still hadn't produced any errors. The other stick also hasn't reported any errors on its own either, though I have only tested that one for around 90 minutes.

Unfortunately this morning when went to restart my computer after running memtest all night Windows refused to load, saying that a boot file was missing or corrupt (I think it was Config.nt). I had to fix the boot sector through the recovery console to get back into Windows. I guess this must have occured when I shut down the computer last night to remove one of the sticks and run memtest on the remaining one.

Anyone got any ideas? Could it be my motherboard if both sticks test fine individually?
 
And the other stick passed memtest overnight as well. So they're both fine on their own but together, and in any slot combination, they cause massive numbers of errors.

No one got any ideas on the cause of this?
 
Well, I'd be suspecting the board by now I think.

I don't suppose you've got any different RAM you could try, say, from a mate or something? Or try your RAM in somebody else's machine?

It's difficult trying to isolate things like this, but you've done the right thing so far trying to methodically isolate the cause.
 
Are they matched pairs?
What if you run them in single channel not dual channel configuration?

If its under 28 days old RMA the ram back to supplier for replacement then try again. Its easier to change the ram than RMA the board, having to strip it all down and the likes!!
 
They are a matched pair, and they fail in both single and dual channel mode.

They're around 3 months old, though Corsair do a lifetime warranty on them. However as I understand it, its a nightmare to RMA Corsair stuff as you have to deal directly with them and ship the stuff to the US. So I'm reluctant to do that, especially as it seems the ram is actually fine and the problem lies elsewhere.

Unfortunately I don't think I know anyone with a DDR2 motherboard and ram, but I'll ask around.
 
Try each stick seperately under Windows using 'MemTest' (http://hcidesign.com/memtest/). Memtest86+ wasn't able to find errors with my RAM for whatever reason, yet this program did pretty much instantly. I suggest you try it if you can, as you may indeed find one stick is actually faulty.
 
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