On Mon, 2004-05-31 at 09:42, Chris Torske wrote: > Anyways; on running the memtest86; I did get some errors, at 18.0MB > memory sections and 18.2MB memory sections (address range always > different; ran 28 passes through the tests; ran it about 10 hours > straight). I haven't gone and resit the chips yet, as with time and the > anoayance of getting to the chips gets to change the decision a lot. > Anyways; if I this memtest86 is completely accurate, then I may have a > chip that is starting to go bad. I should probably just find which it > is and replace, but I am not because of lack of money. Already had one > stick go bad, and haven't replaced that either. A DIMM may be going bad, or you may have a power supply that is running on the verge of overload or failure due to age or accumulated gunk, heatsinks on the CPU, northbridge or motherboard voltage regulators almost certainly covered with dust/gunk preventing them from working efficiently...etc, etc. Gently cleaning heat sinks with a small brush and q-tips may help considerably...carefully and only in a high humidity to prevent static electricity discharges... Also, make sure you either unplug the box or shut off the master power switch on the power supply before you start doing anything with the memory DIMMs. Powering down an ATX motherboard (ie any PC mb made in the last 8 years or so) with the front switch does *not* remove power from the board...it only tells the CPU to move to a power down state...the MB is still live with power applied to much of the circuitry. If this is a white box computer, it would also be worthwhile checking to make sure that the vendor didn't overclock the CPU and especially the Front Side Bus. I'd need to know more about the system to say if this is a possible source of problems. The important point is that you *know* you have incipient hardware failure. Almost is ok for horseshoes and hand grenades but 100% reliable is the only acceptable way to run a computer. Until you fix the hardware, you risk totally corrupting your system. KAS
