Crazy feckin computer

Drazhar

This one your gonna love.

So my PC has been acting weirdly lately. Capped it all off the other night when i was copying something over and it told me that a file on my C drive was corrupt, and Winamp popped up an error message, and in that error message was the note that "This Error Cannot Possibly Occur"!!! As you can imagine, i needed new boxers at this stage, but wait, it gets better

So i formatted the drive, and attempted to re-install. Now here we started having real problems. When the setup program (2k, 2k w/ SP3, XP Home or XP Pro w/ SP1) tries to copy over the files needed for installation, it tells me that it cannot find a file on the CD. Have tried installing repeatedly. Different file not found everytime.

Talked to a fried who told me that perhaps the memory is shagged, or perhaps the IDE controller. So i downloaded the Ultimate Boot CD 2.1 and ran three of its memory tests, MemTest 86+, Memtest 86 and docRAM Test. It failed parts of them all. I tested all my HD's for physical and data errors, none came back.

So my question: Are these mem tests accurate? is it my mem thats shagged? The mem is a generic 512mb PC2100 DDR module, there's an M-Tech sticker on it, never heard of them..

other specs:
MoBo: Abit KR7A-133 RAID
CPU: Athlon XP 1900
HD's: Seagate 40GB, Samsung Spinpoint 160GB
Optical: Hitachi DVD, LG Burner

Anyone got any thoughts. No one around me has any PC1600 or 2100, nor can their machines take it.

quarryman

well if it failed on all 3 memory tests its pretty reasonable to assume that's the problem. the next step here is to use some other ram to see if error keeps occuring. you don't have to put 2100 ram in, any speed should work as long as its DDR. faster ram in a slower board just means it will be forced to run at a slower speed than it is capable of.

Civilian_Target

If the memory test failed, your RAM or board is forked, probably your RAM.

If you can't borrow some RAM to test with, you should bite the bullet and buy more RAM, it's not too expensive nor a hard comodity to resell if it turns out for board is the trouble

Senor_Fudge

ya ive been getting similiar worrying symptoms too with my box lately
but i think it might be a virus as its too much of a coincidence
someone mentioned to me the lovesan virus or something which has a new strain at the moment

im getting frigged up messages (well i only got one cause im not here most of the time to analyse the box) which said some file in windows is corrupt and shutdown will take place in a minute or so

for a sec i just thought it was a more sophisticated pop up but sadly not
also ive been getting that messed up winamp error

i have updated my AVG virus scanner but its not coming up even when i do a complete scan

im also getting an svchost error too
helppppppppp meeeeee too
(walks around with a taxi driver face)

:mad:

CombatCow

That windows install error is a good sign that your memory is fuxored,your luckey it's not ur hdd tbh.

Your board can support up to PC2700 DDR ram ( 333MHz ) I doubt you will find PC1600 for sale new,and there's few pc2100 options on komplett aswell.


CombatCow

CyberGhost

hmm that's strange!

if your memory was dead, you wouldn't be able to boot at all!

Drazhar

problem was the memory alright. got a stick of 2100 and slapped it in, i now sport a copy of XP Sp1!!

CyberGhost: The memory wasnt completly borked, it just had a bad block in it that was corrupting values put in and so killing any running prog

I ordered 512 of Samsung ECC 2100 off of pc memory upgrade, €130, arrival on monday or tuesday

CyberGhost

happy you solved your problem man!

Stephen

Ehh, you shouldn't have ordered ECC RAM unless your existing RAM is ECC.

Mutant_Fruit

CyberGhost: The memory wasnt completly borked, it just had a bad block in it that was corrupting values put in and so killing any running prog

That means the memory is completely borked. There is currently no way to section off the broken block, so its completely unusable. Just throw it away i suppose... or take it apart with some tweezers to see what makes it work