New RAM - System Instable Only With Games

[Cari]

Hi there. My name is Carissa, I'm new to your group.

Just upgraded my homebuilt system yesterday evening with a gig of ram
and a new hard drive. System appears stable except when attempting to
play games, where it automatically reboots itself or just kills the
app.

New system specs are as follows:
ASUS AV78X-X mainboard
AMD Athlon XP 1800+ 1.53GHz - no overclocking, etc currently temps
(ambient/core): 36/52C (97/126F)
1536 MB (1.5 GB) DDR400 RAM (I don't know which way they're numbering
the slots here. The 512 is in the slot furthest from the CPU it's a DDR
333; the 1024 is in the slot beside it, it's a DDR 400)
NVidia GeForce 6600GT (AGP) 128 MB RAM - not overclocked; temps
(ambient/core): 37/46 C (99/115F)
330GB HDD (250 GB + 80 GB)

Copied system log errors to my website, viewable here:
http://www.wepwawet.org/personal/syslog.txt

My only theory for this is that the differing clock speeds here is
causing system instability. However, why it's not causing instability
just regularly working with the computer, I am unsure.

Opinions? Suggestions?

Thanks,

Carissa

 

[beenthere]

Hi there. My name is Carissa, I'm new to your group.

Just upgraded my homebuilt system yesterday evening with a gig of ram
and a new hard drive. System appears stable except when attempting to
play games, where it automatically reboots itself or just kills the
app.
snipped

Copied system log errors to my website, viewable here:
http://www.wepwawet.org/personal/syslog.txt

Age of Mythology error
http://aom.heavengames.com/scendesign/advanced/aiscriptAnd possibly a logitech mouse software problem.

 

[Cari]

Age of Mythology error
http://aom.heavengames.com/scendesign/advanced/aiscript
And possibly a logitech mouse software problem.

Hrm, okay ... thanks for that bit ... why would my Civ IV end up
rebooting the computer? No error messages with that, just reboots the
entire thing?

 

[Michael Hawes]

Hrm, okay ... thanks for that bit ... why would my Civ IV end up
rebooting the computer? No error messages with that, just reboots the
entire thing?

Download Memtest86 or Microsoft Memory tester and test the RAM. If you
remove the new RAM does problem go away? Change memory timing in BIOS from
AUTO to 333.
Mike.

 

[Tweek]

Hrm, okay ... thanks for that bit ... why would my Civ IV end up
rebooting the computer? No error messages with that, just reboots the
entire thing?

Windows XP reboots by default on error. You can change this by right
clicking on my computer and selecting properties. Go to advanced and click
settings under startup and recovery. Uncheck the box that says
'automatically restart' under system failure. The next time it happens, you
should get a blue screen rather than a restart. From there you may be able
to identify what is generating the error.

 

[Rod Speed]

Windows XP reboots by default on error. You can change this by right
clicking on my computer and selecting properties. Go to advanced and
click settings under startup and recovery. Uncheck the box that says
'automatically restart' under system failure. The next time it
happens, you should get a blue screen rather than a restart. From
there you may be able to identify what is generating the error.

Or you can look at the event log which should have some better
info on any problem significant enough to produce a reboot.

 

[Paul]

Hi there. My name is Carissa, I'm new to your group.

Just upgraded my homebuilt system yesterday evening with a gig of ram
and a new hard drive. System appears stable except when attempting to
play games, where it automatically reboots itself or just kills the
app.

New system specs are as follows:
ASUS AV78X-X mainboard
AMD Athlon XP 1800+ 1.53GHz - no overclocking, etc currently temps
(ambient/core): 36/52C (97/126F)
1536 MB (1.5 GB) DDR400 RAM (I don't know which way they're numbering
the slots here. The 512 is in the slot furthest from the CPU it's a DDR
333; the 1024 is in the slot beside it, it's a DDR 400)
NVidia GeForce 6600GT (AGP) 128 MB RAM - not overclocked; temps
(ambient/core): 37/46 C (99/115F)
330GB HDD (250 GB + 80 GB)

Copied system log errors to my website, viewable here:
http://www.wepwawet.org/personal/syslog.txt

My only theory for this is that the differing clock speeds here is
causing system instability. However, why it's not causing instability
just regularly working with the computer, I am unsure.

Opinions? Suggestions?

Thanks,

Carissa

Did you buy "bargain" RAM from Ebay ? Some of the generic (unlabelled)
1GB sticks, have an inferior design, and use 128Mx4 chips. I would suggest
a branded RAM, using 64Mx8 chips instead.

This page, shows examples of both good and bad RAM. The bad stuff is
the cheapest stuff on the page.

http://www.portatech.com/catalog/memory.asp?ID=285

Memtest86+ and Prime95, can be used for testing your new RAM.

If you don't have the option of returning the RAM, you can try
running just the 1GB stick by itself. If the computer still
misbehaves, then you know the 1GB stick is crap.

Paul

 

[Cari]

Per Tweek, I have unchecked the computer rebooting on system failure.
Will try rerunning Civ IV where that crashed it again to see what it
tells me.

Per Michael Hawes and Paul, much thanks to my hubby for remembering
that my Ubuntu's grub install put the memtest in the grub menu, it
doesn't appear to have failed any tests after 1.75 hours.

Bought my RAM from an actual store that builds custom computers, called
Elitech. Never had a problem with their RAM before. Their page:
http://www.elitechcomputers.com/products.php?action=catdisplay&id=11

Finally found a way to set the RAM speed in BIOS, I have an "Award BIOS
08/06/2003 VT8377/VT8235-A7V8X-X" FWIW

Earlier today hubby was playing Starscape which just crashed on him.
Error Log for the event reads:
Faulting application starscape.exe, version 0.0.0.0, faulting module
starscape.exe, version 0.0.0.0, fault address 0x00009153.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

0000: 41 70 70 6c 69 63 61 74 Applicat
0008: 69 6f 6e 20 46 61 69 6c ion Fail
0010: 75 72 65 20 20 73 74 61 ure sta
0018: 72 73 63 61 70 65 2e 65 rscape.e
0020: 78 65 20 30 2e 30 2e 30 xe 0.0.0
0028: 2e 30 20 69 6e 20 73 74 .0 in st
0030: 61 72 73 63 61 70 65 2e arscape.
0038: 65 78 65 20 30 2e 30 2e exe 0.0.
0040: 30 2e 30 20 61 74 20 6f 0.0 at o
0048: 66 66 73 65 74 20 30 30 ffset 00
0050: 30 30 39 31 35 33 0d 0a 009153..


Civ 4 - Warlords also appears to work fine. After uninstalling and
reinstalling both Age of Mythology & the Titans Expansion pack, the
regular AoM works fine. The Titans caused a BSOD. Here's the
information from the BSOD:

STOP: 0x0000008E (0xC0000005, 0xBFB45A6D, 0xB4C7BA34, 0x00000000)

nv4_disp.dll - Address BFB45A6D at BF9D4000, Datestamp 4410c8d4

Fudged around with it again ... and I think I managed to fix it.

 

[VanShania]

I would pull the 512 stick and just run the 1gig stick and see what happens.
I don't think running 2 different types of ram is helping with your system
stability
--
Love and Teach, Not Yell and Beat
Stop Violence and Child Abuse.
No such thing as Bad Kids. Only Bad Parents.
The most horrible feeling in the world is knowing that No One is There to
Protect You.

A64 3500+, Gigabyte GA-K8NSC-939,AIW 9800 Pro 128mb
MSI 550 Pro, X-Fi, Pioneer 110D, 111D
Antec 550 watt,Thermaltake Lanfire,2 Gb OCZ Platinum 2-3-2-5
2XSATA 320gb Raid Edition, PATA 120Gb
XP MCE2005, 19in Viewsonic,BenchMark 2001 SE- 19074
Games I'm Playing- Falcon 4, winSPWW2, winSPMBT, Call of Duty War Chest

 

[jaster]

Per Tweek, I have unchecked the computer rebooting on system failure. Will
try rerunning Civ IV where that crashed it again to see what it tells me.

Per Michael Hawes and Paul, much thanks to my hubby for remembering that
my Ubuntu's grub install put the memtest in the grub menu, it doesn't
appear to have failed any tests after 1.75 hours.

PSU, cpu cooling and Vga problems are sometimes masked as memory errors.
Memtest 4 hours or overnight. The BSOD message was related to the
nVidia drivers and I assume you updated those drivers.