RAM Issues

[Guest]

Specs: Pentium 4 3.0Ghz / Windows XP SP2 / ATI Radeon 9800 Pro / 2 Kingston
DDR 512mb on an ASRock P4V88 Motherboard
All drivers and BIOS are up to date and no viruses or spyware are detected.
Problem:
It started out with random reboots while playing games like Doom3, but then
also during other applications, burning DVDs, surfing the net, etc. I then
dissabled the "reboot function" in Windows and now I get the BSOD: STOP
0x000000A... IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL I'm thinking it's RAM because:
When I run memory diagnostic tools I always get errors: In Windows Memory
Diagnostics I keep getting errors in the "LRAND" and "ERAND" tests and in
Memtest86 I get errors in test #7(random number sequence) and in the Windows
based Memtest I get an average of 8 errors at 100% pass.
I have also tried other new memory sticks and switching them around, but
they keep failing the same tests.
This is a new PC, about 6months old, everything else seems to be running ok

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated,

 

[Guest]

If you get errors in your memory, you'll get errors in your applications. My
son't system was randomly rebooting. I ran MemTest86 and by swapping sticks
was able to find the bad one. Replaced that stick and all is well now.

 

[Guest]

Sorry, hit Post too soon. How do you know the other sticks are good? If
it's a consistent with known good RAM - then I'd suspect the motherboard.

 

[frodo]

check bios and make sure mem timing is set right - sometimes they don't
detect the chip's specs correctly. disable any turbo modes. try bumping
up the ram voltage, 2.7 is not too much. You could try to manually back
off on the timings to see if you can get it to pass.

check a forum that has users of your motherboard - they may have good
tips.

if memtest86+ says it's failing, then you can count on it. as stated, try
moving the sticks around to different slots to see if that fixes it. at
least it may help you determine which stick it is (error address moves w/
the stick).

Sometimes, a particular brand of stick just doesn't work right in a
particular motherboard, when it works just fine in someone else's
motherboard. If you do replace a stick, I would try a different brand
(unless its under warentee, then get them to replace it).
corsair and crucial are pretty rock solid brands.

Once it's working, I would (perhaps) not trust your install. A ram error
could have resulted in a bad write to disk, and it's possible that some
system file is now bad on disk. So, consider a clean install.

 

[Guest]

I think Frodo is right, I have a Kingston an Ultra and a Rosewill all DDR
512mb, thing is they are all new sticks and even when I use just one I get
the same errors. Funy thing is I haven't had the BSOD in a while now, I even
ran a bunch of applications in the background while playing Doom 3 for about
an hour and it worked just fine. Pretty damn strange if you ask me, because
if Memtest is reporting these errors, why don't I BSOD while using so much or
all of my RAM???