Screen blacking our regularly, with CPU spike

[Neil]

Help. After installing a 3rd memory stick on my AMD-based PC, and getting
instability, I updated my Geforce 5200 drivers with latest NVIDIA ones, as
well as moving from Direct X 9.0b to 9.0c, and ever since, I keep getting
either problems where on opening simple applications (IE6, OE6), the monitor
blinks black occasionally. Often, I'll get this happening regularly every
10-15 seconds, and from Task Manager can see that coinciding with a 100% CPU
spike.

I've also getting desktop corruption intermittently. I've tried going
initially back on NVIDIA drivers, firstly going from 61.77 to 61.36 and now
to 52.16, but it's worse if anything on the latter.

I'm further getting a lot of "Windows has receovered from a serious error"
messages. On submitting to MS they appear to indicate a problem with the
Nvidia drivers, but having replaced, does this point to a hardware fault
now?

I'm running XP, using an ECS/Elite L7VTA Motherboard. I've swapped my
memory out, and am now using 2x512mb DDR333 sticks. System temperature
running around 60 degrees - it's always been about that.

 

[Neil]

Remove the "3rd memory stick" and reboot, then run some programs. Are you

then still having the problems? If not, it is the added RAM causing it.

Sorry, I should have added that I'd tried that. I'm now back on 2 memory
sticks, although these are replacement 512mb each, for the previous 256mb
ones. I won't rule them out as faulty, but the NVIDIA errors seem more
of a pointer - though that could be an effect of something else rather than
a cause. The CPU spiking is weird too, and I can't see if/how that could
be memory linked - I could be wrong!

Neil

 

[Frank]

I have the same board L7VTA. I can only use 2 sticks of 512mb RAM on
this board, adding a third causes stability problem. Btw, visit
www.ecs.com.tw for latest bios, fixes cpu temperature reading and raid
problem.

 

[Neil]

I have the same board L7VTA. I can only use 2 sticks of 512mb RAM on
this board, adding a third causes stability problem. Btw, visit
www.ecs.com.tw for latest bios, fixes cpu temperature reading and raid
problem.

I think you're right Frank. I tried adding that third SIM three different
times in the past year, and was chaos each time, with BSODs, freezes etc.
Sounds like I have the same as you now, in having just two 512mb sticks, in
slots 1 & 2. But even with this, am still getting problems. I was
beginning to wonder if it was just 1mb that the L7VTA didn't like, but
sounds like you're OK? Which BIOS are you on? I went to the latest at one
stage, but then back-levelled to 1.7c when I had these problems.

Neil

 

[Frank]

I actually have 2 of these boards. I'm running bios version 1.7i on
both. Fresh install of Windows XP w/ SP1 with AMD XP 1800+ overclock
to 2400+ (176 FSB) and raid 0. Both are rock solid if I leave the
third memory slot alone. Have tried Kingston, OCZ, Cosair, Crucial
memory modules but no luck. I used http://www.memtest86.com/ for
testing, it's time consuming but finally convinced me to gave up on
the last memory slot. Hope this helps and good luck.