PLEASE READ IF YOU KNOW HOW TO FIX COMPUTERS

[AgentOrange]

Alright, I figured I had bugged Wes enough with my computer questions so I'm going to post on here and hopefully you guys will be able to help; DO NOT POST STUPID UNRELATED SHIT PLZ....

I have an MSI K8N Diamond Plus motherboard, recently I had to redo the whole system cause it was giving me problems but this one keeps persisting... It seems that the computer starts up fine after being shutdown but ALWAYS freezes on the "Testing Base and Extended Memory" Stage of startup when I reset (say after installing a program for example)... so does anyone know why this is happening only at select times (not constantly like it did before when I had faulty ram)? and if so how I would fix it?

Thanks for the help folks....

__Agent_Orange__

[silence]

it sounds like faulty RAM again to me... my guess is once it tries to use a damaged sector of memory it's crashing on u.... do the test, remove 1 stick or RAM and try that, if that works, switch the RAM until u find the damaged one... if they r all fine im not sure o.O

[The Killing Joke]

Silence is on the right track.

Troubleshooting 101 says that it's likely a problem with either (good news) the RAM or (bad news) the Motherboard. I would remove one stick of RAM, and try it for a while on one stick. Make sure that you NEVER see that message, or have reason to mistrust that stick. If that works, remove that stick, and replace it with the other stick, in the SAME SLOT. Redo the test.

If during this stage, you NEVER see that message, it's possibly the Motherboard itself, as you had not used the other slot, however you have effectively stress tested both sticks effectively.

Try that, report your findings.

[ORION]

"Testing Base and Extended Memory" ehh...
I assume this is just after the POST as your BIOS loads... So I'd try
1. BIOS update
2. Chipset update
3. mem86 tests, if you watch the error addressing (should one actually turn up) then you can easily figure out which stick it is without having to "switch-out" anything. Most issues are located by the time you get to test 4, but if you wanna play it safe, go for the full test (2 hours on my 1 gig pc3200).

[EyeMaster]

To test the RAM, just download a bootable CD of Linux with some mem tools on it. Also do the HW route that's been mentioned already.

You might want to check the motherboard. Physically inspect it visually and look at the capacitors. Check for liquid leaks or bulging capacitors.

[AgentOrange]

Alright boys, thanks, i"ll try those and see how she goes

--> Anyone have a copy of mem86 i could 'try' to see if i like it before i 'purchase' it lol

[Wesley Crusher]

Google for Memtest86+ the plus is necesary.

[AgentOrange]

thx wes

[ORION]

lol, memtest should be freeware.

[AgentOrange]

ok, i d/l'd it but I'm not sure exactly how to run it, i got the iso so do i have to burn it on a cd then reboot my computer from the dvd-drive? and if so anyone got any programs I could use to burn the iso?

[Wesley Crusher]

www.imgburn.com

[AgentOrange]

K so I ran Memtest86+ overnight (for about 10-11 hrs) and it still hadn't finished testing... I dont know if I just dont know how to set it up right or what but after 10 hrs, it had 13 Passes, 0 Errors and was still running through the same 10 tests so is it supposed to do that?? Do i need to let it run longer or do i have to set it up differently cause it should have encountered an error

[The Killing Joke]

I don't like the 'software' approach to troubleshooting, as there are too many things that software can't test. I stand by my process of replacing each bank of RAM independently, and troubleshooting it via a nice 'stress test'.

[AgentOrange]

just incase you didnt know, Memtest doesnt run from an O/S, its ran off CD so its able to test areas of the ram that aren't 'testable' while in Windows... and unfortunately I'm not going out to buy ram to test with just to find out that the ram isn't the issue....

so does anyone have a reply that relates to my questions?

[silence]

u dont buy new ram to test if ur current ram is broken dude... take out all the ram in ur machine and put ONE of ur CURRENT sticks back in, run a 'stress test' and if that one passes take out that stick and try ur next stick in the SAME slot as the 1st one... repeat...

[The Killing Joke]

so does anyone have a reply that relates to my questions?

How about you try all of the suggestions you've already received before groaning at my post, Mr. Ungrateful? I've only been a computer tech for over fifteen years, but hey - if you think you're so scary smart, go figure out your own damn problem. I told you how I diagnose problems, and why I prefer a certain method over another. If my help isn't appreciated, just say so.

[Zimba]

is your bios up to date?, alot of the new mobos have incompat issues with ram...

[AgentOrange]

because I've had the same mobo before and the ram slot failed, i'd have to do a lot of timely stress testing to figure out if its the ram sticks and if not the sticks then which slot (im busy with school and need my computer most of the time so using memtest86 is perfect for me since i can let it run overnight and not have to check up on it and not have to monitor it/switch out sticks after each test)...

Ungrateful? what because I moaned that you didn't address any of my questions and because you felt the need to throw ur opinion out there despite I wasnt looking for your opinion, rather i was looking for answers to my questions... You need to grow up and not take it so personally, maybe its my fault I didn't specify that I wasn't looking for personal opinions that didn't answer my question... Your help would be greatly appreciated if it answered my questions, sorry but with ur history of hijacking threads and making useless posts unless ur directly answering my questions, I don't really care about ur personal opinion
**Auto-merged Double Post**
uhh see thats the funny thing zimba, before I had redone my computer, my bios was up to date and it started acting up, when i redid my computer there was definitely a problem (with no bios driver installed) but then I installed the 'default' bios drivers (that came on the cd with the mobo) and it seems to have resolved some of the issues but my ingame performance seems to still be sub-par and crashes still occur occassionally

[ORION]

BIOS is a ROM, not a driver, and MemTest should only be run for about an hour and a half (all 8 tests) running it multiple times won't really increase the amount of "stress" the ram is under... if you're not getting mem errors or blue screens then it's prolly not your ram.

[AgentOrange]

the version of memtest I've been using has 10 tests (if that makes a difference?) and see i'm confused because do i have to specify for it to test each stick or will it automatically move onto the next stick? I figured it'd run through all 10 tests, 4 times (1 for each 512 i have) and then it'd finish but leaving over night just went through what it says is 13 successful passes (a pass of all 10 tests)... I figure its my ram because on restarts (only), my comp freezes on the Testing Extended Memory portion of the startup... will memtest stop itself? I was hoping it'd be me a report of the tests/results

[ORION]

Extended memory is Swap Space (HDD Virtual Mem) If I'm not mistaken, that could be because your drive is too full or because it's damaged. MemTest goes through by address, not by stick, so if you get an error at 1921mb (for example) then you know its DIMM4 that is malfunctioning, you should only need to test it once.