Faulty Ram? Help!
 

Hey guys,

I recently bought a pre-built computer from NCIX warehouse sale (the cheapest out of the 3 in the preview video from linustechtips), and I was super happy that I got the computer. When I got home, my bud and I decided to boot up the system and see what was installed on it. The system booted up to the windows 7 desktop... and short after (maybe 1-2 mins) the computer BSODed.

Since I didn't have time to troubleshoot the computer yesterday, I decided to troubleshoot it today.

At first I thought it was just an installation error, so I decided to install windows 7 again and take the computer out of RAID0. When I was installing, there were no problems, and after say 5 mins, the computer BSODed when I was on the desktop page...

So now my thoughts were that the ram was faulty, so I decided to take out 1 of the 2 sticks, and start up the computer from there. There didn't seem to be any problems. And then I swapped the ram and tried it again, and it didn't seem to have any problems (granted i didn't really leave the computer on for too long or do any other tests on it). Also I did the memory diagnostics test that's in windows 7 by default, and it didn't return any problems. Now I returned to what I had in the beginning, and I installed the two sticks back inside, and booted the computer up, and did the memory diagnostics again... no problem.

Now I'm really scratching my head. I personally don't know what memory diagnostics does... but that was what I had at the time, so I used it.

Now when I left the computer running, I heard a beep sound... sure enough the computer probably BSOD'd and restarted. Then from there on it was constant crashing. I thought it was the hard drive failure, however the computer did a CHKDSK, and it didn't seem to have a problem. Now I tried to reinstall windows 7 (with two dimms inside) and it refused to install, it popped this error at me (0XC0000005). I did a little bit of research and it seems to be related to faulty memory and some other issues.

Excuse my lack of experience in diagnosing computer issues... I'm really thinking this is faulty memory, because after poking around the interwebs some more, I ran into this link and it said

It was certainly crashing when I was installing win7 with two dimms installed. And it did certainly crash when it was doing normal operations. Now I understand that I didn't do any memory intensive tasks, but I decided to include that in there anyways... lol

I've removed 1 dimm, and installed win7 (32-bit if that matters) twice successfully with 1 dimm installed (I don't know if this is the faulty one..)

I haven't swapped the ram in my main rig (that I know works... since I'm using it...) to the computer there, I'll see if I can do that tomorrow.

I haven't done any memtests, because I'm lazy... =P (only spent about 6 hours troubleshooting)

What do you guys think?

check MB bios is current from manuf site and what fixes also check drivers for chipset,sound, video,nic

Try a bootable memtest with both stick, also try both stick in another system. It could be a faulty mobo or ram slut. But well, do it fast since you have only 7 day for DOA :P

how are temps and voltages readings?

windows desktop probably uses more gpu than the installation screen or such? :)

I looked at the descriptions for the most recent BIOS updates and other drivers, but they weren't related to BSODs. There were updates to the BIOS that had the purpose of improving stability. I'll have to check if the computer still BSODs after I reinstall the second stick of ram.

I'll try this when I get home.

I'm pretty sure the temps and voltages for the CPU are fine... since I had the computer running without any BSODs with one DIMM of ram for quite a long time (comparatively to the previous setup). If you're talking about the RAM, I believe it's still stock.

or a faulty HDD cable will give same issue

Don't know if that is the case since the computer appears to be fine when I have one stick installed only.

UPDATE****

I ran the memtest, and it appears that I get a LOT of errors, half my screen goes red because of the errors listing below.

:( Linus sales are to god to be true :(

lol yeah, but i gave my computer to ncix at aberdeen for servicing, so I hope they can get the computer back to me asap

as for the memtest, I took out my set of ram from my main rig and put it into the new computer, and ran the memtest, and it appeared that there weren't any errors, which allows me to assume that the problem is with the faulty ram rather than a faulty mobo/slots.