first things first. let me give you a run-down on my components so you can see what i'm working with.

--asus k8ne deluxe mobo
--antec 480w psu
--amd 64 3200+
--2 sticks of corsair value select 512 ddr400
--radeon 9800pro 128mb
--2x seagate barracuda 80gb sata (in a raid 0)
--zalman cpu heatsink/fan
--running winxp home

i hope this gives you a rough idea. i got everything put together; no problem. computer worked fine for the first three days. then yesterday i began getting random reboots. a blue screen would come on-screen for only a split second (not long enough for me to read what it said) and then windows would reboot fully. sometimes this process would happen several times in rapid succession. other times, it would be a good hour between occurences. i was able to run temperature diagnostics on my mobo and proc and both were well within tolerance (both hovering right around 90 degrees fahrenheit even under heavy load). the graphics card was also cool. all cases fans and component fans are working properly. i also noticed that firefox seemed to display characters incorrectly. ex: all "T"s in a body of text in the browser window would be displayed half a line lower than every other character. it almost always followed that pattern, where a certain letter would be displayed as such. additionally, firefox would predictably crash after about 2 to 5 minutes of being opened. the bizarre thing is that instead of prompting me with the netscape feedback window that should pop up when firefox stops unexpectedly, i would get a window similar to the one you get when IE crashes. this window prompted me to send feedback to microsoft about firefox's problem. i'm not sure what that's all about. by reading other posts here in the forums i suspected that i had a ram problem. i ran both dimms through a memcheck utility and it couldn't find any problems, but my symptoms persisted. i decided to take out one of the dimms to see if that would change the behavior of my compy. it now appears to be running ok, albeit slower. do you think i was correct in my assumption that one of my dimms was bad, or do you think that the problem lies elsewhere and that maybe my woes are only temporarily and unexplainable abated? any feedback, advice or suggestions welcome. if you need anymore information to properly diagnose my problems, let me know. i'll be checking the forums regularly until i get a satisfactory answer. thanks to any and all who can help this novice out. much appreciated.

If taking out the one dimm stopped the problem, try putting it back in by itself. If problems start back up, most likely a bad dimm. If no problems, then try adding the second dimm. If problems start back up, there may be a problem with that slot on the mobo. You can try this several times to confirm what the problem is. I'm sure others will have more suggestions.


And welcome the the http://www.pcguide.com/ubb/pcgubb.gif forums.

Are you by chance "overclocking" ???? I overclocked an ASUS mobo and had to adjust the multiplier down to get 1 gig of memory to work properly, just a thought. You situation sounds similar.

In order to see what your BSOD says, go to Control Panel-System-Advanced-Startup and Recovery Settings and uncheck the Automatically Restart box. In trying to convince people that XP doesn't crash, M$ has made it difficult to diagnose why it crashes. Unfortunately, the text on the BSOD is usually vague and cryptic, but it might give you a starting point.

Dorky,
Now there's an eloquent bashing of M$ if I've ever heard one! And a good diagnostic tip's post to boot! Thanks for the tip in XPee...

Were you wearing a tux when you posted that??? :p

My thoughts are malware

Trogdor,
You've mentioned hardware and browsers. What did you do to this install prior to venturing into the 'jungle'? A/V software? Firewall? IE Spyads? Anything at all?

Even if you went directly to any of these sites to install them first, depending on what browser or search engine you used, you could have already picked up a hitchhiker..

E-v-e-r-y build I do these days gets an install of at least a freshly downloaded gamut suite of malware guards prior to exposure to those Dark Waters otherwise known as the internet.... Partial list below:

A/V - freshly downloaded and burned to cd (with the others below) from another pc, so up dates are at least close ( I use two A/V's, but don't tell anyone here, I'll get in trouble :eek: .)
Firewall - fresh download with another pc
SpywareBlaster - recent
SpywareGuard - recent
last but not least:
Firefox 1.0

I was struck by the following statement:

i ran both dimms through a memcheck utility and it couldn't find any problems, but my symptoms persisted. i decided to take out one of the dimms to see if that would change the behavior of my compy. it now appears to be running ok, albeit slower.

It's a lot tougher running two dimms than just one, even good dimms. I know from very recent personal experience, as I could not get two OCZ 3200 EL platinum rev. 2 dimm modules to work. We are talking top-notch memory. But they just won't work together on my kt-600 system (about to install them on a different mobo). They worked just fine when tested separately on memtest86, the newest version.

That's an nforce3 mobo you've got, high performance, a good mobo, and it may be that your memory is not quite up to snuff, though it should be. What are your memory timings? That has to be considered, and you may have to relax them to work properly in that system. The other factor is your psu. If that's the antec neopower 480, you should have no problem. Even if it's not, antec psus are solid, but it's always a factor to consider. Is it brand new?

Good luck.

marty

Fruss Tray Ted,
(I get it, Frustrated)
I've learned a lot about XP in the month that I've been using it. Most of it unpleasant. And not trying to get off subject, but have you looked at my post: 0X0000007B Error?