[Klep]

Hi all,

I'm new to this forum. Therefore, first of all, I would like to thanks all the people who want to
have a look at my problems and try to help me find a solution. Cheers guys.

My problems started about half a year back. I'll try to keep it short. I wanted to flash the BIOS
of my asus a7v600-x mobo. Somehow it failed (I used the windos-util, I know...). I then ended up with
buying a new mobo (same type, same spec). Eversince I have been seeing BSOD's. 75% of them are
0x0000008E, and I see 0x00000050 a lot also. I refers to win32k.sys. Between the beginning and now i
have tried several things, all without any good result:
-I bought a new HD. At first i though it was that. Comlete reinstall, but pretty soon the BSOD's were
there again.
-I borrowed a good PSU (tagan 480W) from a friend. I myself dont have a A-brand (Q-Tec 400W bigfan), but
it did not make the BSOD's go away.
-Also I borrowed the CPU and RAM of this friend. On my mobo there's an Athlon XP 3000+ (333) and 2 sticks
of 512 MB (pc3200) RAM. Different brands. His Athlon XP 2600+ worked fine on my pc, together with his RAM
(512 MB Kingston). In the meanwhile, my RAM and CPU worked on his mobo VERY well. He OC-ed the CPU to 2,6
GHz! No problems whatsoever. Too bad we only tried it one day long...
-Clearly, one of the first things i read on the internet was that it could be a RAM issue. The RAM I have
is not on the list of 'supported' by the motherboard, but when I do a memtest86+ it gives NO errors.
... well, with the standard test that is. As soon as i select 'scan whole RAM area' (or something like
that) it comes up with some errors. I have a screenshot of that right here:

http://home.student.utwente.nl/j.j.b.leussink/foto/errors.png

-I also tried swapping videocards. No effect. I uninstalled and removed the drivers before i did that with
drivercleaner.

What else can I say?
X The voltages look stable in speedfan 4.26
Vcore: 1.74
3.3: 3.36V
+5: 4.65V
+12: 12.10V

Temperatures are not that bad either.
CPU idle: 47C idle, 54C stressed.
Chipset: 43C idle, 48C stressed
HD: 43C idle, 48C stressed

There are only a few things i can think of which may cause the problems, considering that I did quite a
lot already:
O My CPU is damaged... just a little! one corner is damaged a bit, and one side is not as sharp as it
should be. I know this can be fatal, but my pc runs ... well... fine, apart from the BDOD's. Could this
be causing it?
O Maybe somehow the RAM and motherboard don't like eachother. But there's no way I'm going to buy new RAM
without beeing sure that that is what causing this mess.
0 Finally: Could this be software related? I'm not sure and that's why I have come to you guys.

Could you guys give me a hint on what I could do to fix my problems. It's quite annoying. Lately it happens
a coulpe of times per day (4-8 times).

If there is anything I forgot to mention, let me know.

Best regards,

Klep (dutch)

Ps: The crashes are random. Like i said. Most of the times it's 0x8E and 0x50. I also had 7F a few times
and 1D once...

 

[crazijoe]

Hello and welcome to TSF.
This does indeed point to a RAM issue. I cannot say if it is your memory or not. I have seen some MBs cope with sertain types and not like others. But the BSOD and the memory test points to the memory.
Run the memory test with individual sticks. This wil help you isolate the problem better.

Side note. I am not one that likes to hack on brands. But, my opinion, VIA chipset MBs are considered low budget and not that reliable. (I notice this is what you have from the screenshot). You may have a problem with the MB's memory bus. It's just hard to tell.

 

[Klep]

Thanks crazyjoe,

But like i said: If i run the standard test, it does not come up with any errors at all. :4-dontkno

What i forgot to mention is that when i replaced the mobo with a new one (but exactly the same) the errors were still there, so I swapped the BIOS chips, so that the new (good) bios chip was in the old mobo. I still had the errors. Does that not make it unlikely that there is something wrong with the motherboard itself? :sad:

 

[crazijoe]

Now when you are saying you run the standard test, what test are you running?

 

[Klep]

It crashed twice while writing this reply.

I noticed that putting the clockspeed from 2167 MHz to 1733 MHz helps with the stability (standard is 2167 MHz --> 13x166), and thats what I just did.

The test I use is the newest version (v1.65) from http://www.memtest86.com/ (with all the standard settings, that is what i meant)

I realise that that is not what you can see on the screenshot. Then I used the previous version, but it does not give any errors with the new version as wel... :4-dontkno

 

[crazijoe]

I don't know how you run the test but I usually run a full test for 12 hours on each stick of memory. This usually gives me the best results.

 

[Klep]

Hi crazyjoe (and others),

It's been a while, but I now know that RAM is not the problem. I tested my 2 sticks of 512 MB separately, but what i also did is use 1x 512 MB Kingston (KVR400X64C3A/512) which is on the 'support' list of my mobo. No luck :deveous:. I tried putting it in a different bank, but that didn't bring any improvements. So i got my own RAM back and this time we swapped our processors. I traded my 3000+ (333fsb) for his 2400+. He runs my processor without any problems at all. He even OC'ed it to 2,6 GHz. (13x200). But his processor runs without a crash on my pc. How can this be? Could there be an issue between my a7v600-x and Barton processors (or just the 3000+ in specific?)?

 

[crazijoe]

It could be your system having issues running at 333MHz FSB. You might try another processor witha a 333 MHz FSB.

 

[Klep]

I'll try to find someone with a 333 fsb proc

Would it not help if i ran my memory @ 266?