Member Panel

Yes, that's what I'm afraid of, Jelly Bean, that nothing will run. I think that I will look for 32 bit when I'm ready to do this. Guess I first should see what's wrong with my memory or motherboard . . . always something!

All righty . . . I made that last reply, and my PC crashed twice more . . . I clicked a link to go to the home page, and out it went. It crashed again, immediately upon rebooting.

This time, a box came up to say that I had a problem with one of the following:

RAM
Motherboard
CPU
Power Supply

I'm told that Vista has a memory test? If so, is it reliable? Trying to get one of the boys to take a few minutes to make me a disk . . . once they start a game, though . . .!

I found the memory testing diagnostic tool, pretty much by accident, and ran that today. It told me that once my PC rebooted after the test, I'd be able to see a report. Well, no report popped up upon reboot, and I have no clue where to look. Searched the folders in Windows, but, didn't see anything.

The test had gone 85% with no problems found when I left my PC, so I need to find out if any problems were found in that last 15% of the test. Also, should I still run the other memtest or will the Vista memory test be reliable enough to go by?

Is there a test to find out f my problem is with the motherboard? Is there one for the CPU and the power supply?

Where did you download this test from Neenah? Is it memtest86+ v2? I didn't know memtest *could* create a log file because of the different file systems used by Windows and memtest, but I could be wrong. Are you able to do another test, and just make sure your there for the last moments of the test?

What is the make and model of this PC?, or if you have your PC specs, can you fill them in by going to Quick Links at the top, followed by Edit Options. Has there been any hardware changes since you initially bought the PC?

It's a process of elimination at this point. Memory problems are the most likely and easy to test. What is stored in memory is controlled by software. A motherboard cannot be tested, because the operation of the motherboard takes place in hardware, automatically in the background. A motherboard is much more complex and every motherboard is different, so the only people that are truly qualified to test a motherboard would be the original manufacturers. However, we can do stress and temperature checks to make sure there are no other sources outside of the motherboard that could be causing this problem.

The test I ran is located right in Vista. My son told me I could find it in the BIOS, but I got it to appear by tapping F8 a bunch of times. Wasn't trying to get into the BIOS at the time, so I'm not sure how or why it showed up when and where it did!

I haven't run the memtest-v2 that you recommended because no one's made me a disk yet. I have downloaded it, though.

My computer is custom built by my son and my husband.

I have an XFX NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI 2 motherboard with an AMD 3800 64 X 2 processor. 2 gigs of RAM.
NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GS video card
Realtek High Definition Audio- which isn't working just now . . .
Seagate Hard drive 320 Gigs
Mitsu (sp?) Floppy drive with build in card readers (no one knew how to hook up-the card reader end, the floppy drive is connected)
Samsung TrueDirect Lightscribe CD/DVD writer
ACR Acer AL1916W Monitor
750watt Power supply
Thermaltake Tsunami Dream case (silver clear side)

The CD/DVD writer is the newest thing I've added. Everything was fairly fine running on XP Pro. Although, as I say, that crashed from time to time anyway, and before I added the Samsung to it. I had an Asus CD/DVD writer before that.

I'll have to run those tests later today, just got a text that a good friend isn't doing well again . . . could be her last day or so with us . . .

I'll go put in my PC specs in my profile then as well.

Thanks, madmonkey!

That's great Neenah, all the hardware you listed so far are all compatible with each other. You wouldn't happen to know the brand of memory, and the configuration (i.e. 2x1 gig or 1x2gig or 4x512mb)?

Originally Posted by NeenahDee

I'll have to run those tests later today, just got a text that a good friend isn't doing well again . . . could be her last day or so with us . . .

Great stuff. Sorry to hear about you friend

Originally Posted by NeenahDee

I'll go put in my PC specs in my profile then as well.

Fantastic, that will also be available for any problems you may have in the future too, we can just click on your "my PC" as part of your profile and we'll know immediately.

I'm pretty sure the memory is Crucial, and it's 2 sticks of 1 gig each. I had thought to go ahead and get two more sticks, but I believe I saw a post somewhere that said four gigs doesn't really make a difference. Not understanding that . . . but I've held off for the moment.

Going to see if I can get that memory test to pop up again.

My friend's hanging on by a thread, but she is hanging on. Only time will tell . . .