How can i do a Windows RAM diagnostic easily to test if its ok??

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Ergolite

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Hi

My PC has been crashing consistantly for the past 4 months, while I'm playing games (Unreal tournament, World of Warcraft, all games cause the PC to crash).

I'm now in the process of talking to PC Service call technical guys (PC World) to try and see what the problem is.

They are taking me through a series of tests. This Memory diagnostic being the latest test. But I am having real trouble running it.

http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp

I've spoken to the PC tech line 4 times in the past hour and they will not take me through the process.

Can somebody please describe in simple terms what it is I have to do? :o

Help will be MUCH appreciated at this point :nod: as I can't face another long session of chatting with these supposedly technical helpline people. They are doing my head in!! :wall:
 
Well, to start with, can you tell us a little more on the hardware spec of your PC? Make, model if shop bought.

Is it, only 'games' that cause the system to crash?

I take it as read you are using XP

What other software do you run?

Are there any "error" messages when something crashes, if so, can you please post one, including all its text.

As for memory checking, I wouldn't bother just yet.


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Does the pc crash when your not playing games? I ask because it maybe due to overheating.
 
In all fairness V_R a lot of PC's dont crash untill the game that is being run becomes fully active. The likes of WoW generates a lot more heat from the likes of GFX card because of the rendering needed where as a simple desktop wouldnt if you knw what I mean?
 
If you want to test your memory use Memtest

It's free and you boot into it from a CD, floppydisk or USB memory key.

Let it run for at least four hours although if you do have faulty memory it will usually show on the first series of tests.

However, I'm more inclined to think you have a heat problem.
 
My PC is an Advent 9107 2.8 Ghz 1GB Ram Radeon X550 Graphics card and was bought from PC world 4-5months ago.
The games i play are Dawn of War, WoW and Unreal tornament 2004 all should run easily in my opinion on a 4month old PC as they work on my sisters pc which is a year old and cost the same price and is of similar spec.
The PC crashes every 10mins or an hour, whenever it feels basically and the screen just goes blank and monitor button goes on standbye or sometimes the PC will just reboot.
Ive run all the tests with PC helpline for the graphics card and they say its fine.
Ive got speedfan software and the Temp doesnt go about 50.
All im left with to test is the Ram and its a struggle to get it working for me :wall:

Thanks again
 
Ergolite said:
My PC is an Advent 9107 2.8 Ghz 1GB Ram Radeon X550 Graphics card and was bought from PC world 4-5months ago.
The games i play are Dawn of War, WoW and Unreal tornament 2004 all should run easily in my opinion on a 4month old PC as they work on my sisters pc which is a year old and cost the same price and is of similar spec.
The PC crashes every 10mins or an hour, whenever it feels basically and the screen just goes blank and monitor button goes on standbye or sometimes the PC will just reboot.
Ive run all the tests with PC helpline for the graphics card and they say its fine.
Ive got speedfan software and the Temp doesnt go about 50.
All im left with to test is the Ram and its a struggle to get it working for me :wall:

Thanks again
Click to expand...

So, er, you gonna try memtest then?

And when I said heat problem I meant with the graphics card.

Simple test: Take the side off the PC, run a household fan into the PC, run your game. If it crashes, it's likely not a heat problem.
 
Ill have a go at that then tonight fingers crossed its just a heat problem
and ill try figure out how to use the memtest im slightly crap at this type of stuff as you can see :o
Thanks
 
TriplexDread said:
In all fairness V_R a lot of PC's dont crash untill the game that is being run becomes fully active. The likes of WoW generates a lot more heat from the likes of GFX card because of the rendering needed where as a simple desktop wouldnt if you knw what I mean?
Click to expand...
I think you misunderstood me.

That's exactly why i asked if it crashes when he's not playing games. We are reading from the same page mate. :)

Sorry if i didn't make myself clear. :o

I know what ya mean about temps when gaming though, I play RCT3 and temps barely raise. But if i play HL2 or GRAW temps go up a few degrees. :)
 
Ergolite said:
Ill have a go at that then tonight fingers crossed its just a heat problem
and ill try figure out how to use the memtest im slightly crap at this type of stuff as you can see :o
Thanks
Click to expand...

Don't worry if you're not sure what to do, that's what we're here for. Just ask :)

If you have Nero, or a CD burning program, download the ISO image from memtest and burn a CD with it.

Enter your PC's Bios and make priority boot from CD.

Save Bios settings, put Memtest CD in drive and reboot. Memtest will run automatically, errors appear on the right, as I remember.

If you don't have a burning program, use a floppy disk.
 
So i downloaded Download "Pre-Compiled Bootable ISO (.zip)" to my desktop which is called " memtest86+-1.65.iso" and i unzipped to desktop again all i got is a winrar file thats called "memtest86+-1.65" which does nothing am i doing something wrong?
 
floppybootstomp said:
Enter your PC's Bios and make priority boot from CD.

Save Bios settings, put Memtest CD in drive and reboot. Memtest will run automatically, errors appear on the right, as I remember.

If you don't have a burning program, use a floppy disk.
Click to expand...

How do i enter the PCs bios and make a priority boot cd? and how do i save bios setting?

P.S im not sure what you mean by ISO image but i have "WINDIAG" burned on a CD is that it?
 
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You'll need a burning program such as Nero to make a CD from an ISO file.

If you haven't got Nero or a burning program, go for the floppy disk option with Memtest.

You enter the BIOS of your machine by pressing either del or F2 (or sometimes another key, see your motherboard manual) as the machine starts.

Within the BIOS you can choose which drive your machine starts, or 'boots' from. Depending on which media you load Memtest to, set this to floppy drive or CD/DVD drive.

Then when you reboot Memtest will start from whichever drive you've chosen.

Clear as mud eh? :)
 
In Nero I burned the ISO file (from my desktop) to the CD. When I explored the CD it is now named WINDIAG (which in properties says its a .RAR file)

I put the CD in and tried to boot up but I'm getting nothing.

I think my PC boots up from a CD Rom - when Windows starts up everytime, because at the bottom left of the black screen I get 'Boot from CD:'

BUT does this mean it's automatically booting from a CD Drive? Or does it mean I have to type 'yes' or something?
 
I'm getting a bit lost now.

You didn't, perhaps, burn the unzipped file did you?

It's some time since I've used Memtest so I'm not immediately familiar with it.

You need to burn the unzipped ISO to a CD, change boot priority to CD/DVD and Memtest will run on boot.

Sorry, but other than that there's little I can suggest.

If any of you other guys wanna chime in here, all help apreciated for this fella, ok? ;)
 
A few possibilities here ...

Nero did not burn the ISO file ... I personally have never gotten Nero to burn an ISO, it just copies it, I ain't alone. :rolleyes:

I use this program ... http://isorecorder.alexfeinman.com/isorecorder.htm

Nero did burn it and ... you do have to press 'any key" to make your PC boot from the CD drive. The space-bar is a good substitute for "any" key. ;)

... try rebooting first & pressing the space-bar before we go any further.

:thumb:
 
If you have a floppy drive then download This

Right click the file and extract it to somewhere you can find it.

Insert a blank floppy into your a: disk drive and run the install.bat file.

As the install prompts you, to use memtest directly, leave the disk in the drive and reboot your machine.

Your machine should now boot from the disk, display the word Loading folowed by a series of periods and then show a screen much like the screenshots on the memtest86+ web page.

The test is automatically started.

See if that works. :)
 
Well thank you Mr Vanilla ;)

That's exactly what I was trying to get him to do.

You appear to have made it a bit simpler - kudos :thumb:

I've never had a problem with Nero burning an ISO file, has always worked well.

Now then, does anybody around here know where the nearest brick wall is?

You do? :)

Thank you. Now, I'm going to bash my head against it for at least 20 minutes.
 
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