BLAINE said:
Hi,
Recently a store installed 512MB and 256MB DDRPC3200 RAM on my PC. It speeds
up the system a lot vs the 256MB I had before.
A system crash the other day generated the following error log:
"System Error Error code 000000d1, parameter1 0000e0e2, parameter2 00000002,
parameter3 00000001, parameter4 f6c2c24a."
Re booted the sytem and it then generated a "your system has recovered from
a serious system error" message.
Could this be due to the RAM being too fast for the PC 1.70ghz processor, or
be realted to the BIOS speed?
The RAM has been in place for about a month a this is the first "blue
screen" crash.
Is this something to be too concerned about? The PC recgonizes the new RAM ok.
Regards
Blaine
RAM is backward compatible. For example, a DDR400 memory can run at DDR333,
DDR266, or DDR200 without a problem.
When new memory is installed, it should be tested. There are a couple levels of
testing. Memory testers are available in the form of a boot floppy or a boot
CD. The main advantage of these boot level tests, is there is no OS present.
The memtest86+ tester (the first one), actually moves the executable code
out of the way, and tests underneath. So at least the first tester, tests
all of the memory in the computer. I don't know anything about the second
tester.
http://www.memtest.org/
http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp
When the computer is running Windows, you can use Prime95 as an integrity test
program. Prime95 carries out a mathematics calculation with a known answer. The
answer is checked for correctness. A good portion of memory is tested in
doing so. Prime95 checks the memory and the processor, and runs the processor
at 100% usage. This is the latest version, suitable for even multicore processors.
http://mersenne.org/gimps/p95v255a.zip
If the mersenne.org web site is not responding (which seems to happen a lot now),
you can also get the previous version here.
http://www.majorgeeks.com/Prime95_d4363.html
When you run the program, it will prompt you as to whether you want to
"Join GIMPS ?" or not. Say no, as you just want to do some torture testing
of the CPU and memory. Next, a custom dialog will appear, and you can
adjust the amount of memory to be tested. On my 1GB machine, the max memory
shown for test in the custom dialog is 767MB. I adjust that downwards, if
I expect to be doing other things on the machine besides running Prime95.
I might set it to 200MB, and then let the program test the computer.
Both of these test programs can be left running for long periods. In
the case of the bootable memory testers, I find there isn't much point
to running them for long intervals. A couple complete passes of memtest86+
error free, is a good reason to stop.
So maybe those two test methods, will tell you that the system is
completely stable. If not, take the computer and the test program
to your installer, and show them the problem.
Memory does fail while you are using it. I bought two lots of no-name
memory from local computer stores, only to have it fail after the
warranty period (one year). One of the stores was even bankrupt.
I've had much better luck buying memory direct from Crucial, and
all of that memory is still good.
Paul
