"algae" said:
Recently one of my pcs has been giving me fits with various stop errors, the
latest of which is
pfn_list_corrupt. I have tried new ram, new hd, etc. but to no avail. I've
run Memtest and it has come up with no errors. I"ve tried to reinstall Win
XP Pro more times than I can count!
Is it possible that one of the RAM slots has gone bad but Memtest doesn't
pick it up?
The only other thing I can think of replacing is the motherboard and/or CPU.
Any suggestions?
Thanks
Gary
Is this your "MSI K7T266 Pro 2 motherboard" ? Based on your posting
history, you've been adding memory to this thing without success,
for a while.
Your board is similar to an Asus A7V266-E. There are three DIMM
slots, that can take PC2100 DIMMs. Faster DIMMs can be inserted,
but won't run any faster than whatever the clock generator on
the motherboard supports.
Now, life would be wonderful, if every motherboard could take
all the RAM that the manual says it can. But that is not always
the case.
To prove this is a memory issue, start with one stick of RAM
only. Place it in the slot furthest from the processor. Run
your tests, whatever triggers the most pfn_list_corrupt errors.
(I like to test with Prime95, from mersenne.org, and its
"torture test" option, as it thrashes the hell out of the
memory. It should not report any round off errors, crash or
burn. If you can do four hours without error, of Prime95,
your processor and memory are pretty solid.)
Once one stick is proven, add a second stick. The most stable
configuration with two sticks, is one in slot 1 and one in
slot 3. Leave slot 2 blank. Repeat your testing program.
I would be pretty happy with two sticks of RAM. If you insist
on using three, you might have to drop the clock speed a bit,
to make it stable. That is about the only sure-fire way to
fix it, and of course the slowdown in the system would suck.
That is why, if two DIMMs are stable, stick with that.
Since I don't have the manual for your motherboard, I don't
know if the board has a Vdimm adjustment or not. The normal
voltage for DDR is 2.5 volts. Setting the voltage to 2.7
volts might help the memory a bit, but no guarantees. Not
all motherboards have adjustable memory voltage settings.
Some boards might even use jumpers for this function.
Actually, I did find one interesting option on this board.
On this page, I notice your motherboard has a "SDRAM 1T
Command" option. Try disabling that, and see if your
stability magically improves. That increases the address
setup time to your DIMMs, and if you use three DIMMs,
disabling that setting is an alternative to turning
down the clock speed.
http://www.planet3dnow.de/artikel/hardware/k7t266_pro2_ru/3.shtml
If you are still having problems, then go back to basics.
Get a copy of memtest86+, from memtest.org. It makes a nice
test floppy for you. The floppy is self-booting and needs
no OS (you cannot even list the contents of the floppy in
Windows, once memtest prepares the floppy for you). Using
memtest, test the DIMMs one at a time, using the slot
furthest from the processor as the testing slot. See if each
DIMM can do at least several full passes of Memtest86. I've
had a couple of DIMMs that failed just past their one
year warranties, and it is possible your RAM has gone bad
on you.
HTH,
Paul
My RAM is new and