Mysterious RAM Issue

[JohnM]

Hello,

I have a problem with my PC giving memory-type error messages on bootup occasionally.

However most of the time it does not give a problem and when it gets past the boot stage it is usually totally fine.

Except that rarely it crashes for no reason, going into some kind of a sleep mode where even the reset button won't work.

It is an AMD Athlon 900 MHz (WinXP) with 512MB ram in three PC133 cards: 128MB, 128MB, and 256MB (SDRAM, DIMM).

The motherboard is a MSI MS-6330 Lite.

I tried taking various cards out but it doesn't seem to help much what I do with them, or at least very hard to figure out which one is faulty (I'm still working on it). Since I started re-arranging them, though, the boot-up memory error changed from a fastfat.sys file-missing error to a continuous bios beep right at power-up, which for my Award bios is supposedly a memory problem.

But switch it off/on and then it's fine.

I've run some memory tests and found nothing.

I've tried reloading bios defaults, etc. and got nowhere.

Anyone have any thoughts on this?

Thanks for any help.

[spyder003]

Just did a little research. It sounds like a missing fastfat.sys ties to a bad DIMM. What did you test the RAM with?

Download Memtest86 and check the RAM with that. Remove all your RAM and test it one stick at a time.

When you get the continous beep does it boot or just hang?

What brand is the RAM? Mixed brands? It could just be that one of the sticks is incompatible with your motherboard. Try it one stick at a time until you find the culprit.

[JohnM]

I used that program, thanks, and it didn't find anything. I mean I didn't let it complete everything but I let it go for 20minutes anyway and it completed lots of tests all passed.

I also used another windows program.

Yes the RAM is mixed brands.

I am going to have to try 1 stick at a time again. It's weird. It seems that I can have the error no matter which memory stick I have in, even if it's just one.

And that's bad...

I am wondering if maybe the motherboard is cracked somewhere; if maybe I used too much force changing cards recently or something like that.

I will try to work on it more when I have itme.

BTW how livable would you say this problem is? I don't care too much about occasional bootup problems but I don't want my data corrupted by weird memory. But it seems to work fine once it boots up.

I notice also that the first boot after a long night of being off is usually bad.

I will work on it some more; thanks; but suggestions are helpful meantime.

[spyder003]

You need to let the tests run all the way through at least once.

Did this problem just start out of nowhere?

Have you added any of this RAM recently?

Made any other hardware changes?

Edit - Also, are you running the latest chipset drivers? (VIA 4 in 1) Well, latest for that board being 25 Oct 01...

[JohnM]

You're right; maybe I've been rushing through the diagnostics too quickly. I guess I thought that the problem would be obvious and I was looking for a quick fix, ie. which memory card to pull.

I am using the latest drivers; I updated them recently.

I upgraded my video card recently, but I was having some problems before that that might be related.

Thanks for your time and advice; I'll work on it some more as you've suggested and I'll get back to the thread if things aren't becoming more clear for me.

[glc]

That particular MSI board is from the time when there were a lot of bad capacitors. You need to take a flashlight and magnifying glass and examine the board for any bulging and/or leaking capacitors. It can also be a bit fussy about mixing different brands/speeds/sizes/densities of ram, and it definitely doesn't like cheap generic ram.