On Saturday 22 November 2003 01:52 pm, Marc wrote:
> We ran memtest and the memory appears to be OK.
> This is all starting to seem like a hardware problem but I cant
> quite put my finger on what it might be.
> Anyone here have any ideas?
Newer kernels seem to be getting much less tolerant of
marginal hardware and/or configuration (and overclocking).
ftp://mersenne.org/gimps/mprime235.tar.gz
D/l that and unpack it. cd to the directory it's in and run
'./mprime -m' then choose number 17 from the menu (torture
test). You should be able to run it for several hours without it
stopping on 'hardware errors'. The longer you can run it the
better. You should never see a hardware error tho. Much better
PSU/ motherboard/ cpu/ cache/ ram/ test than memtest86. Both
apps test all those simultaneously (there is no such thing as
software 'just a ram' tester), and the problems you describe
could be attributed to any one or a combination of those
components.
I recently had to replace a two month old Aopen KT400a chipset
motherboard that began causing similar problems. While I was at
it I replaced Kingston ram (dubious reliability) with a stick of
Crucial/Micron. No more problems ;) The Kingston would pass
memtest86 with flying colors, but error with mprime, even in my
new KT600 Asus board, even at minimal timings and overvolted to
2.65v. Which by the way is the first thing to try... up the
voltage to the cpu slightly (1.7v for an XP) and for the ram (2.6
to 2.7v). See if that helps. Also try taking the case cover off
and pointing a table fan into the box to eliminate overheating
problems. Try with and without, while testing with mprime.
In fairness to Aopen, it was running an XP 3000+ severely
overclocked (2.4+ Ghz, XP 3500?). I'm not pushing the Asus quite
as hard ;) The 3000 is now at 2.2 Ghz, XP 3200+, 1.65v, the
Crucial at 2.5-3-3 at 2.65v
--
Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas
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Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
