Hello All,
My friend has been having an ongoing battle every couple of
months with his computer. If he initiates a restart from within
Windows 2k, when the system restarts, the machine locks up and the
Bios doesn't even show up. He has to disconnect the motherboard
battery and unplug the system in order to restore the computer to a
working condition.
So he has brought over his machine for me to take a look at it
and install Windows XP. The motherboard is a Tyan KT-A with an Athlon
1.4. I first upgraded the Bios and when I tried to go into making a
few settings to the Bios after the upgrade, the same problem occurred,
a dead computer. The only problem is that this was occurring on every
restart! So I started pulling out drives and all of the pci cards and
eventually found 1 out of the 3 memory sticks, a SyncMax S256M-16044
was the culprit. Once I pulled that stick out I had successful
reboots! So far so good.....now getting to the Windows XP install.
I start installing and no more than 2 minutes after the reboot
I started getting blue screens about IRQ out of range and other
faults. So I yet again pulled all of the peripheral PCI cards out and
was able to get the install in. Now the minute after I started to
install an app, the system started to blue screen again. I ran memtest
with 1 pass and everything check out ok. So as I was ready to give up,
I found an old stick of PNY 133 and pulled out the other 2 SyncMax
sticks and since I have put it in, no blue screens!
So now getting to the memory sticks, is the SyncMax memory
reliable? Anyone have comments on this memory? Should I even bother to
get it swapped out or should I say the heck with it and order Crucial
or PNY?
When I had built this computer back about 3 years ago, I
didn't know any better about memory and my friend was on a budget so I
tried to conserve money (and the Best Buy / Staples computer boom
wasn't there). But now I've known better not to buy crap memory.
Thanks for taking time to read this novel and any comments would be
greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Nick
