[foxoff]

Hello,

I have been having real problems with my PC.

When powering on, sometimes (and the frequency is increasing) nothing happens at all. I can hear the fan going but the PC itself doesn't begin start-up. Other times I can hear the DVD ROM kick in and the screen starts but then when windows tries to start everything dies and I get a blank screen (fan continues to run). Other times Windows starts but before the log-in screen everything dies again.

Please help if you can. This is driving me a little crazy

Fox

[Advertisements]

Hi. When did this start? Have you made any changes to the system recently?

[Facedown98]

Hi. When did this start? Have you made any changes to the system recently?

[happyrock]

does it ever get to your desktop...have you tried starting in safe mode...

Edited by happyrck, 28 October 2006 - 08:40 AM.

[foxoff]

Hi Stormknight6 & happyrck, thanks for responding.

This started a few weeks ago. I recently upgraded my RAM from 0.5m to 1.5mb with 3 matching sticks of PC2700 DDR SDRAM.

I can get to my desktop but it can take a few tries. I have tried bootiong in safe mode but still it crashes on me that way as well.

Would appreciate any help you can throw my way.

Best,
Fox

[foxoff]

Oh, one last thing. I also added a new DVD ROM (LITE-ON DVDRW SHM-165H6S) a few months ago.

Fox

[vally]

Try playing with the RAM stics.
(try starting the cmp with one in turns and c what happens.)

it seems 2 me that one of them is giving u trouble.

[happyrock]

go here and get memtest86 and check your memory...let it run for at least 3 hours...if you get any errors in that time remove 2 of the three sticks and test 1 at a time...

http://www.memtest.org/

[vally]

hi HAPPRCK
wont it b faster for a one stick at a time test before waiting 2hr 2 see if there is a problem?

[happyrock]

it may not be the memory at all and testing them all at once would show us if it is a memory problem...but if its not a memory problem we will have eliminated the ram as suspects in this "who done it"

[foxoff]

Thanks guys, but my PC can't run the ISO or BIN files downloaded from this site. All I get is a text file with code. Any suggestions on how I can run these?

Thanks,
Fox

[happyrock]

get burncdcc...the .iso files are image files and need to be burned to cd or dvd....after you burn it to a cd you put it in the cd drive and reboot...it will run without any operating system....you may have to go into bios and reset the boot order...

http://www.snapfiles...t/burncdcc.html

[foxoff]

Hi,

Sorry it has taken me so long to get back, but I was away for a while and sitting some exams after that. Have only been able find time to test the memory in the last couple of days. There was a problem with one of my RAM sticks that memtest picked up. I have taken it out and am runnin g with 2 x 512 MB sticks instead of three with one corrupted one. have still had trouble powering Windows, which persisted crashing on start-up for a while after. However, I just got it running after Windows started a "chkdisk" (first time it had done this) test and all of a sudden I am in.

Don't know if this is the end of the problem, but I hope so.

Thanks happyrck and vally for all your help.

Fox

[foxoff]

Hi,

Too good to be true it seems. I was a bit premature with my last post. PC is still having problems getting started and often cuts out prior to launching Windows - the screen just blanks.

I know that the RAM card was a big problem, but now that is resolved I don;t know if there is anything else I can do to fix it?

Fox

[pyron81]

Well if you can keep it on long enough and you've run a RAM test. I'd test the hard drive next, and finally make sure that the power supply is in fact running.

If the screen is not coming on though that lets me know that it is either going to be one of the above two or it might be your graphic card. Sad to say but without checking these things and telling us if your are sure they are running it could be any number of things.

Check to see if the power supplies fan starts up first. If your power supply is going out it would cause crashes and blue screens.

[Samm]

Just a quick thought here....
foxoff, you said you ran memtest & it detected a problem. Did you run memtest over the sticks individually? (i.e test each one in turn by removing the other two). If not, then I suggest you do this as it sounds like you may have removed the wrong stick.

Failing that, the problem could be that more than one stick is bad, a ram socket is bad, or the sticks are mismatched. Just because all 3 sticks are PC2700 doesn't necessarily mean that they are matched that well