Arrgh! So yesterday, after running memtest, I finally found what the source of all my computer woes has been since I upgraded my CPU, motherboard, and memory.
Bad memory.
About 2mb of it, to be exact. In places that windows apparently likes to use for the critical system files. This explains why, when I had to reinstall Windows, it took 43 (not exaggerating, I counted) attempts at running setup. It also explains how SP2 managed to corrupt my Windows two times before it installed without a hitch. I now know why I’m getting all of those great BSoD errors with cryptic messages such as PAGE FAULT IN NONPAGED AREA and BAD MEMORY POOL.
Of course, now I have to ship the damn memory stick off to Taiwan to see if they’ll honor my warranty. I’d say the chances of that are slim to none. Anyone else have experience in dealing with fucked memory?
I blame Intel. PCs used to come with parity-checked memory, which detected many memory problems and limited the damage caused by memory errors. Some bright person at Intel decided that RAM chips were so reliable that parity-checked memory was a waste of money, and they stopped supporting it in their consumer chipsets and motherboards. This is the “La La La, I can’t hear you” school of engineering. The value of the time that I’ve wasted dealing with PCs with flakey memory far exceeds the small cost savings generated by the use of non-parity memory. If it was up to me, ECC (error detecting and correcting) memory would be standard on all PCs.
I’ve only seen bad RAM twice - both when XP had problems either running or installing. The first was some home-built rig like yours (so some testing might be expected). The other was when one of our clients opened up our leased laptop (hey!) took out our RAM dimm (HEY!) and managed to insert a bigger one so wildly wrong that when we figured it out and took it out, it had a noticable twist to it ( :smack: ).
Huh, I know a few people who must have graduated magna cum laude from LLLICHYSOE.
To be fair, it’s not any school of engineering. If anything, it’s a school of marketing or business administration.
Heh. At one time, only Linux users noticed crap RAM because Windows was crashing all the time anyway, mostly for reasons unrelated to hardware issues. That is, even if it was crashing because of bad RAM you couldn’t tell those failures from the failures caused by shitty drivers or applications going off the reservation or it being the first Tuesday after the second full moon in a year ending in ‘5’.
Maybe this will get memory makers to take a more serious interest in quality. Making Microsoft look worse than usual isn’t a good business practice for a hardware maker.