Alright so here are the symptoms, I started out thinking it was a ram issue but I think it might be my import engrish motherboard. (I’m not kidding, the motherboard’s startup message is “CoreCell Extreme - you need” or something along those lines.) Anyways, so the system’s symptoms:
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Iffy for boot up. Sometimes it boots up with a ram timing error that I have to press a key to continue past, but if it doesn’t boot up it doesn’t do anything. The screen is black and I hear a whirring like it’s bumping the hds or something.
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A gradual slowing of the machine. This is what made me think it was a ram issue but the bootup makes me think it’s a mobo issue.
I used a Microsoft memory diagnostic program that is burned to cd or put on a floppy, and during the 6th test in the program, instead of reporting an error the system actually locked up. So that can’t be a good sign.
So, thoughts?
Take all the cards out of the MB including the RAM and reseat them. That is the first step. It doesn’t take long and might fix it.
Yeah, I’m going to do that now. The iffy booting has held out for a while and it isn’t booting, usually after five or six attempts it boots up, but it hasn’t yet.
And in case someone asks, I’m using my roommate’s laptop to access the Internet.
The next thing to try if that doesn’t work is to change your BIOS settings for memory timing and things like that. It might be a good idea to hit the “Revert to Defaults” key and see where that goes.
Other things that might cause this is excess heat and an iffy power supply that doesn’t produce enough even power.
I would start with the assumption that it is something you can fix pretty easily before you move to the stage of replacing parts.
One more thing:
If you have any overclocking on the system, either through software or MB jumper settings, you need to get rid of that or at least back it off. Some BIOS let you specify multipliers to speed components like RAM and the CPU up (beyond their design). That can cause errors like you report as well.
Well I re-sat everything and it boots up, but it was pretty warm in there so I think it might be partially heat related. The bios error on bootup is that the “DRAM timing is too tightly” though I thought the settings were still default so I’m going to check the bios now.
Thanks so far dude 
Alright, so the processor was running at 165f and the case was at a system temp of 101f. I reset the bios defaults however the immediately following bootup still gave me the dram error.
That CPU temp seems out of bounds. Most CPU’s run well up to 60 C (140 F). Are all your fans, especially the CPU fan working correctly? That type of excess heat can cause the errors you see.
They seem to be. As a temporary solution I’ve opened the side of the case to help with air flow, though I’m going to run to the office supply store and see about a pci slot fan and a new can of compressed air to clean out some of the dust.
Alright so the system was pretty dusty, I used the new can of compressed air to blow it out. That in itself should help. I also have added a fan in an open pci slot to help with airflow. I’m installing MBM 5 to help me track the cpu temp, we’ll see if this brings it down to a reasonable level.