It wasn't jumping around the whole screen, just moving around a little with the flashing which I think was the screen/graphics card/something buggering up instead of software. I've never seen anything like it.

 

I jsut tried running MSSE and had a /different/ BSOD, something to do with memory_management. Last night I had a irql_not_less_or_equal.

 

Something's not right.

I don't really want to reinstall if I can help it. Maybe I could run a live CD of Ubuntu or something to see how that works out.

 

I'm pretty sure I installed all the drivers off the CD and graphics ones from AMD's site. WU may have updated some though, I can't remember.

:D

Does sound like dodgy memory.

Ant: :'D

Here's my flashing screen from last night. Looks liek a recording of a CRT but what you can see in the vid is exactly what was happening. I was walking past the room and the whole bedroom was flashing blue.

That's significantly fucked. Graphics card maybe then? Could be the RAM on that giving all these memory errors rather than the system RAM.

Very strange that was, and the only time it's done anything like that. Had no problem in games when it's been using the grpahics card, only when it's been sitting on the desktop but could be the graphiocsa card.

 

Can the i5 be used with a single stick of RAM? I could try that first, swapping between the two and then replace the graphics card with my old ATI one which I assume woyuld just work with the current AMD drivers installed.

Yeah should work fine with one stick (as far as I know).

The IRQ_NOT_LESS_EQUAL error is normally graphics card drivers related, start by installing the most up to date drivers, and if you still get the same problem then try the driver disk that came with the card and wait until the current latest drivers are updated before trying them again!

Also, check the timings on the RAM are set correctly, I have 1333MHz Corsair XMS3 in my big i7 box and that defaults to the wrong timings so I have to set them manually to get a nice stable configuration, I think from memory they were 9-9-9-24-2T

I haven't had much of a chance to look at things yet, been away to Tenby last weekend and up to London the rest of the week til yesterday. I had hoped I'd come home to a lovely stable computer but had a BSOD while booting, dxgkrnl.sys, couldn#t get it to boot for more than a minute or so with various BSODs, usbstor.sys, and others I can#t remember.

 

I haven't changed anything and it's gone from crashing while booting/every minute to being stable since this afternoon so I have no idea what's going on. The next time it crashes I'll have a fiddle with the RAM/graphics to see if I can find the problem.

RAM failures can be very difficult to spot, sometimes only repeated Memetest passes might spot'em. Have you done a long Memtest yet?

Depends what you call a long test. I did leave it for about 12 hours the first time. Not done one since though.

Hm ok, not likely then... Try a few of these stress tests, something must give eventually:
http://www.tested.com/news/how-to-stress-test-your-hardware-and-keep-your-pc-stable/762/

 

edit: from what you're saying, I would (for now) blame the power supply or the graphics card. But heck, it could be anything...

Could be the power supply, especially as I made my own cables to get the graphics and P8 connector going from spare molex connectors. Dunno. It's been fine since yesterday afternoon now so sometimes it's rock solid then sometimes it won't boot at all.

 

Actually one thing I did change was moving the main ATX power cable away from the RAM wotsits but I don't know if I did that before or after it started running well yesterday. Could have been causing some interference touching the chips?

Could be lots of things, down to dead/dying transistors or even physical damage (hairline cracks, static damage) in the pcb traces.

The computer's been running souper dooper since Sunday afternoon now, not a single crash since, although it has been sleeping some of that time. I think the crashes have buggered up a couple of things slightly though.

 

I'm trying the Turbo memory setting now to see if it really is running properly as that crashed it when I first installed everything.

If you're worried it's buggered up your OS files slightly try typing the following from the command line (I think you need to be admin)

sfc /scannow

Which will check the integrity of any of your system files and if they're found to be corrupted replace them with shiny new ones!

I tried that and it got to 40% then said "Windows Resource Protection could not perform the requested operation."

 

The only problem I seem to be having now is with Windows Live Mail. I might just try reinstalling that to see if it fixes it. The turbo memory setting seems to be working fine now too, the computer's been on since yesterday torrenting with no problems :D Hopefully everything's working properly <crosses fingers>

Problems once again. All was fine til I started to convert my CR2s to JPGs to use with the screensaver on my HTPC. I set Irfanview to some batch conversion and things started going wonky again.

 

Took a while the first time but soon after starting the conversion on subsequent attempts the computer BSODed pretty quickly. I had a PFN_LIST_CORRUPT and something_MEMORY_CORRUPT. I've now taken one of the DIMMs out to see if things are stable with just the one. If it is I'll swap over the other one and hope it crashes so I can have be reasonably certain it's the RAM.

I did eventually get around to taking one of my DIMMs out and the computer was running perfectly with just the 2GB, even if it seemed ridiculously slow after using it with 4GB. It had been running for days with no crashing so I swapped the two over last night.

 

Everything was fine, watched some stuff from it on the HTPC, played Trackmania for a bit, got worried that nothing was crashing. Just tried to open Computer Management and it BSODed straight away so I'm sure it's a faulty DIMM.