Computer going Mad
 

Can anyone help. I had to have new memory put in my fairly new machine last week because one of the chips had failed.

The last couple of days I haven't been able to up-load my photos from my card reader it keeps hanging and when I do manage to get one on it is corrupted. I have tried plugging in the camera direct to try that, same thing.

I have used another computer to test the cards in its built in reader and the card seems fine and up-loaded no problem. Could it be another pair of bad memory chips in this computer. or faulty usb connections.

Hi Christine, you say you have new RAM chips installed - a common fault with doing this is that they are not seated properly - that may well cause your problem. The first thing I would do is to take all the RAM modules out and then re-seat each one. Make sure that the lugs on each end of the chips are locked home. Oh - yes - please disconnect from mains before doing this and leave machine for about twenty minutes - this lets it cool and before you touch the chips make sure you have earthed the main chassis by touching it. You are also advised to wear an "earth strap" while doing it - basically stick bare toe on radiator if possible or stick a piece of wire from your wrist to a suitable earth point in the house - this is so any electrostatic charge in you doesn't blow the chip. If that does not work let me know for further cures.

Andy, after they fitted the chips I had to go back as one was not seated properly.
I would normaly have done things like that myself as upto last year I built all my own machines, I can't see all that well anymore thats why in November I thought I would buy a ready built machine. I have had nothing but problems with it. Personally I don't think the power supply is large enough 340 watts for a Duo 2 core and I keep getting USB faults.

I think I may have sussed it, checking my event viewer I had lots of page faults, so I have removed the page file and defragmented. I tried to up-load the CF card without a pagefile and the files up-loaded okay. I am now going to put the pagefile back, I won't do what I normally do which is put a set amount of 4096 I will let windows adjust as necessary and see what happens.

Best of luck Christine - hope it works - if not post again and I'll see what else I can come up with - what's the make by the way or is it a "local" supplier?

Thanks Andy, it seems to be loading okay again since I deleted the pagefile and reset it but it has left some bad sectors on the disk which can't be overwritten:(.
I bought the computer from overclockers in Stoke, much easier than buying online, I can take it in if there is any problems I can't solve.

I will see how it goes and keep a check on the pagefile, the first signs of it not reading the card I will reset it.

The problem has reared itself again, the pagefile has corrupted and it won't delete. I can't shut down the machine unless I hard button it.

Christine, I hate to say it but if you are starting off with a machine that has bad sectors on the hard drive, then in my experience you are courting problems - I would hurry it back to Overclockers.

Thanks Andy I have managed to delete the pagefile of my boot drive and put it on my second drive and it's still corrupting. If I remove the pagefile I can do a restart or complete shutdown and everything works fine. As soon as I add a pagefile it won't shut down unless I do it at the button. Its this manual shutdown thats causing the corruption because it doesn't have chance to save all the setting, I have thought of doing a complete dump to file instead of a small dump to file to see if its that not being big enough.

Ditch the disk - it is not worth chancing it and they are cheap enough these days.

Derek I don't think it is the disk, if it is then four of my disks are bad, I have tried running a pagefile on all of them and as soon as I set the pagefile the computer won't shut down and when I look after switching back on I have to run chdsk to correct all the errors.

Hi Christine, if this is happening on all four discs, then something is corrupting your pagefile on each - I think I would be looking at software corruption. I think I might rescue all the files I needed and then do a complete system reinstall with initialization of all disks. Sorry but I might also be handing it over to the shop if possible for them to sort. Especially for important data recovery.

Andy I have just done a repair to Xp rather then reload and still the same problem. I am just about to disable all hard disks one by one and see if one of those is the culprit. I know it only take one to have problems and it can muck up the rest.

Hi Christine, been dredging my brain box - start again- If you have problems with pagefile that is a Virtual Memory - RAM function- you therefore have a faulty RAM chip, one installed wrong OR an incompatible chip? Hard drive bad sectors: are you able to check drive SMART status? If not, then for XP or Vista you need to ensure drives are ALL formatted for NTFS. As a physical check - try checking component dates - remember that most drives have a five year guarantee ( they should be dated) - to see if shop gave you all new parts or tried to palm you off. Power supply is unlikely to be source of the pagefile errors, but a blown/incompatible RAM chip is very likely to be your problem.

I have gone through all my hard disks and found one that it wouldn't defrag or format. When I opened the case to disable it I found the main sata lead had worked out slightly, probably from when I took it in to get the new memory. To check it out I disabled the drive booted up and tried a normal shutdown, everything worked as it should. I knew then that it was that drive that is causing the problems.

I then plugged the drive back in and made sure the lead was fully home and had another go at reformatting it, it formatted no problem and with no errors and my machine now still shuts down and restarts.

I won't use the drive for anything important for the moment just see if I start to get bad shutdowns again and corrupted pagefiles if I don't then its possible that it was just the ribbon cable not fully in position.


Why are computers so frustrating.:(

Well done Christine - loose leads throw us all the time - hope the problems are over.

Why are PC's so frustrating ?

Lets not tar all computers with the same brush :D ;)

Trust you Stephen! - I have been very good and not mentioned Apple Mac all the way through and you have to go and spoil it!!!!!

LOL! I wish I could have afforded apple Mac they a great graphics machines.

:D LOL :D

No mention of Apple in my post, Andy. ;)

Now, back to Christine's PC problem.