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.