SUNK and it wasn't my Sub nor a Ship.

[Elder-Pirate]

Originally Posted by zylark

I had a blue-screen the other day whilst playing SH4. Having not seen a BSOD for years, I got very anxious. Some troubleshooting later, it turned out one of my disks was failing, thus promting windows to stop all activity without any special warning.

Your problem though sounds more like some kind of memory fault. You've pretty much ruled out PSU, CPU or GPU fault by stress testing them with another application (umm, game). That leaves RAM. The kernel resides in the first 640kb of physical memory, so if you got more than one stick of RAM, try changing them around a bit, then do a thourough RAM test (google is your friend).

Also, the first stick of RAM is often neatly placed right beside the CPU fan/heatsink exhaust, thus ensuring it will get at least hot, if not exceedingly so. It might have reached a certain tolerance level, and sparked some freak error. By changing around the sticks, you'll put a less historically stressed stick in this voulnerable position, and thus gain some more stability. If failing RAM was the problem in the first place that is.

I've Three one Gig sticks of ram and all are 184-Pin DIMM 128MX64 DDR PC3200 Unbuffered. One of the three sticks is from a different company and it is nearest the CPU which in my computer that's at least three inches away as I've an "AlienWare full tower" with a lot of airspace.

Factory pic:

Tomorrow maybe I'll swap the one nearest the CPU which just happens to be one out of the three "one GIG sticks" I ordered and two were bad and sent back,thats when I ordered the other two from a different company( also a higher price ). This one may also be a stinker? I'll find out as its still under warranty.

Thanks for the info.