Memory error while playing games

[AlNom]

Now this is really bugging me. Two of my friends have the following systems:

System 1:

AMD Athlon 64 3800+
1GB DDR400 (can't remember what brand)
Geforce 7800GT OC (eVGA)
some HDD, some optical drive
X-Fi sound blaster
DFI nForce4 Infinity (this one I sold to him because I wasn't using it, and it definitely worked fine for me when I did use it)

System 2:

AMD Athlon 64 4400+ X2
2GB DDR400 (OCZ Value)
Geforce 7600GT OC (eVGA)
300GB seagate, some optical drive
Asus A8NE


Clean installs of WinXP, latest updates and drivers as of last weekend. Both computers give some sort of "Cannot read memory location" error when running games, and it's pretty random while the game is running. For the life of me, I cannot figure out what's wrong. I'm a bit afraid to uninstall nforce drivers because I did that to myself last week and ended up with "windows cannot find blah blah blah, reinstall driver, but we won't let you get into windows to do that".

Google didn't really turn up anything with regards to the errors as far as I could see.

Any ideas? I was thinking bad memory, but... to two people I know? Each purchased their components 6 months apart. Now, I've only had bad RAM once out of maybe 20 sticks of RAM over the past 7 years.

 

[_xxx_]

Well you can always swap the RAM for some testing, so at least that should be easy to check. Otherwise, no idea.

 

[SugarCoat]

Make a bootable CD, run memtest86 at least one test run per stick. Do not run both sticks at the same time, totally useless.
Flash bios of boards to newest release if possible
Make sure video card bios are up to date. In the case of the 7800GTs many were released with GDDR memory speeds clocked too high causing BSOD and system locking. Should be no more then 470 / 1100MHz stock.

 

[AlNom]

Thanks for the suggestions. I would have tried the memory swap sooner, but I just haven't had much time in the last few months. Same for the mobo BIOS updates. argh... It really sucks because they live on different ends of the city and they don't know anything about computers (well, relatively speaking). It's just a huge pain in the ass.

Where can I get the video card bios updates? Do they require a floppy drive?

 

[SugarCoat]

Its half a MB, they have to register with S/N and P/N on the site @ eVGA before they can DL any BIOS updates, then go to http://www.evga.com/support/drivers/ and type in card info for DL. Or if you like i can send the file to your email. Basically what it does to older cards is removes the Delta clock and makes the card frequency 470 Core 1100 memory. Just a friendly reminder, its for the 7800GT only.




FLOPPY METHOD (Floppy Disk and Disk Drive Required)
Download the executable file above
Insert floppy disk into drive and run executable
When finished, keep this new disk in the floppy drive and reboot your computer. You may need to adjust your motherboard BIOS to allow your computer to boot from the floppy drive before the hard drive
When the floppy boots up, it will automatically start the BIOS update routine. After the update is complete, remove the floppy disk from your computer and reboot

NON-FLOPPY METHOD
Download the following compressed zip: 516_136B.zip
Extract the files and when you get to a DOS prompt (you must be able to boot into a DOS prompt, a command prompt within Windows will not work), type RUNME and the flash utility will execute



I never got the non-floppy method to work since XP really doesnt have a true DOS prompt. Plugging in an old floppy (most people have one lying around) takes all of 5minutes and the flash is quick though.


I'd have them check the memory for errors first.

 

[Althornin]

The symptoms you describe have always occurred because of bad memory in my experience. memtest86+ FTW.

 

[AlNom]

Thanks for the in-depth procedure.

Thanks, Althornin. That gives me a little more confidence. They bought the RAM recently (one six months ago, the other just a couple weeks back), so if worse comes to worse, they'll have to just get a replacement under warranty.


And then they can stop bugging me!

 

[_xxx_]

You don't need to update the gfx-card BIOS. There are very rarely some cases where it needs to be done due to some programming failure, but I know of none in the last few years.