Possible Memory problems causing computer to stall and crash.

Hey i am having a serous issue with my machine right now. I do not believe this is a infection, as my computer just was recently cleaned for maleware from this site. I did have an issue with my USB ports not working correctly but i found a work around for that as i changed my USB controller to the standard on and that seemed to work.

I will try and explain exactly whats going on and not try to diagnose it my self. The computer mainly stalls, like ill be moving the mouse and it will jump or just stagger along. When i open up certain applications or programs, they will some times not respond. For example when i use my capture card to capture video which uses memory, it will lag way way behind on the video resulting in corrupted files. Right now the machine is so slow right now i can't hardly do anything with it. I have not tried to reboot in safe mode to see if it has the same symptoms, but i will say during one of these applications crashes, i got a message that displayed on screen, i was not able to take a screen capture of it because it froze my whole explorer.exe and i was forced to reset my machine. But the message did state something bout loss of memory or not enough memory to execute the application. I have 16 GB of ram, i checked both in the bios and my system memory and windows is reading it correctly.

It has gotten worse and worse over the days and this is something that has just recently started happening after i cleaned my machine of infections bout a few weeks ago. I ran the normal ram test, the ram64.exe application over night. It didn't find any bad sectors. I also ran the windows 7 memory test diagnostic tool. It found nothing.

Is their is any way we can diagnose and determine if this is a hardware issue and which hardware might be causing the problem. I also checked CPU and temps and they check out pretty fine, the machine is cool, its not over heating or anything like that, But the fact that i did get one message that said not enough memory left to load to run this app, leads me to believe that it might possibly be a bad memory card. But i want to know for sure before i replace anything.

I got my work i have to do on here and its just a bothersome issue right now.

Assuming you have 4 sticks of ram, get a sheet of paper, and write 1 though 4 spaced out on it, using safety first, shut down and remove the power lead from the wall, open the side, and remove 3 sticks of ram, now this is important, the sticks are numbered as 1 being closest to the heatsink, and 4 being furthest away, remove stick 4, and place it on the paper under the 4, repeat with 3 and 2, you get the picture ?

Replace the side, fire it up, see how you go for a while, repeat the previous again, BUT, this time remove stick 1, and place it on the number 1 on the sheet, now put stick 2 into slot 1 and repeat, the same again swapping stick 2 for 3, but always keeping on the original number, should there be one that starts playing up, then you have your suspect, but there can be other reasons for problems, but this is how to check ram, sorry it's so longwinded, hope this helps.

Assuming you have 4 sticks of ram, get a sheet of paper, and write 1 though 4 spaced out on it, using safety first, shut down and remove the power lead from the wall, open the side, and remove 3 sticks of ram, now this is important, the sticks are numbered as 1 being closest to the heatsink, and 4 being furthest away, remove stick 4, and place it on the paper under the 4, repeat with 3 and 2, you get the picture ?

 

Replace the side, fire it up, see how you go for a while, repeat the previous again, BUT, this time remove stick 1, and place it on the number 1 on the sheet, now put stick 2 into slot 1 and repeat, the same again swapping stick 2 for 3, but always keeping on the original number, should there be one that starts playing up, then you have your suspect, but there can be other reasons for problems, but this is how to check ram, sorry it's so longwinded, hope this helps.

Ok i understand the general concept of this. But as far as replacing stick 2 into slot 1. Switching and changing Ram cards and putting them into different slots, won't that cause conflicts because the RAM has to be on the same channel. So if i have duel channel memory, those sticks can not be swapped and crossed on a different channel other wise it can cause all kinds of problems. So i am kind of confused what you meant by that.

But Generally what you want me to do is Take out all ram cards, leave stick 1 in slot 1. Power it up see if their is any issues. Then take it out and put stick 2 in slot 2 and visa versa? Until i find the culprit. As far as changing up the slots, i don't know bout that.

My computer won't even post or boot when i have one ram card in slot 1. I tried it with all 4 ram cards in slot 1 and still no post beeping and no boot up.

EDIT: Think i may of figured out the problem, when plugging in any ram slows to the "BLACK" color slots, not the grey ones. I think those are the single channel slots. They do not work at all. Only the "GREY" slots work by them selfs.

But when i put in my RAM in the dual channel slots and then put in my other sticks to the single channel slots, it still reads the 16 GB of ram. So i have no idea, if a channel or slot was faulty, i don't think it would read the memory in the computer. But anyways thats what i found out, the black slots will not work by them selfs. It won't even boot up. 

EDIT 2: Yeah i noticed a significant change when using the "GREY" slots only. I am going to continue monitoring it like this with 8 GB of ram, if no freezes or stalls or anything like that. Then i know, its something with the "BLACK" slot channels on the board.

What I said above was what I meant, put stick 2, 3 and 4 into slot 1, and repeat so in the end every stick has been in every slot, what this does is highlight if there is a noticeable problem with specific sticks and\or slots on the board, but no matter what stick and no matter what slot it is tested in, it's essential to maintain the original 1, 2, 3 and 4, because as you say it's dual channel must be retained.

What is the make\model of your board ? and note if it has any revisions, incase there is more than 1 release of that board.

The coloured slots are the key to easily identifying it's dual channel, usually anyway lol, and sometimes they can be fussy with what they will allow, hence the request for further info, but it's hard to tell at this stage about the board without knowing more.

So wait does this mean that the "Black" slots in the board, that channel of memory is bad? Because no matter what i do, it does not matter what stick i put in them, the computer will not boot up in those slots, I must use the white slots. Or does this possibly just mean that you have to have both channels being used at the same time for the computer to even boot up for dual memory?

The make and model of the board is an EVGA P55 Sli

I hated EVGA before I saw this, but this just enforces it, the manual is very lacking compared to any other manual I've ever seen, and their numbering is something I have not come across before, I will not repeat it here because it will be too confusing.

So from what I have seen if you have 1 stick it must be in the first light grey slot, the fact it won't play nice when trying the black slots I can only put down to another of their quirks, but what happened when trying 1 stick in the 2nd light grey slot (slot 3 as I had initially set out) without anything else ?

I would hesitate on saying the black slots are bad, it's good you seem to feel there is stability with just the light grey slots, but to be sure you're using the correct sticks, you should be using either sticks 1 and 3, or 2 and 4, in slots 2 and 4 (the light grey slots), this way you maintain the dual channel, the initial testing I suggested dual channel was not a consideration, it is simply a way to see if the individual sticks and slots are working OK, unless we know that all the sticks and all the slots are working fine, we could be chasing ghosts.

Now assuming you currently have sticks 1 and 3 placed in slots 2 and 4 (light grey ones), and are running fine, then swap them out and see what sticks 2 and 4 do in slots 2 and 4, if you get the same sort of feeling from the 2 pairs (when used in each turn) it would suggest the ram is OK, as are slots 2 and 4, so next we need to try and check the power out.

So when you reply with these answers, can you also say if you have access to a multi meter, and would you, or someone you know be comfortable using it to check the voltages with some help ?

Also if you can say what the PSU make\model\power is, it is normally written on the side of it, so you would need to open the case to read that, but don't touch anything, if it isn't visible then just leave it, then we can go from there.

I just called EGVA, yes they mentioned that the Black slots are for dual channel memory only as you said. Meaning i can't run ram in the computer unless i use both white and black slots. So yeah the slots are not bad, its just the way i was inserting the ram. The way to test it is to place each RAM into slot 2 which is the first white slot.

But their is something i did change, in the bios, my frequency and Voltage were different then what is displayed on the manufactured ram. It has a 7-7-7-24. My motherboard was preset to 9-9-9-38. I also changed the voltage to 1.60v which is what the RAM's Voltage is supposed to be at. The motherboard was set to auto, i have no idea what its initial voltage was but just to be safe i used manufactured settings from the RAM in the bios.

I then replaced all 4 sticks, so far so good, i don't notice any freezes or crashes but i just did it, i am going to play around with it a little while and see if i have any more issues. But it looks to me like it wasn't a bad memory card, but just the frequency was off and it was taxing the system with 16 GB of ram.

Just to clarify, Dual channel is as it say's, it's 2 sticks of matched ram, which produces the dual channel function with higher performance than normal, motherboards denote this by colouring the slots to minimise the risk of using the wrong slots, now all 4 slots used in their coloured pairs, with matched pairs of sticks, will give dual channel performance, that's my understanding anyway.

1 matched pair of sticks in 1 pair of same coloured slots, in this case either the light grey or the black, enables dual channel for that pair of sticks, place a 2nd pair of matched sticks in the other same coloured slots and again it enables dual channel, it means each matched pair of sticks in the same coloured slots for each pair, gets you 2 sets of dual channel basically, and the best performance possible from what you have.

But it looks like power was the issue then, which as said above was the next thing to check, it's unusual for the board not to supply the correct settings for the ram when in Auto mode, it's supposed to read the info from the sticks, then apply the best settings for them, but I guess it's not unheard of for such a thing to happen, ultimately it's the ram that states what it needs, and as it appears you have done, applied those settings to the bios.

What bothers me is how it suddenly started doing this, I assume it had been running fine until this happened ?

Had you changed anything prior to this happening ?

Did the system maybe crash prior to this ?

I know there are times where ram needs to be run at a different rate than it say's, normally where there is a slight compatibility issue or similar, which is why makers have lists of known compatible ram\CPU, it doesn't mean other parts not listed wont work, it is simply a selection of parts they know will work just fine, and is the surest way for a hassle free build, theoretically anyway lol, but fingers crossed you won't have any problems now, depending on why it happened to start with.

Well i had some pretty bad infections on the computer and maleware including the bagle worm that i got rid of.  I had frequent crashes yes. Other then that, thats pretty much it. My USB controllers were also not working correctly, but i think thats just the case of the actual controllers on the board malfunctioning, that should not have anything to do with the clock settings of the ram.

I don't know, ive never had any good results with building a machine for some reason, i always seem to run into component malfunctions and hardware failures, etc. I don't know what i do wrong, maybe its because im not getting enough airflow, but i don't know how to fix that, i do the best i can by tying up the wires, its just the environment its in is a very dusty place. I generally use a mid tower ATX, maybe i should go to a full tower ATX. I kind of live in the woods outside of town, so their is dust everywhere, their is really no way around this unless i bought like a purifier or something. I don't use hydrogen cooling cause its ridiculously expensive and their for i figured a mit tower ATX case would do ok, but i am really considering swapping this case for something a bit better. According to newegg though its a pretty decent case, i like how it has a 240 Mm fan at the top, keeps things very cool. I do the best i can with using compressed air like once a week on the computer but dust builds up so incredibly. I also do not have a side case fan but to compensate for that, i do have a 240 mm fan at the top and another exhaust fan on the back of the cast. I can't fit a case fan into it, so i took the side panel one off. Maybe that wasn't a good idea, but i can't seem to fit it on the machine with out getting in the way of my enormous heat sink/fan, as you can see its large and stands up but it definitely keeps the CPU running into the high 20's. Very cool.

Using speed fan to read the temps though, the temperature ratings for the inside of the computer and CPU are actually good, some where around 29-32 degree. On the low end, how ever i do notice that ONE of my hard drives reads bout 50, so thats not a good thing. I am guessing that one of my HD's is ready to fail, but thats an external HD, not an internal which can easily be replaced.

So far so good, its not stuttering like it used to so hopefully this fixes the issue with loss of memory. How ever i might just buy another Motherboard anyways, i been meaning to get one that is a bit more modern for this build. This motherboard also does not support 3.0 USB and at the time of purchase i didn't realize that, and i use alot of devices with 3.0.

Hey this might help you, ill link all the components of my build maybe you can recommend something that might help this entire situation, as far as the RAM, i remember only one thing, one person told me that its not the same model number so the frequency is going to be slightly changed and could cause issues, that was "corsair" the manufacturer of the ram, Other people i called like EVGA, seem to say their shouldn't be an issue with that cause it has the same speed of RAM. 1333 mhz. Remember all sticks have been replaced due to faulty memory in the past and our all the same.

But here is my components all in one case:

Graphics Card

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127510

Power Supply

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139020

CPU FAN with Heat sink

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103099

Mid Tower ATX Case

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119197

DVD ROM Drive

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827100058

Extra Exhaust Fan

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835233035

Motherboard

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813188055

CPU

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115215

RAM

http://www.amazon.com/Corsair-Vengeance-240-Pin-Platforms-CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9/dp/B004CRSM4I/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1393955081&sr=8-4&keywords=Corsair+RAM (4 sticks of the same RAM)

The reading of this RAM which amazon states is actually incorrect. Its not 1600 Mhz, its 1333 mhz, i can see it located on the sticker and its a  PC3 12800 which should be sufficient for my motherboard, isn't that correct?

You have every piece of information here to carefully check this out, let me know if their is anything i can do as far as changing components or anything that might fix these problems.

PC3 12800 IS 1600mhz ram, that doesn't mean it isn't running at 1333mhz (pc3 10600) speed  in your system even tho it is capable of running at the faster 1600mhz.

i wouldn't change anything in your system at the moment if everything is working correctly now.

 

I don't know, ive never had any good results with building a machine for some reason, i always seem to run into component malfunctions and hardware failures, etc. I don't know what i do wrong,

i don't think it's because of any problems with airflow or your case, it's a very good case, but i do think it might be your not taking all the correct precautions, especially against static, so in future make sure to keep yourself grounded when putting a machine together.

that doesn't mean you won't get a bad component because sometimes even brand new parts are dead on arrival and need to be returned but you shouldn't run into problems with "every" build like you say you do.

All in all you have a pretty nice set up, the PSU should be a solid choice, the case is certainly a good case, the only issue I find with smaller cases is the ability to work in there without struggling, but that's me, the CPU is listed as being compatible, the ram is not, but that doesn't mean it won't work, as I said before, they only list x amount, it would be a thankless task to test every variation around, but not sure I would of gone for that video card, and definitely not EVGA anything from my experience with them, as you have found they are quick to pass the buck.

But the ram is as you bought it, and if in doubt, use the manufacturer's code of what you have, or are looking at, then go to the makers site and find that same code, it ensures it's the same stuff, often there's not a lot between some sticks, only a letter or number between them, then look at what they say the spec is, in your case what you bought, and what you have said are both correct, look Here and go down the spec, you will see both numbers used.

As to dust you can buy filters to use, it may mean you changing\washing them weekly if it's as bad as you say, but it may be easier than what you're currently having to do, or if you're not proud, you could buy some tights from a drug store lol, and cut\stretch those round the system so they cover all the gaps, more so any intake fans (if you have them), but do not cover the exhaust fans, use this as an experiment before spending more money on more expensive options, with luck you will get away with a quick hoover with a hose as you see any build up to keep it as best it can be.

Now your "poor" luck with building systems, have you noticed any storms prior to things going wrong ?

Are you using any surge protection ?

What I am wondering is if you have got a poor quality electricity supply, and it's getting lots of surges etc, I only mention it as a thought as I don't know what your power is like there, but it's wise to use surge protection, a UPS device is the ideal, but a surge strip is better than nothing, just a thought.

Should you look to replacing your motherboard, my advice is go for Gigabyte or maybe Asus boards, both are respected by most, and good workhorses, but see how you go for now, and if you can get surge protection as soon as you're able for greater peace of mind, if you go for this check to see if anyone has some input as to what you may be looking at getting, but look for one that carries insurance, assuming they do that there, in the UK they have connected equipment damage cover, so if the device fails and your kit gets damaged, you can claim against it, so check that out when\if you go for this, but fingers crossed you will be fine now.

*edit

That's what I get for the wife bringing tea in as I am part way through replying lol, but terry1966 makes a good point with the static as well, get in the habit of touching the case\frame before touching parts, and if your arms rest\touch on the side of the case it won't hurt, it only takes a couple of steps to build up a lethal (to the components) charge.

I am going to  have to rekindle this thread, i am still having issues. I went through my RAM, checked all the numbers on each stick, every one of them are exactly the same so there is no mismatching ram. I have taken out two sticks and tried them for a period of time, it seems to run ok for a bit, but that gradually gets slower and slower until the entire OS is staggering. This happens more frequently when im using software, or copying and writing files to and from hard disks. Right now i have only 8 GB of ram in the machine but i have swapped different ram sticks and also with different slots, trying the duel channel memory as well. But to no avail i am still having major issues. I have money, i don't mind purchasing a new motherboard if that is the issue which i think it might be, but then again i don't know. It could also be a video card issue. I don't have another compatible video card to try for this mobo so their is no way to really test that. The CPU, i am pretty certain is not the problem, the CPU usage is generally pretty low and the temps are nice and cool, for the case, GPU and CPU.

My issue here is i need to determine if this a motherboard problem or RAM. Its either one of the two, or possibly another infection? I don't see that being the case though cause i JUST cleaned my pc not to long ago through this forum.

Here is what i can tell you right now, on memory statistical values, at this current point of time, well this machine is going extremely slow right now. I am going to try and take a few screen caps and post it here. Maybe you can figure out what the heck is going on.

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I might consider doing a clean install of windows, that might possibly fix it, but i really need to rule out all software problems, cause i don't want to spend money on a new motherboard when my current mobo is just fine. But i need to figure this out some how.

personally i don't think you have a problem with the cpu, ram or motherboard.

i'd be much more inclined to think you have malware or a hard drive issue, but you say it's clean of malware so i'd look at your hard drive/s.

how full is it/are they? to full and things slow down dramatically.

have you run any speed tests on them to check what read/write speeds your getting? check what speeds your getting against what speed they should be.

have you run a hard drive diagnostic on them, how many errors, bad sectors, etc, if any do they have? they may be failing and causing your problems

 

but i really need to rule out all software problems,

download the live kde iso from here

http://software.opensuse.org/131/en

burn it to a dvd or usb memory stick and then boot and run the live kde to test your pc. this will rule out any chance of it being a software or hard drive problem.

but if you notice your pc is still crawling along then i may be incorrect in my thoughts and the problem may be else where like cpu/ram or motherboard but don't think so, if i remember correctly you have 2 very old drives in that pc rescued from used older pc's?

just noticed your cpu is running very slow, it's set at 9x and running at 1200, where it should be set to at 20x i'd have thought.

at stock speed intel say that cpu runs at 2660 and 3200 with turbo boost, which is 20x and 24x your bus speed of 133.

so have you been in bios and changed the cpu settings or is that just a cool and quiet low power setting that jumps up when the cpu is under load?

Hey Terry, thanks for responding. I don't believe its hard drive issues although i did have a hard drive that was consistently causing me problems, i called the manufacturer and they assured that the data on it was corrupt or damaged, not physical damaged. But every time i tried to plug it, it kept saying "Do you want to reformat this drive" So what i had to do was buy a new external HD and copy all of the data from the bad drive to the good drive. Then i reformatted it, so yes i did quite alot of copying data for hrs. 

My computer though was stalling and slowing down to a crawl prior to this, so i don't believe a bad HD is the culprit. If i had to think bout any drive that might be having issues, it would be the C drive. I will say i been getting alot of issues though with having to safely remove my drives, like right now in fact, drive 6 which was my bad drive, says it "can't be removed because its being used by another software or program" this is a problem because i need to be able to remove, i can always turn off my machine and then remove it.

But the reason i don't think its an external drive is because even deleting files, i will go back and delete files on various externals and my C drive and it will just open up the "rycling box" and just sit their for ever instead of deleting the files. It will just freeze on me. I actually removed all of my externals and its still staggering like crazy. My guess is it could be the OS or the C drive it self thats causing the issue.

My drives are copying around 25 -30 MB's through USB 2.0 because my motherboard does not support USB 3.0.

The only settings that i messed with in the bios was to reset the frequency and clock settings of the RAM, this was when i was having the issue before i started copying all that data, the representative of EVGA told me specifically to try that so the settings match the stock ram instead of what the bios reads and we did notice it was a bit off.

No i have since replaced it with a newer 1 TB drive. I have two internals though, my 2nd one in their is a very old drive yes, but its not running OS. Its only being used as a small data back up drive. 

When i click on my drives, open files and folders, its not just one drive, its pretty much all of them and everything is just running very slow.

hmm, thats interesting. Well i haven't messed with any settings for my CPU in my bios.

I will try that scan and get back with you on the results of that.