It was my turn to have a poorly PC this time
.
Started about a week ago.
Blue screens of death or full lock ups where the computer is fully frozen and having to press the reset button. Sometimes computer just suddenly restarts as well.
It can happen any time, not just playing games but could happen even at the desktop with computer not doing anything.
Think the heat was getting to it, been hot here in England.
It's an old system. Last year I upgraded its memory adding 2 more 4 gig sticks I bought used off ebay taking it up to 16Gig. I do remember getting an increase of blue screens after this upgrade, but that seemed to fix it's self.
Some of the Blue screens said 'PAGE FAULT IN NONPAGED AREA'. Googling that, points to a memory problem. A website I found said "
This could be System RAM, Graphics card RAM or even the small L1 or L2 cache memory on the CPU chip itself"
Things I tried....
- I did a few Windows memory tests, no errors found. But pc did lock up doing one of them.
- Cleaned out dust from machine with can of air, still crashes.
- Increased case fan speeds, still crashes.
- Remove one of the RAM sticks I bought last year, Still crashes.
- Removed 2nd stick I bought last year, just leaving my original 2 sticks in, Still crashes.
- Did hard drive scans, no errors reported.
- Did a
SFC /scannow to check for damaged system files, no errors reported.
- Swopped Graphics card with old graphics card, Still crashes
- Removed one of the original RAM sticks, leaving just 4 gig stick in machine, still crashes, but crashes now more often.
- Removed that stick, and put back the other original stick, and machine stopped crashing even after a whole day of testing
.
- Next day, took that good stick out, and tested out the 2 sticks I bought used last year and they were good too.
- I now have my better graphics card back in machine too, and still good.
So, just a bad memory stick that does not like the summer heat. I've now ordered a pair of used replacements to bring my system back to 16 gigs. Cheap as nuts. Fingers crossed they will be fine when I get them. Happy it was not the CPU or motherboard (Touch wood).
DJC