Possible problem with RAM?

[Judge Zetsumei]

I just finished crysis, during which i had a couple blue screens and program not responding crashes. I left my computer on and went downstairs to watch top gear.

When i got back my computer was off and when i went to turn it on nothing came up on the screen. So i looked at my graphics card to make sure the fan was running and it was. So i turned it off, took out the second stick of ram and turned it on and still nothing. Turned it off took out the first stick of ram and replaced it with the second and it booted.

So just to make double sure it was the ram that's the problem i put the supposedly bad stick of ram back in on it's own and it booted. I now have both sticks of ram in and the computer is on that is why i'm writing this message. Do i have faulty ram or is it something else? And how can i be sure of what it is?

Vista reports that there is indeed 2gb of ram installed, my temps are;
motherboard roughly 50c
cpu can be as low as 24c and go up to 58c
graphics card can be as low as 49c and go up to 75c
case ranges from 26c to 32c

This may be useful to know as well that wen i first put together this pc i got nothing, took it to scan and it turned out one of the motherboard cpu pins was bent, the guy straightened it, put the cpu back on and it worked. that was a few months back. I don't know if that may have something to do with it.

[iranu]

Firstly I'm going to assume you are using Win XP. (common Hexus I've have already suggested you add an OS section to "My System").

I would first look at the overclock you have on the cpu and (ram and graphics card - from memory those numbers are higher than stock).

Firstly you need to ensure you can read the BSOD. This requires you turn off the automatic reboot in windows. > Right click My computer > Properties > Advanced (tab) > Start up and recovery > uncheck the box "automatically restart" under "System Failure". This will allow you to atleast get an error message which will help in the diagnosis.

Usually faulty ram gives faults often and causes a large number of random BSOD messages. You can use memtest (google it) to see whether your ram is faulty.

As for motherboard socket pins being bent I would not suspect that this has any issue whatsoever. If something was wrong with regard to the socket it would be disastrously wrong and the PC would either not boot or continually have issues.

Try backing off your overclock(s) and running Crysis again for a bit noting if you have the same issues.

[Judge Zetsumei]

Thank you for the reply, I have vista but I found the start up and recovery you mentioned and I have unchecked the box. I am now running with 1 stick of ram in the 2nd slot as now doing that booted. It seems so random.

My overclock is indeed above stock, cpu stock is 1.8ghz but ram is actually underclocked, it's stock at 800mhz and the timeings are at stock, my graphics card is stock at core575mhz, memory1800mhz, shader1350mhz respectively.

I had problems with artifacting so i lowered the clock on the gfx card to what it is now. But if it was the cpu overclock that was the problem then it would at least boot or just restart with stock settings, but it's not even getting to that first screen where you press delete to enter bios among other things, it just stays on with a blank screen, and the only way for me to get it to boot is to move the ram to a different slot or take a stick out.

I will run crysis now with 1gb of ram (wish me luck lol) and if it blue screens i will post back here the result.

Edit: Oh I'd like to add that the blue screens are really random, I even got one while watching an episode of lost on my computer.

[Judge Zetsumei]

I was playing company of heroes and i got a blue screen, it said kernel_data_inpage_error. Now Whenever i try and boot it says BOOTMGR is missing, press ctrl alt del to restart. I tried to repair by booting from the cd but no OS was found. I guess my HDD is bust

But that doesn't explain why my computer sometimes doesn't even display something on the screen when i switch it on, but re-jigging the RAM and putting it in different slots eventually gets my computer to boot up.

Any help is highly appreciated.

[iranu]

Really random BSOD in my experience are nearly always due to a ram fault.

[peterb]

Download a copy of memtest.

Memtest86+ - Advanced Memory Diagnostic Tool