Having a nightmare motherboard/ram problem.

[Anteries]

I bought a secondhand barebones PC and I'm having real trouble sorting out a ram problem. Basically it freezes during the ram boot sometimes. I have two 1gb sticks one of which that I bought recently.

It might take on average about five attempts before it goes into Windows and then seems to work flawlessly. mem test seemed to come out clear when I boot from CD.

Once the computer has booted and is working okay. If I reboot it always seems to work okay.

It mostly seem to have problems booting when the computer has been off for a while.

I tried the ram sticks in every combination and the start-up problem is just as random.

I'm really gutted about this, because this PC while only based on an older dual core Athlon would do the job perfectly.

The ram is pc2 5400 and the motherboard is am2 only. and the CPU is Athlon x2 4200.

I feel if I am forced to buy any new parts, I'm going to have to upgrade everything which was hoping to avoid.

Any thoughts and suggestion.

[GoNz0]

maybe they sold it because it was faulty?

[chris_argyle]

Have you ensured that the ram is getting a high enough voltage?
I have had problem with RAM in the past due to it being underpowered (when set to auto in the bios). That also seemed to show intermittantly.

[Anteries]

maybe they sold it because it was faulty?

No thats not possible because that would have been dishonest.

[Anteries]

Have you ensured that the ram is getting a high enough voltage?
I have had problem with RAM in the past due to it being underpowered (when set to auto in the bios). That also seemed to show intermittantly.

Thanks had not though of this, funny thing is it was plus .o1v, so I will try it at defult and see what happens.

[GoNz0]

No thats not possible because that would have been dishonest.

and your point is ?

[Queelis]

No thats not possible because that would have been dishonest.

LOL at this

But I was having the same cold-boot issue: booting only after some 3-5 restarts, and then no problems. Memtest also ran through OK, stress-testing the GPU revealed no artifacts; the culprit was found to be the MoBo - I would suspect the same in this situation as well.

[ehhhhhhh]

I had a similar problem with an old socket A motherboard (successful boot only on every 5-6th attempt), and it was caused by a faulty capacitor on the motherboard. Check all the capacitors on the MB, here's an example:

http://media.photobucket.com/image/f.../whurd/Bad.jpg

it can be easily replaced though if this is the culprit