So, shortly after my last post, I went a poking around in my mobo manual to see what I could find out about my memory. There was nothing concrete about it really. There was a paragraph describing SDRAM and there was a number for voltage, 2.5 volts. So, being curious, I popped open the old BIOS to see what my voltage was set at. It was auto setting to 2.7. I thought that was odd it would autoset to 2.7. After some trial and let sees action, I decided to bite the bullet and manually set the voltage to 2.5, knowing full well that things could come a crashing down upon my head.
I changed the setting to 2.5, saved it, and rebooted. I sat there, half-expecting fire and brimstone spewing from my computer case. Fortunately, the familiar boot up screen came up, with it's ever so long RAM checking spiel going. I normally skip the whole checking part but I was paranoid and let it run to completion. Diablo himself did not roar to life, dragging me to pits of fiery inferno, disco even. Windows XP booted normally. I was frankly surprised that it worked.
Anyway, since then, I have not experienced any locking and I've been trying my damnest to get it to. The first thing I tried was run a demo of Star Wars: Empire at War which had some intense processing going on. Next, I had winamp streaming music, iTunes playing music, and two instances of youtube.com playing videos all at the same time. All of the multimedia instances would normally have locked at some point running by themselves. Having them all going at the same time should have caused a BSOD and reboot. Much to my happiness, it has not. So, now I ask myself, is my RAM damaged from running at 2.7 volts ever since it sat foot in my case? The obvious fact that I am typing this from my keyboard still connected to the same case I have had for two upgrades is saying that there is no damage. Time shall tell. Though it would be nice to have 1 Gig of RAM. During this whole thing, I noticed that I use up quite a bit of RAM just by using Firefox and other dinky apps.
For the time being, my RAM issue has been fixed, so says Poop Dog! The Gangsta Spectre of Defeat! Err...nevermind. I've had this particular set up for about two years as well. To bad I never got more annoyed with this issue before.
2 comments:
I am envious of your ability to make BIOS changes. I've come to the conclusion that I will never know enough about computers to do anything worthwhile.
My computer has been spontaneously rebooting during video chats with my mom on MSN. Never during other applications and only when chatting with her. Weird. Also, if I try to do anything else while chatting with her, the connection gets jumpy and halting, in spite of the fact that I have 1.5G RAM. sigh.
Eh, don't feel to bad. My computer is still doing it spontaneous rebooting. My l33t skillz are weak. lol I read online that I may need to adjust the position of the sticks.
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