Random Crashes and occasional boot errors

[Ashy]

Hey.

 

I've had quite a bit of trouble with this PC in the past. I've had to pull 1gb out of my 3gb of RAM after I kept getting boot errors and other related issues which pointed to either that or my HDD dying. I replaced both in turn which seemed to sort things out. Here I am now, out of nowhere, I'm getting unusual things happen to me.

 

It started yesterday. Out of nowhere, Firefox crashed (as it does) but everything else went too. Windows Explorer crashed and froze, Windows Live Messenger, everything. I had to manually reboot. It happened again another hour or so later, and then I woke up to the same issue.

 

I've scanned a bit of my PC with NOD32 and Windows Live Essentials initial scan, and got back an all clear on both accounts. I've scanned fully with MalwareBytes and it picked up nothing, too.

 

I'm not sure what else to do. I'm thinking it's my RAM, but I'm clueless, as the freezing seems like malware...

 

Any help or diagnosis would be of great help, thanks.

[Poconos]

Ashy,

You seem to have ruled out a lot unless you're getting errors on the remaining RAM too. Could be a printed wiring run on the MB that is intermittant or a power supply voltage that is out-of-limits and starting to cause problems. Had a new Intel MB once that had the same issues you are describing. Would sometimes run for a couple weeks then quit. Random freezups, crashes, etc and after a couple months of troubleshooting I traced it to a bad run near the RAM sockets. I can suggest you boot it up and start gently pressing on various areas of the MB to see if you can cause the problem. In my case it was so intermittant I wound up getting into BIOS and watching the clock tick. Pressing near the RAM sockets froze the clock. That's about as basic of a test as you can get. The way these multi-layer board are made it is quite possible to have a bad joint between a wiring run and a plated thru hole. Thermal cycling alone could have caused questionable joint to start failing.

Hope this helps.

Al

[Plastic Nev]

If you do remove the cover to look inside check the fans and other free air cooling area's for dust and fluff building up, it could just be overheating if it runs OK for a while before crashing.

Nev.