Question about Faulty Memory Possibilities.

[Stahi]

While I'm still getting 07e/050 errors on kmixer.sys even after installing a new soundcard, and 0xa errors on ntoskrnl.exe, I'm really starting to believe that it's a memory issue. However, previous experiences with bad RAM is telling me otherwise. Whenever I get the kmixer.sys errors, I'm running Second Life with Voice activated. When voice ISN'T activated it'll run fine for hours. The 0xA errors I get with EVE Online (and occasion Second Life), and it's either on ntoskrnl.exe or something to do with ZoneAlarm or AVG (vsdatant.sys or avg7core-whatever)

The last time I had faulty memory, I didn't bluescreen at all. The system just rebooted randomly by itself, programs wouldn't install correctly, etc. Could my current problems BE faulty memory, even though I'm not having that particular kind of issue?

 

[Crazy]

Might be bad ram, if you want to exclude it, run memtest:
http://www.memtest.org/

Let it do a few passes and then you'll be sure if it's your RAM or not

 

[Stahi]

Memtest86 3.3 & Memtest86+ 1.70 run through multiple times on both sticks with no problems. Memtest86 3.4 crashes on the 2nd test and shows errors for 10 tests, while if I have it do test three it shows the test error window followed by a lot of pink & black flashing binary junk. Did another option and showed 1275% complete and going out of control.

When I previously had bad RAM (a stick of PNY from Best Buy), errors popped up almost immediately. But here I've let them run overnight with the RAM I have now (two sticks of Crucial RAM, and I HAVE run tests on one stick at a time) and have gotten zero errors.

 

[Stahi]

This is a new one. EVE Online crashed as an 07e on kmixer.sys, which is a first.

I'm really getting tired of this.

 

[Crazy]

The other techs on the board are more familiar with dumps and this kind of problem. Try using the search for problems like this and see what they do there.

Imo, it still sounds like bad ram, or a corupt xp install, or might even be bad drivers.

 

[Stahi]

The onboard sound I had, the last drivers were updated in 2004. The new one I have, updated late '06.

I've been wanting to do a fresh XP install for a bit now. And for comparison notes, Second Life has been running with voice off for about 3 hours no. No crash. Turn Voice on and it'll crash within 20 minutes. I dunno.

 

[nickc]

Stahi, if Memtest has any errors then u need new ram, it may not show a problem and still be bad but if it shows a problem it is bad.

 

[Stahi]

Well, I would normally think so, Nick. But Memtest 3.3 showed nothing while Memtest 3.4 went haywire and crashed every time, saying it found errors on "all 10 tests" when it hadn't gone through 2% of the 2nd test. Shame I can't screenshot it.

 

[Stahi]

I dunno what they fixed in it, but I saw they had a version 3.4a released on their website. Decided to try it out and it actually went past the 2nd test without crashing, so I'm going to let it run completely in an hour or so. Wish me luck.

 

[Stahi]

Alright, I just switched the RAM from my two Crucial 512MB sticks to two 1GB Corsair sticks.

Fired up SecondLife, fired up voice, ran fine for a bit and.. bam, 050 on kmixer.sys