[Untold Prophecy]

I thought I'd post this here since it might be a hardware problem. Anyways, my computer has been running extremely slow lately, more so than usual. I haven't really changed anything however. My computer has been crashing lately, giving me a "Memory Management" or "Driver IRQL Not Less or Equal" BSOD. I'm not sure what to do. This usually happens when running an audio program, since it takes the most memory to run, so it might be my external audio interface, however, I've had the BSODs while not in the program.

Also, my Dell 15" monitor has been whiting out regularly, rendering it useless until the screen comes back. Turning it off then on is no help. It's usually a gamble when it will work or not. It's also got a straight vertical yellow line on it. Kind of like a dead pixel, but a whole line of them. It's not my video card, since my video card runs both of my monitors.

Comp specs:
Dell Dimension 2400
Windows XP SP 3
Intel Pentium 4, 2.2Ghz
2GB Ram (Kingston)

EVGA GeForce 6200, 256MB (PCI)
Acer 21" + Dell 15"

[Untold Prophecy]

No one wants to help me?

[Triple6]

Lets start by testing your RAM, download and burn the ISO image of Memtest86+ from here: http://www.memtest.org/
Let it complete several passes and see if it passes or fails.

[Untold Prophecy]

Currently running it. there's already a red line... Then again, I'm not really sure what I'm looking for. I'm not very tech savvy.

[Triple6]

Thats a failure. If you have more then one stick, try testing them one at a time.

[Untold Prophecy]

Should I let this test complete before testing the individual sticks? Or can I just shut this down and try testing them?

[Triple6]

Nope, no need to let it complete if its already showing errors.

[Untold Prophecy]

Just so I know, what does this mean? I have to get a new stick of ram? Why would a stick fail?

[Triple6]

Its electronics, all electronic will eventuality fail. If you more then one stick of RAM you may be able to take out the faulty one and run with the good stick, performance will be lower because you'll have less RAM until you replace the bad stick. If you have only one stick of RAM then you'll need to replace it.

[Untold Prophecy]

On an interesting side note, the 15" monitor still has a dead pixel line while in the boot menu and the mem test.

[Triple6]

That could be an unrelated problem, or part of the memory issue. Have another computer to try the screen on?

[Untold Prophecy]

Just plugged it into this lappy. Still has the dead line. That's what I'm calling it from now on.

In addition, my computer did not even boot with one of my sticks of ram. That's probably the faulty one, but it makes me wonder why my computer would still report 2GB of ram if one of the sticks where faulty enough to not start the computer.

[Triple6]

According to the documentation: http://support.dell.com/support/edoc...m_en/specs.htm

The system can hold a maximum of 512MB of RAM per slot with 4 slots for a total of 2GB's. So that means you must have 4 sticks of RAM in there. You just have to pinpoint which one is faulty and remove just that one piece and the computer will still have 1.5Gb of RAM. I'd be removing one stick at a time or removing 3 of them and testing individually.

[Untold Prophecy]

That documentation is strange/wrong. I've only got two slots, both with 1GB of ram in them. My computer booted up, testing the second (believed faulty) stick now.

[Untold Prophecy]

Also, I'm running the test, and it's gotten to Test #4 without any errors. The other stick got this far as well. Could it be the slot that is faulty?

Nevermind, Test #4 finished, gave me an error. Oh well, time to put in an old stick.