faulty memory

I got a pc (custom made) only a month ago and when i first got it, it worked fine. But then i started getting random system crashes and errors when installing programs and extracting files (e.g. installing sp2 would come up with the message of 'file is corrupt' when extracting its files)

reading around, i thought it might be a problem with my memory, so i ran memtest86+ and sure enough i got heaps of errors. The computer came with two 512MB memory chips, and so i tried each one separately in all four slots and one gave errors no matter which slot, while the other worked fine in all of the slots. So i assumed it was a one-off bad memory chip.

So i ran my comp on the single working 512MB, but a few days later, i got the random crashes again - and when i ran memtest, it came up with several errors. (i.e. now both mem chips will not work separately or together in any slot)

What could be causing OK memory to start going faulty like this?


My specs are:
Gigabyte GA-8I915P-G motherboard
Seagate 200GB harddrive
Pentium 4 3.2ghz
Nvida geforce 6600gt graphics card
Windows XP home (w/SP2)

 

Wrong voltage

 

While Dave may be right...since this is a Custom Built PC that you bought only 1 month ago....TAKE IT BACK!!!!

 

I installed new memory (better quality) and it's worked a treat. Seemed like it was just a combination of inferior memory and overheating (was badly cooled) which probably caused it.

 

Well this is true ! Most computer shops around here anyway build pc's with cheap power supplys,generic memory, really thin cases with no cooling at all.
I't planned obsolesance, they need you back for buisness. They don't want your pc to last forever, so they give you cheap hardware and no cooling ,after a year when the warranty wears out. = $.