memory problems?

CDsDontBurn

so, i'm troubleshooting a computer for a friend of mine which i believe had bad memory. that was according to the BSOD it spit at him, "dumping physical memory dump" error. that being the only description of the error aside from all the number codes that he didn't write down to give me i run his machine on the latest version of memtest86.

memtest runs for a little over 24 hours, 2 errors total. first on pass #7, the second error on pass #21. i said it's likely to be memory giving you these BSODs.

To test that theory out, i put in one of my known good working tester sticks of RAM in his machine, and fire up memtest again to see if it's stable. a few hours later, my friend calls me up telling me that there are 4 failures. these four failures are less than 6hrs. after i had left his place.

now, what this tells me is that if my RAM was known working RAM, and it got errors, there's got to be something up with his MoBo. It could be the memory controller, or it could even be the DIMM slot as well. IDK what it could be if it's not the memory, but i'm pretty confident it's the MoBo at this point.

His system specs:
xp2200+
1Gb of RAM (his RAM)
MSI VIA kt266 MoBo
onboard gfx
1xWD 40Gb HDD (OS)
1xWD 80Gb HDD (storage)
DVD-RW drive

RAM specifics:
My RAM - Kingston KVR400X64C3A/512
His RAM - Buffalo Select PC3200U - 30330 - B1, 1Gb CL3

EZero

First thing I would check up on is his motherboard's bios version. Check the official website for his motherboard for an updated BIOS or specifically look to see if it says anything along the lines of "improved compatability with a wider range of memory modules" or anything of the sort.

If that is ruled out you can also try to put the RAM in a different slot, so instead of slot 1 you can try slot 2 and 3 to see if it is a specific slot at fault.

CDsDontBurn

alright, i'll check for that as well. the MoBo has 4 slots, but 2 of them are for SDR and the other two are for DDR. i'll try putting the RAM in the other slot.

ChaosMinionX

7 and 21 are odd places to get errors. I would say if it errored on test 5/8 that it could cause OS instability and BSODs due to incorrect timings, but since nothing happened on those It would lead me to believe that the board or module itself has some slight damage to it. Can you put your ram in the board and see if it passes?

EDIT: After further using my xtreme skills in reading...I have found out that you have indeed tried a set of your own RAM
Does the mobo allow for any timing/voltage tuning? and how old is it?

CDsDontBurn

lol. i have all bases covered when posting up issues that require system specs and things like trying out other RAM .

anyways...the board itself isn't that old. the chipset though is a bit old, VIA266. i never went into the BIOS to adjust any timings as i had configured those timings to "auto" when i first put the computer together a while ago. Then the RAM being CL3 (both my RAM and his RAM), i wouldn't have thought it would require more than the default 2.6v that the auto config sets it to.

When my friend contacted me that my RAM had failed in his board, i didn't ask him on which passes it had failed on. all he told me was that it had 4 lines of failure. and remember, that was in ~6hrs. vs. his RAM which had 2 lines of failure in ~24hrs.