memtest crashing?

TheBaron

hardware:
some shuttle sff i845 system
p4 2.4b
2 x 512 generic ram @ 2.5 / 3 / 3 / 7
radeon 9500 pro

symptoms:
1) halflife 2 crashes a lot. right after the install it worked for about 3 hours
2) memtest86+ cant seem to get past test 4, ever

things i tried:
1) tried both sticks of ram individually
2) checked voltages, looked good. it reports vcore at 1.5v. apparently it doesn't read VDD at all, and nothing is adjustable in the bios
3) temperatures seem out of control to me, reads 60c for system and 80c for cpu, but it has ALWAYS done this and it seems to work fine under load. the only things that have ever given it problems are halflife with its crashing issues, and WoW drops to about 10fps in instances (from 60, probably unrelated).
4) updated all drivers, made sure xp was up to date

can you guys think of what i need to check here? im really tempted to say maybe the vid card is overheating, but why the hell does memtest CRASH?

primesuspect

well if memtest crashes, is probably the ram. I would loosen the timings to stock first, and see if anything changes.

Mt_Goat

primesuspect wrote:

well if memtest crashes, is probably the ram. I would loosen the timings to stock first, and see if anything changes.

.....and test 4 is where 99% of bad RAM fails! If loosening the timing doesn't work try running it at the next lower speed. Then if it does pass, you will know if it is just real crappy RAM that has been labeled for more than it's worth.

TheBaron

2.5/3/3/7 is stock, but i'll see what happens when i drop it to pc2100 speed
thx guys!