Hard Drive breakdown?

[Bent Romnes]

Thanks Wiz, When I take the computer apart again, I will check the video card more closely. Maybe just go and buy a new one, who knows. They cant be that much money.

[Bent Romnes]

Wiz, just to let you know I got my problem fixed.
It was a memory module. One out of the 2 512K modules was faulty. So I went and got 2 new ones at 1GB each. So now I have 2.5 GB RAM and a computer that boots up great and runs like a jet plane!
Thanks for all your help, Wiz. You pointed me in the right directions.
Thanks also to the others who contributed their input. It is greatly appreciated!
Bent

[Dave Potter]

Glad to see your problem is resolved. However,

When I take the computer apart again, I will check the video card more closely. Maybe just go and buy a new one, who knows. They cant be that much money.

Well, I have no frame of reference on what you consider "that much money", but I tend to try to stay on the edge of what's "the best" available, and I expect to pay on the order of $5-600 USD for the latest video card on the market. That's not "that much money"? I wish.

[Bent Romnes]

Dave,
I suppose if you want spend 5 or 600 on a video card, you are doing a lot of movie watching and heavy duty gaming. Plus, maybe video production?
That kind of a card is way beyond the needs of a more average user.

For everyday use a 256 K or even 128 K card is all you need. My Nvidea card that came with my computer 2 1/2 yrs ago is 128K. Plenty for watching youtube video. Plenty for clear video telephony on Skype and other chat programs.I am not into gaming at all. Also more than adequate for digital picture editing. Maybe, if I see the need arises, someday I will upgrade to 256.
As it turned out, I didn't need a new video card, but I went as far as pricing them. A 256 card with cooling fan cost $55 to 60.

To me it wouldn't make sense to put a $600 vid card into a $1300 computer.
But that's just me...To each his own of course.

[Bent Romnes]

Once again, I got the problem fixed, and things are working tickety-boo.

I guess those error beeps are in error themselves...I got a beep for video car failure, when in fact it was a memory module.
Thanks again Wiz, you may close this one
Bent

[Wiz Feinberg]

I too have experienced random shutdowns, failures to boot and BSOD's, that were eventually traced to bad RAM modules, that used to work fine. All of the faulty RAM was in the lesser quality lines, from various manufacturers; like Corsair Value Select. I had three of their modules go bad after they worked fine for two years. I replaced all of my bad RAM with Crucial modules, as recommended for my motherboard, by the Crucial Memory selector tool. I have never personally had a problem with Crucial RAM. I should have bought Crucial memory when I built my computer, but the company I ordered the parts from had a big sale on Corsair Value Select, so that's what I bought. It took two years to learn that I made a mistake over maybe $60 difference in price between the two brands.

{Shameless plug:}
I have links to Crucial memory and their online and downloadable RAM selector tools, on my All About RAM web page. Since I use Firefox I had to download the tool that reads the motherboard memory controller ID and then checks their database for the correct replacement modules (which I used to order my 1 Gb replacement module). Internet Explorer users can run the RAM lookup utility right in their browsers.
{/shameless plug}