Strange problems

Kallb123

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Jul 29, 2008
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Hi all,
My friend is experiencing some weird things. Spec:
AMD Athlon II X4 630 - CPU
2x2GB DDR3 1333MHz - RAM
MSI 770-C45 - Motherboard
PNY GTS250 - GPU

Nothing is overclocked

Running Prime95, it sometimes says:
Fatal Error - Hardware Failure. Rounding was 0.5, expected less than 0.5.

It shows this on different cores whenever it happens. I've been running the test for an hour and 10 minutes and then one of the cores failed. Usually it happens as soon as I click start test but thats probably because I don't leave the test long enough. I have tried moving the Ram into the other 2 slots and the error still happens.

Also when playing just about all games the screen will start to flicker and in a few there will be a crash to desktop. Sometimes it will tell me that Direct3D10 crashed because the device was removed. The screen sometimes goes all different colours or artifacts appear on screen.
I have tried different drivers but thoroughly as I'm not surer which ones could cause these problems.

Some problems that might related probably aren't:

Trying to reinstall Windows 7, it would get to expanding files (about 80%) and then say that the media might be corrupt and stop the install, I burnt the disc several times to make sure the media wasn't corrupt (I had a working ISO copy of the disc backed up). I had to put the hard drive into my computer and install it to get it to work.

A game called company of heroes will get about 80% of way through the install and then say the that a file might be missing and the media way be corrupt (again!). I have tried using my disc and my friends disc. I tried to install it on the fresh windows 7 install but to no avail.

Windows 7 kept switching to aero basic. When I inserted his GPU into my computer for a while it kept doing this again, even with all my components other than gpu. This seems to point to faulty gpu but then there is also the prime95 saying hardware failure when prime95 isn't testing the gpu (I think).

None of these things should happen on a new PC (I built it for him just a few weeks ago) and I can't make sense of why its all happening. I have also tried a different PSU (both should easily be able to run his computer being 650W and 750W). I will switch his GPU with mine tomorrow and try some games again.
 

Kallb123

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Jul 29, 2008
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Ok, ill get that downloaded in the morning. Do I burn that to a cd or dvd? If the memory is faulty the program can try to fix it can't it? If it can't fix the errors would my friend need to return the memory?
 

caamsa

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Don't forget to switch out your memory sticks and test one at at time to figure out which one might be bad. Could be that they are not fully seated into their slots.
 

Kallb123

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Jul 29, 2008
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Ok, I've run the memtest and found the problem.
Both sticks in Slot 3 & 4, the screen fills with errors (around a thousand in 10 seconds).
One stick in slot 1 gives the same problem.
The other stick in slot 1 isn't showing any errors (test not finished though).

Is it safe to say the other stick of RAM is faulty?
I will try some games with only 1 stick.
 

dokk2

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Jul 1, 2007
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Hmmmm, try the sticks one at a time in the first slot,also get the hdd diag from their manufacturers and test the hdd just to be sure especially after all that snafu'ing you have been having...:)