BSOD and I am replacing the RAM.....

[pwnzor]

Hello everyone, this is my first post on this fourm and I hope I am in the appropriate section for my issue.

Recently while playing World of Warcraft, I have been receiving the "blue screen of death." It states "page fault in nonpaged area" after re-installing some applications and researching some things related to this issue, I have decided to replace the memory in the computer. My first mistake was purchasing a DELL. Its not a horrible computer, it computes what i want it to. Its the fact that DELL's machines are perticular when it comes to "non-DELL" parts. Sorry for the ramble. My question is, I want to buy

Kingston 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300)

and put it in my DELL XPS 400, the requirements for the xps's ram are

Package Type Logical Type
240-pin DIMM DDR2 128x64
Speed Description
PC2-5300 / 667 MHz Non-ECC, Unbuffered
Units Required 2

Does anyone know if Iwill encounter a problem putting a non DELL part in the XPS??

Thanks in advance. Dan

[Sterling_Aug]

Use the Kingston RAM configuration tool on the Kingston website. Buy only the part number Kingston RAM that it recommends. Any other part number is a gamble that it may not work.

[Midknyte]

did you run memtest? how do you know the ram is bad? a blue screen doesn't mean the ram is automatically bad.

[pwnzor]

I didnt test the ram yet, but i am going to do so before I go buying things. I beleive I have 1G duel channel currently, so i will do the process or elimination when i get home. Also, the IT guru at my work said my problem sounds memory related, given the details. Thanks, this forum posting stuff works well to get the ol' gears turning .

[Ol'Tunzafun]

Have you recently installed any hardware or software?
What kinds of things are showing up in Event Viewer?
Type EventVwr.msc in the Run box and check the System and Application sections.

[pwnzor]

Thanks ol', nothing new in the past two months, last thing I installed was warcraft which worked beautiful for the time. Then crash after crash. Last night I opened the box up, I took out one 512 mem stick and booted up. It worked fine, a little slower (operating on half the RAM) but I was able to reload WoW and play for about an hour. At that point I was convinced that it was the mem stick I had removed. I am kind of a noob when it comes to event viewers, I did look and there were huge lists of things that I didnt understand though. any suggestions what I would be looking for?

[Ol'Tunzafun]

Last night I opened the box up, I took out one 512 mem stick and booted up. It worked fine, a little slower (operating on half the RAM) but I was able to reload WoW and play for about an hour. At that point I was convinced that it was the mem stick I had removed.

Bad RAM is the most likely cause, and that is the most reliable way to test it. It sounds like you are on the right track.
Kingston or Crucial will point you to the right stuff.

http://www.kingston.com/

http://www.crucial.com/

[pwnzor]

I ended up going with a 1G stick made by Corsair. Is that an ok brand? Someone recomended it to me along with crucial and kingston and PNY.

[Midknyte]

Did you run memtest or not? The ram must just needed to be reseated. You should test each stick individually as well as together (dual channel). I've seen issues with boards able to run sticks by themselves, but not in dual channel.

Did you already order your ram? Did you get a 1GB kit or a single stick? You don't necessarily need to buy a set, but you should at least buy 2 of the same make/model.

[pwnzor]

I didnt run the memtest, but I was going to upgrade the memory to 2Gb at some point. I am replaceing the 2 512 sticks with one Corsair 1Gb stick. I will probably buy another Corsair 1Gb stick in a week or two.