I'm having an amazingly aggravating computer problem and I'm pretty much at the end of my rope about what to do about it.
I just went from 256MB of RAM to 1.25 gig of RAM two nights ago. I was pretty excited especially because I've had slow load times on stuff like Battlefield 1942 and now, finally, I have an unnecessarily large amount of RAM to kick around.
Unfortunately, once the RAM was properly seated (and working wonderfully), a new and mysterious problem appeared. Everything works fine--great--every program except Battlefield 1942 (which is a bit of a resource hog, but nothing my system can't handle and then some). I'll load up the game, load a map, and then play for a couple of minutes when suddenly the game will crash with no warning or error message--it just vanishes.
I messed around with it a bit, increasing virtual memory paging size and making sure my motherboard drivers were updated and stuff, and it didn't help. In fact, at one point, the game blue-screened (split-second, too brief for me to read message, but something about an error. duh) and the whole system rebooted itself. And on restart I got some error message about a driver of an unknown device not being right.
I checked the EA website and there WAS an entry for this problem, but it said it was only if you had a VIA motherboard. I followed their procedure for checking if I had a VIA motherboard and the answer was No. (Mine's an ABIT KG-7 RAID). I went back to look at the Abit site for drivers and, suspiciously, I noticed some mention of VIA stuff (what's VIA? not exactly sure). So many I have a secretly-VIA motherboard?
I followed EA's advice for the solution, downloading a "test driver". Installed it. It didn't help. Installed some kind of IDE driver (whatever that means) from the Abit site, and on restart, my computer froze on the pword screen. Restarted; disk-checked; froze on desktop. Restarted, skipped disk check, and the computer didn't freeze. Tried BF1942 and it crashed. Re-installed BF1942. Restarted. Tried BF1942. It crashed.
So, I'm lost. Could my motherboard be defective/damaged? Did it just become so when I installed the memory? Why isn't it causing trouble in other apps--they're not resource-hoggy enough to trigger it? And most importantly, HOW DO I FIGURE IT OUT if it IS damaged? Is there a diagnostic tool or something?
I just went from 256MB of RAM to 1.25 gig of RAM two nights ago. I was pretty excited especially because I've had slow load times on stuff like Battlefield 1942 and now, finally, I have an unnecessarily large amount of RAM to kick around.
Unfortunately, once the RAM was properly seated (and working wonderfully), a new and mysterious problem appeared. Everything works fine--great--every program except Battlefield 1942 (which is a bit of a resource hog, but nothing my system can't handle and then some). I'll load up the game, load a map, and then play for a couple of minutes when suddenly the game will crash with no warning or error message--it just vanishes.
I messed around with it a bit, increasing virtual memory paging size and making sure my motherboard drivers were updated and stuff, and it didn't help. In fact, at one point, the game blue-screened (split-second, too brief for me to read message, but something about an error. duh) and the whole system rebooted itself. And on restart I got some error message about a driver of an unknown device not being right.
I checked the EA website and there WAS an entry for this problem, but it said it was only if you had a VIA motherboard. I followed their procedure for checking if I had a VIA motherboard and the answer was No. (Mine's an ABIT KG-7 RAID). I went back to look at the Abit site for drivers and, suspiciously, I noticed some mention of VIA stuff (what's VIA? not exactly sure). So many I have a secretly-VIA motherboard?
I followed EA's advice for the solution, downloading a "test driver". Installed it. It didn't help. Installed some kind of IDE driver (whatever that means) from the Abit site, and on restart, my computer froze on the pword screen. Restarted; disk-checked; froze on desktop. Restarted, skipped disk check, and the computer didn't freeze. Tried BF1942 and it crashed. Re-installed BF1942. Restarted. Tried BF1942. It crashed.
So, I'm lost. Could my motherboard be defective/damaged? Did it just become so when I installed the memory? Why isn't it causing trouble in other apps--they're not resource-hoggy enough to trigger it? And most importantly, HOW DO I FIGURE IT OUT if it IS damaged? Is there a diagnostic tool or something?
