Misplaced memory=system instability after 4 months?

[Fred69]

Here a small issue on my friend's pc. This fall he bought a brand new computer and then ask me to mount it. So he chose all his pieces. Here his config:

mobo: asus a8n-e
chipset: nf4 ultra
mem: 2X 1Gig DDR 400 dual channel
cpu: athlon 64 3700+ 1meg cache
graphic: asus geforce 7800 GTX
power: 400 watt
HD: SATA WD1200 and his old 80gig IDE

So it's a top computer. But after about 4 months and maybe before that, he got a blue screen: system file damaged...DLL, etc. rebooting the comp was enough to resolve the problem for a while...but it happened a number of times over weeks and then, when he installed a new mouse, the system was pretty instable until he cannot boot XP.

I remember it was about a reading error (just like memory problems) and it suggested it was a main system file, like a big dll that was corrupted. I thought it could be a memory problem but the memory was brand new so this time I reinstalled windows.

Now the same problem has coming out and I understood, yesterday, that one memory stick was in the wrong slot. There are 4 slots, 1 blue 1 black 1 blue 1 black..I've put the 2 sticks in the 2 first slot, not considering the colours for DUAL CHANNEL. Now it is in the first and third slot, working in dual, like in the manual recommandation.

Some other things were wrong, like his 1st bootable hard drive was slave.. not good

And windows is on the sata (faster) disk but a XP kernel was already existing on the IDE while installing windows, so the windows setup didn't change that. It is stupid, we can't control where windows puts his basic files, like the kernel.

1st: IDE with kernel - now master was slave
2st: sata with windows - master also because it's sata

MY 100$ QUESTION: THE PROBLEM WAS DUE TO:
THE MEMORY PLACEMENT
THE BOOTABLE HARD DRIVE WAS SLAVE
THE KERNEL ON A DISK AND WINDOWS ON ANOTHER
A CORRUPTED FILE
???

 

[mainegeek]

Fred69,
If I understand this correctly, you have an IDE drive on a master controler with a previously installed XP OS on it and a SATA drive with a fresh installed XP OS on it?

Was the IDE drive in a different system when the OS was installed on it?

Did the SATA drivers get installed correctly on the SATA drive at the onset of the XP installation?

Also,how is the boot order set in the bios?

If it were me, I would remove the IDE drive from the equation and boot with the SATA drive and then while in windows verify the boot path using msconfig and then add the IDE drive with out listing it as a boot device from with in the bios.

 

[Fred69]

If I understand this correctly, you have an IDE drive on a master controler with a previously installed XP OS on it and a SATA drive with a fresh installed XP OS on it?"

not really, i never installed windows on the IDE. only the kernel as been installed there

"Was the IDE drive in a different system when the OS was installed on it?"

no.

"Did the SATA drivers get installed correctly on the SATA drive at the onset of the XP installation?"

When i first mounted the pc, no. At that time I didn't use a floppy disk. But yesterday, when I made the "Fresh" install, I used the sata driver on a floppy and the "S" key in setup. I formatted the sata driver and installed windows on this partition. But it still need to boot on the IDE first, because as I said, there is no kernel files (NTLDR) on the sata, it uses the IDE's files.

"Also,how is the boot order set in the bios?"

I repeat:
1st: IDE with kernel - now master was slave
2st: sata with windows - master also because it's sata

I can't boot on sata -- no kernel on it!

 

[Fred69]

Ok my question was more about the dual channel memory. Can we get blue screens when a memory module is in the wrong slot?