My Game is Bork, but I'm pretty sure it's not my fault.
Gastfyr:
Quote from: witch on 2008 October 04, 06:15:38
RAM can also go bad, you might have to throw away your current RAM.
Yeah, that's what my husband was saying. Sorry for not being clear. He said the computer has all the sticks of RAM it can fit, but he's going to throw away the two oldest ones and try putting "bigger" sticks in the same slots. Something like that. I have heard about the whole mismatched RAM thing; my one brother tried to explain that to me once. I hope my husband understands it better than I do. lol Research like you said is a good idea; considering how much money all this computer stuff can cost, there's no sense spending money on stuff that won't work.
As to if we've changed our RAM configuration recently, I'm not sure. Well, I'm not sure how recently counts as recently. One of the RAM sticks is newer than the other 2. The newest thing, though, is the video card; my husband replaced the old one so he could run Obilvion on this computer. Of course, at the time, he didn't know about any nVidia crasch bug. I honestly don't remember if the Sims 2 crashing has been worse since he changed to nVidia for the video card, because I know it used to crash anyway. It's been an ongoing problem that just seems to get progressively worse over time.
cwykes:
your problem sounds way over my competence level - backing up now sounds critical to me too though!
DK if this will help much, but I just wondered whether you had other stuff running while you were trying to play sims..... If there is anything running that you can close down, you might gain some playing time before that BSOD hits from other causes. It's not just closing applications you know are running like virus checker, e-mail, msn etc, but using Ctrl Alt Del just before you load the sims to clear out less obvious stuff like quicktime, msoffice quickstart etc... Clearing stuff out of startup is a good move if you play a lot of sims and then there are the Windoze services you don't need. Black Viper's list of what they all do is the one I know. Then there's the question of paging files - size of file required and available contiguous HD space are both issues. There's a "how to" at MTS2 and Paladin has a more advanced set of instructions at SimWardrobe.
Yecats:
Zazazu: I have years and years of photos on my externals, along with music, movies, important documents, university lectures and other stuff that I need for future reference.
In a fire, I wouldn't have time to carry my huge heavy computer out to a safe place, but I can fit both hard drives into the pockets of my jacket and run. They're insured, but that can't bring back the memories.
dragoness:
Yup. Memory errors. Thought so.
The "mismatched RAM" thing is this: Your motherboard has (from the sound of things) 4 slots to put RAM sticks in: A B C D. They are grouped into pairs, AB and CD. If you put just two sticks of RAM total into your system, you need to use AB, not AC or AD, and the two need to be identical. If you put four sticks total, then the pair in AB need to be identical, and the pair in CD need to be identical. Most of the time AB can be different from CD, in my experience, but there's a possibility of buggeration if AB and CD are not identical to each other as well. (Note that AB and CD are not necessarily the two slots next to each other on the board. Often it's the first two of each pair, and the second two of each pair. Your motherboard's manual will tell you which two need to be used together.)
However, I am not familiar with mismatching RAM sticks (as I do not do it) and I don't know if memtest would throw errors because of it. From what I've learned the system should just not load at all, or work very poorly (windows only running for 4mins at a time, or some such), rather than you only having a problem when running a memory intensive game. It suggests much more strongly that there is a serious problem with one or more of your RAM sticks.
Replacing sticks is a good idea, but it isn't necessarily the old RAM causing the problem.
You can diagnose the problem by removing the two new ones and running memtest to look for errors, then removing the old and putting in the new and testing for errors.
Or, you can remove all 4 and replace them with new, which, while costing more money, is far less of a headache.
jolrei:
Quote from: Yecats on 2008 October 04, 08:17:44
Zazazu: I have years and years of photos on my externals, along with music, movies, important documents, university lectures and other stuff that I need for future reference.
In a fire, I wouldn't have time to carry my huge heavy computer out to a safe place, but I can fit both hard drives into the pockets of my jacket and run. They're insured, but that can't bring back the memories.
I think what Zazazu means is that, depending on where you are in the house, and what time of day it is, and how far advanced the fire is when you notice it and have to flee, you may not be in any position to take hardware with you, regardless of how much you might miss the photographs. If I'm asleep and the fire alarm goes off, that means that the fire is already advanced enough to create significant smoke (dangerous) and may be burning quite well. I'm thinking I would likely grab the people and kitteh and just go. It's sad to lose the memories, but I'd rather be alive to miss my photographs than the alternative.
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