In Dire Need of Assistance

[KaosDragonDX]

Preface:
Okay, this is my first post in this forum, so I'm sorry if this is the wrong spot for this kind of thread.

Okay, now that that's out of the way...I've been having some serious problems since I upgraded it. Everything is working fine and dandy, however, when ever I try to play a game, it'll completely lock up. The screen will freeze, the music will stop, and nothing will work save for a restart. At first, I thought this was just an issue with World of Warcraft, but its effecting all the games now.

I'm not sure exactly what it is, but I've got a vague idea. I think it has to do with the memory. Aside from the lock ups, WoW will give me an error 230 or something, which says that a certain block of memory can't be read. So, from that, and various tests (Spybot, antivirus, memtests) that I've run, I can only think something is wrong with the RAM.

I'll post my specs, so you guys can get a better idea on where I'm coming from.

Motherboard: ASUS A7N8X-Deluxe, 400 FSB, nForce 2 chipset
CPU: Athlon XP 26004+ @ 2.09GHZ
RAM: 1 stick of 1 gig Corsair DDR400(PC 3200)
Videocard: Radeon (AGP) X850 Pro, 256 MB RAM

Does anyone have any ideas? I've posted threads in nearly every message board I can think of, and I've gotten answers from people saying my harddrive is whacked, to my memory being corrupted. Some answers to common questions are:

No, its not overclocked, nor has it ever been.
No, it is not underclocked, nor has it ever been.
Yes, I've run antivirus/spybot/memtest multiple times, and they've found nothing.

After the crashes, the CPU temp is usually around 55-56 degrees C, so its not overheating(to my knowledge).

Please help, I can't play any games on here, and I'm fairly stupid when it comes to computers. Any and all help would be amazingly awesome!

 

[lhuser]

OK, that seems quite a bit. www.memtest86.com will help you test your memory for errors. If it contains one, change RAM. I would ask you to test one stick at the time.

Now, if this passes, is your video card overheating?
If not, then what is your OS?

 

[KaosDragonDX]

Yeah, it is quite a bit. I've run Memtest86 for about half an hour, and it didn't find anything wrong. I'm fairly sure the videocard isn't over heating, either. I'm currently running Windows XP with starter packs 1 and 2.

 

[lhuser]

What was the OS before?

 

[Tommy Boy]

are you sure your cpu is not overclocked? the 2600+ is the same cpu I have and it runs at a stock speed of 1917mhz (1.9 mhz) not 2.06, you might want to check that in the bios. If it's overclocked a little it will do that, your memory is corsair which is good memory, but I doubt it will let you overclock even a little. You should try another memory stick too so you can eliminate that possibility.

 

[KaosDragonDX]

Okay, new update. Today I switched back to my old RAM before the upgrade, I figured that if it was a memory problem, then that would fix it. Well, it didn't. I still get the same errors in every game.

So, to answer some of the new questions..

What was the OS before?

It has always been Windows XP with service packs 1 and 2.

are you sure your cpu is not overclocked?

Yeup, I'm sure. If it is overclocked, I didn't do it. I'll check the bios after dinner.

Another possibility is the videodrivers. But could videocard drivers lock up even the simplest games? I'm not sure what the drivers I've got are off hand. I'll check after dinner.

 

[Deathstar1]

I'll take a punt and say the video drivers are Catalyst 6.4's, there have been many reports that this release was dodgy, try the new 6.5's or revert back to the 6.3's, and yes it is entirely possible for it to be the video drivers.

 

[lhuser]

I second that. I had experiences with it.

 

[KaosDragonDX]

Hmm..according to my device manager, the drivers are 6.14. Is that one of the aforementioned 6.4's?

 

[PerfectSK]

Yeah, I believe the problem is your video drivers. Unistall your current video drivers, remove any registry entries relating to your ATI video card, install the 6.13 Cataylst drivers from ATI's website.