Bad RAM or Mbd timing problem or ???

[weswag]

ASUS AV7133 mbd, AMD 1.0 ghz thunderbird w/266mhz FSB, 256MB PC133 RAM, Win 98se.
When BIOS set for "standard" mode, with bus at 100mhz and DRAM speed set to 100mhz, system seems stable, but of course the CPU clock speed is reduced, running at 750mhz. When BIOS set to "User Define" with bus at 133mhz and DRAM at 133mhz, boots fine with CPU running at 1ghz, but new, clean install of win 98se on newly formatted drive exhibits erratic behavior/hangs/reports inability to load HIMEM.SYS due to unreliable memory at address 00813020. Resetting BIOS to "standard" mode seemed to clear up the problem, then Windows would hang or give error msg "error starting windows while initializing device VCACHE. windows protection error." Attempting to step through a windows boot in safe mode produced the HIMEM.SYS error mess again. Moved SDRAM to different slot, still get HIMEM.SYS error, but reporting unreliable memory at address 00817020. It appears that windows won't load if HIMEM.SYS doesn't load correctly.
This is all done on a stripped down, minimal system, with no PCI cards and the ATA Raid turned off in the BIOS. Using latest ASUS bios ver and VIA drivers.
So. I suspect bad RAM, with problems that kick in when try to run DRAM at 133mhz. Any ideas? Suggestions? How to test RAM?

 

[butchrecon]

Replace your RAM. First get some different RAM and try it again. If it goes ok then you know its bad RAM. If it still errors out then it could be a CPU or main board issue. Easiest to try the RAM and get back to us. James Collins
Systems Support Engineer
A+, MCP

email: butchrecon@skyenet.net

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