Memory Problems

I have a new Dell XPS 630i with 4 GB corsair RAM. Recently while playing WoW I started getting crashes indicating memory problems. At first I thought maybe a mod was causing the problem, as two memory dumps indicated a mod program in the dump text. I removed that mod and though I was fine. Then it happened again. Here are the errors..

The instruction at "0x04B2C7C8" referenced memory at "0x478EB57C".
The memory could not be "read".

The instruction at "0x04A4C7C8" referenced memory at "0x4F2A709C".
The memory could not be "read".

The instruction at "0x04B3C7CE" referenced memory at "0x05D3A65C".
The memory could not be "read".

The instruction at "0x04BFC7C8" referenced memory at "0x1F2BB50C".
The memory could not be "read".

The instruction at "0x04ADC7C8" referenced memory at "0x418B193C".
The memory could not be "read".

2 errors on one day, 3 on another, a few days apart. I ran the Dell memory diagnostics twice but they don't find anything.

I ran chkdisk and it didn't find anything. No other programs have memory dumps, but I have had a lockups here and there but nothing like WoW.

Question 1, do these error specifically point to hardware memory or could it be a disk problem (swap file)?

Question 2, I've heard Dell techs at work mention before they had to run a memory test 4 or 5 times to find the problem with memory on a server, should I run the memory test a bunch of times?

I'm running Vista ultimate, not too pleased with it. When I open the event viewers I don't see any mention of the WoW memory problems. Usually when a program is able to capture that data it's mirrored in the event viewer.

I'm a little at a loss trying to pinpoint the problem. It appears to be physical memory but i want to be sure. Without a failed diagnostics I don't see how i'll get Dell to replace a DIMM.

Stat

 

It sounds like there are about 4 possibilities for the failure.
1) Game trying to read WOW disk and is getting errors.
2) Bad RAM
3) Bad HDD
4) Software errors.

for diagnostics
1) run burn in test: http://www.passmark.com/products/bit.htm
When you run it, put the WOW disk in the drive. It will stress test multiple hardware devices including your cd-rom drive and video card.
2) one of the best RAM testers is: http://majorgeeks.com/Memtest86_d4226.html
You can run it through 2 or 3 passes to be sure, though any RAM problems should be caught before the first pass is done.
3) When you ran your chkdsk, it should have told you if there were any bad sectors. They may indicate a physical hard drive problem. Running chkdsk again may ignore the bad sectors discovered by the previous scan and not tell you anything.
4) You have already ran chkdsk. Maybe you will have to re-install the game.

 

Well the WoW disk isn't in the machine when the game runs so i'll skp that part.

When I ran chkdisk i didn't sit around watching it, I came back and my machine had booted. I did watch it start though. I wish I knew where the log was written for that scan.

I did reinstall the game from scratch. In fact I removed it, then defragmented for about 30 minutes, then downloaded a fresh copy of the game and mods (took me 3 hours).

Then this memory problem started happening. The reason I did all of that before was there was a "corrupt file" in WoW that running repair.exe wouldn't fix. I wanted fresh files and installed in a new place (defragmentation first). Then after doing all of that, I started getting these memory errors.

Last night I ran the command line more thorough defragment. I guess i'll run another chkdisk and watch it, and maybe another memory scan.

I guess my biggest question is, when you get a memory dump like this how do you know if it's accessing physical memory or swap file memory at the time?

Stat

 

I'm not sure. I would run memtest86+ that I linked to earlier. The program only works with RAM, Processor and Motherboard. So if the computer BSOD (ie: displays a blue screen with white text and possibly reboot), you know it is caused by one of those three devices or the power supply.

 

I think I might be on to something. I should have really checked out the Blizzard support section first. They have specific things to do for error 132. They say that even though the error appears to point to physical memory, it could be a myriad of things including those that I've checked already, and things I haven't like updating ALL of my drivers and firmware, especially motherboard chipset, etc..

So I broadened my search and found several posts from people with my same machine type, most of them even the same model. But the one thing they all had in common was they had a Dell with the same new Nvidia NForce chipset. Basically Nvidia is getting into the motherboard/gpu/nic market and this new dell has one of their new all-in-one motherboards with the SLI capability. They also ran all kinda of diagnostics which showed no problems and interfaced with Dell and Blizzard and got no where with them. (sounds familiar)

They had some interesting theories, some about overheating some about Nforce management software.

I updated all of my drivers and firmware and played for about 3 hours tonight no crashes. If I crash again I'll continue my search.

I'm going to change one thing at a time until I solve this mystery!

Stat

 

But the big question is, have you ruled out the RAM yet?

 

No I haven't. I have ran the extended memory test from the Dell diagnostics twice and it passed. I'm not sure what else I can do in that area. Not only that, but aside from just being pushy with them I would need some evidence before they give me a replacement.

 

Wow I just sent an email asking them to keep my ticket open for a short while and they sent me this.. that's not bad service. Definitely an option I'll pursue.

"Thank you for the informaion you have provided about the Memory failure your XPS630 is having. For us to completely resolve this concern, I will be sending out a replacement for the

motherboard and the 4 pieces of the 1GB memory. The said parts will be send to our onsite tech on the next business day. When the tech receives it, he will contact you via

phone to schedule an appointment to replace them within 2 - 3 business days. In relation to this, what is the contact phone numbers and address from where the Service

will be performed?"

 

that's nice

 

Ever since i updated the BIOS firmware, and Video drivers to the very latest I've had no problems.

You may wonder why I didn't have my vid driver all the way up to date. It was only a couple months old. I updated it then had a problem with BF2142. It was a common black screen problem so I rolled the driver back. I heard that rolling back the driver for an SLI configuration was problematic on it's own. I updated the vid drivers and found a "tweak" int he Nvidia control palen to fix my black screen problem with 2142.

Cheers!
Stat