Nasty problem with my PC

Hi
I have a 7 year old PC thats on Windows XP sp3 that has been working OK without many major glitches since I bought it. Recently I upgraded its RAM to 1GB which is when all the following problems started showing up.
I thought it was for the RAM upgrade as there could have been some incompatiility between the motherboard and the new RAM card. But I had the same problem even without the 'accused' RAM card.

(1) The system will often crash leaving me with blue screens with error messages like http://i54.tinypic.com/9j2d1u.jpg and http://i55.tinypic.com/mkbywx.jpg

(2) The browsers Firefox and Chrome will often crash.

here is the 'hijackthis'

Logfile of Trend Micro HijackThis v2.0.4
Scan saved at 10:50:51 AM, on 10/9/2011
Platform: Windows XP SP3 (WinNT 5.01.2600)
MSIE: Internet Explorer v7.00 (7.00.5730.0013)
Boot mode: Normal


<snip>

 

Did you try it with only the new stick of ram?

 

Now, this is an older mobo. I have seen the case where the CAS latency can be no less than 2.5 on a stick of PC-2700, and the PC will not boot with a DIMM that has a latency of 2.

How far did you go when you researched the new RAM?

The IRQ message definitely means hardware.

 

There is one other option, this is a program I've used in the past, and it has worked very well.

http://www.memtest86.com/

You'd want the .zip file to burn an .iso disc, to run at startup.

Any bit on the memory stick that indicates red, even ONE, means the stick is toast.

Did you get this RAM as a "pull"?

You see, bad bits, can write erroneous data to a hard drive, and that WILL cause major headaches.

 

I have 3 sticks in total. Two are 256 MB each (333 MHz) and the newer one is 1GB (400 MHz). I have tried most of the possible combinations. With the 1 GB stick the system behaves very unstable, for the system would crash in a while. As I go adding up the smaller sticks the system stabilty seems to increase, i.e. with the 1GB and one 256 MB stick the system would crash lesser often , and the browsers too. And with the 1GB stick and both the 256 MB sticks the system feels even stabler in this context, for crashes come less often compared to the above to cases.

 

I am afraid I don't know what the above means.

I noted the FSB of the earlier RAM stick [a 512MB,400MHz] and ordered a new 1GB,400MHz stick.

 

I ran memtest86+ at boot, and I think I saw some reds. But the results differed on the subsequent runs. I will run memtest again.

What is a 'pull' in this context?

I understand this very well. For I was trying to install common softwares on this PC yesterday and the installations failed citing that the files were corrupt and prompting me to download fresher copies of the softwares.

 

I ran memtest86+ at the start up with only the 1GB stick and here is what I got http://i51.tinypic.com/zsnvvm.jpg

 

Ironmaniac , you must check your Ram memory for 6 hours at least to complete the test !! :wave

 

I didn't see the error mate , i was writing my reply to him !! :confused

 

The mekanik, Baklogic, Falconattack, Plodr. Thank you very much.