as title says since building my pc 2ish years ago i have had an on and off crashing to BSOD problem - can be fine for weeks or even months then i get a day of sheer hell where even logging onto windows can crash me after 30sec - completely unpredictable but mostly seems to happen soon after startup as once i get into a game performance is fine and rarely if ever crashes. however just recently the problem has got much much worse rendering my pc unusable - frequently after crashes the MBR gets corrupted or the bios says "invalid checksum" and asks me to update it (already have done since, no change, a reboot after 30sec and error doesn't reappear till next crash and not always) running win7 x64 home premium fully updated as well as latest graphics and bios updates, no common feature in programmes running at time. run AVG and win7 security, memcheck (on each memory stick individually and the pair) and chkdsk, no errors. no overclocking, everything at bios default. speedfan reports no noticably high running temps plus as mentioned game performance is fine so unlikely to be heat/power. crash never happens outside windows (have fully re-installed over the top recently to no luck, have had crashes and HD errors today trying to install to another disk with OS disk unplugged - disk wis working fine and passes chkdsk). full specs at bottom. any help would be appreciated even if it's just things to unplug and try, at the end of my tether. suspect it may be a memory or more likely motherboard problem - been fine for the last 2 hours with 1 memory stick removed, i did notice they were getting uncomfortably hot at normal SPD settings. can run current games no prob (albeit slower from 2gb ram). don't really want to buy a new mobo unless i have to as the fact i'm fine most of the time then i get a single day of constant crashes means something is off. specs : win7 home premium x64 (registered) phenom II x2 550 black asus m4a77TD pro mobo 2x2gb XMS3 corsair ram asus 5770 1gb AMD graphics 500W Silverstone Strider ST50F-230 ta -Dave <edit> photo taken earlier, note error code is 0x0000001A which seems to be a memory error http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/196/dscf1543qw.jpg/
Download and burn a bootable iso that includes memtest x86 and let it run tests on each of your sticks of ram in turn. Just a thought - what voltage are you running the ram at? Is it set manually to what it's specced to run at? Have a look at the label on one of the ramsticks and it should say on there - it may be 1.6 or 1.65v.
Make sure you run memtest from a bootable DVD or USB stick when you start up the PC Then Make sure you test each stick on its own (pull one out, run memtest, then repeat it for the other stick) Also leave memtest for at least 4 runs.
already done memchk on both sticks individually and together in the main dual channel slots - last night moved them to the secondary slots (right next to cpu fan, yuk) and not had a problem since. memchk seems to agree, 9 loops with no errors. will leave it for now as the problem often vanished for weeks then reared it's ugly head again but it seems almost certain some memory controller on the board is borked which doesn't sound cheap or easy to fix cheers for replies, we'll see if this had done the job
