Responses will be all over the place. That's the nature of computer troubleshooting. You make a hypothesis, test it, make another, test it, and so on. You get different responses because most failures, especially complex ones, can be caused by more than one component failing in more than one way.

It's not like anyone can tell you, "ok, if you get a blue screen when you do this, you've got a bum resistor on your motherboard." Sometimes solutions are clear-cut, but they very often aren't, especially if they're intermittent.

For extra fun, sometimes it's two or more components at once. That's always a ton of fun to fix.

Rule #1 of troubleshooting: change only one thing at a time. Change. Test. Change. Test. Never make more than one change at any given time. This single technique will save you more time than anything else I know of. Multiple changes at once only LOOKS like a shortcut.

I thought Rule #1 was, 'Is everything plugged in?'

I thought it was "It's all the user's fault"

I thought the number one rule for troubleshooting was reboot.

Besides, you never ask if it is plugged in.

The correct phrasing is, "Please remove the power cord from the back of the component, and plug it back in."

"Oh, yeah, that took care of it ... thanks."

Sure. Of course it did.

squeeze it harder

OK here's the problem.

I am trying to put the following system together:

2x Crucial Ballistix 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 250GB
Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 Conroe 2.33GHz
GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L Motherboard
GECUBE Radeon HD 3850 256MB
SPARKLE ATX-400PN-B204 400W Power Supply

with whatever my NEC IDE DVD drive is, and my 801.11g D-LINK wireless card is, in my old Antec Sonata case, with WinXP Home (first install was with my original XP disc, which is from 2001 original release, and the subsequent installs have been with that version slipstreamed with SP2).

The first time I put everything together, I found one of the RAM sticks showed errors within 5 seconds of running memtest, so I took that out and RMA'd it. I installed everything, XP, installed AVG virus, started downloading XP patches, etc, had to activate (which is itself annoying, as I'm on my 7th? 8th? complete system reinstall with this license of XP, and they always tell me I'm over my limit of installs...), etc etc. Got through with all the patches, put on a minimal set of apps, and then WoW. Enjoy everything for about a day and a half, and then things start crashing, such as the screensaver, and WoW, and WoW starts telling me that there are corrupt files. I do chkdsk and it says there are file system errors, it tries to fix on a reboot, but subsequent chkdsks still show errors. Seagate Tools finds errors and says it fixes them, but still shows errors after the "fix".

I try a reinstall again, with same results after a day or 2.

On advice from another forum, I RMA the drive and try another 250GB Seagate a friend lent me (brand new). Reinstall everything, same results after a day or 2.

Somewhere in here I try flashing the BIOS (except I have no floppy drive so I do it from within Windows using Gigabyte's utility), with same results afterwards.

I figure it must be the motherboard/disk controller, and RMA the motherboard.

2-3 weeks later I have a new replacement motherboard. Reinstall everything again, with the new mobo, disk, and memory that were all RMAd. Everything is working fine for about 7-10 days. Around day 2 or 3 out of curiosity I run chkdsk and it says something strange such as there are blocks allocated that don't match the filesystem or something. I run Seagate tools, both short and long test, and short test reveals nothing, but long test does find something, which it says it fixes, but the text scrolls by too fast to read what the details were, and the command it says to use to view the log file doesn't work. Then one day around 7-10 days after rebuild as I'm in the midst of playing WoW, it crashes and tells me files are corrupt. Now the whole box crashes randomly and I've turned it off as you can't count on using it at all.

So that's the long of it. I did change one thing at a time and replaced everything except the CPU, GPU, cd drive, and 1 stick of RAM. I've posted on 4 or 5 different forums, as well as Seagate and Gigabyte support, and I still have no clear ideas on what the problem may be. I was going to return the mobo for a refund and try a different vendor and model, but Newegg says I can't, so I guess I'm screwed.

Appreciate any advice.

Yeah, I'd lean in the direction of thinking either the PSU or your remaining RAM stick.

Have you tried running the system with just the RAM that was RMAed?

In the bios, under P.C. Health, what are the voltage readings from the psu? I just had to replace a psu that was putting out around 14.5-15V on the 12V rail and thereby causing all kinds of problems.

First, let me preface this by saying I don't know much about memory and voltages, so hopefully someone else can chime in. I believe that DDR18V should be running at 1.8V +/- 5%. So, you're outside that. Also, that memory says it runs at 2.2V. Is it possible there is a compatibility issue with that RAM and motherboard? Honestly, I don't know what the implications (if any) are of this, but it may be worth looking into a bit.

As far as power supplies are concerned: one thing you could try is to go to your local best buy/circuit city/etc and grab a beefier psu from them and run it for a week or two and see if it fixes the problem. If it doesn't, then you can return it (probably much more easily than if you buy it online). And even if it does, you could technically still return it and then buy one you like better from newegg.

I just received the 700W PSU I linked before yesterday, and spent last night re-installing WinXP, patches, drivers, WoW, and downloading the latest WoW patch (900MB!). It's all installed but I haven't done anything with it yet. If it is something other than the power, then I have to wait 3-10 days to know if it's good or bad I guess. It was probably the power...

The only downside is that the 700W PSU, despite supposedly being "super-silent" according to ads and the user reviews on Newegg, is actually kind of annoying. It's not so much that it's too loud, it's just that the noise it does make is rather noticeable and different than all the other ambient electronic noise. Sigh.

Have you ruled out a compatibility issue between the motherboard and ram? Have you tried a different brand, speed, etc of ram in there? Go here click on Memory Support List for a list of compatible memory (I don't see many Crucial entries on that list). And again, I'd recommend using your local best buy or whatever to test this. Much easier to return if it doesn't fix the problem, and you could have a couple of new sticks in there today, rather than waiting on shipping and whatnot. But I'm also an impatient bastard when it comes to stuff like this

Honestly, I really don't know. It just seems like you've exhausted just about every other potential source for problems. So, to me, trying different ram seemed like the next logical step. Let us know what happens.

Wow! Sorry for all the problems you are having. I've never known anyone having as much problems as you have experienced.

The good news is, you did need a new PS whether it was the source of your problems or not.

I have to call them because when I do the online activation, it tells me I'm over my limit of installs for my license. Which is just absolute BS.