After yet another freeze where I attempted to shutdown using keyboard commands, I decided I needed to be more proactive. Windows error reporting system has been useful at least twice now (I discounted it in the past, but they’ve expanded its capabilities that if it can identify a problem, it will tell you something about it). Yesterday, it suggested my video driver wasn’t right. This time it told me I had massive problems with either memory, the CPU, motherboard, or power supply. Based upon the problems I was seeing, I opted to crack the case and check memmory modules.

Sure enough, whomever installed my memory put one chip in each bank (I had two 512M chips). I know some memory has been recommended to be installed that way in times past; however, according to my motherboard owner’s manual, this is not one of those cases. I co-located the chips in a common bank, and I’ll see how things go from here. This sounds like a similar problem to what my hubby experienced with his machine that he sent back earlier this year. I feel sorry for people who are afraid to crack the case on their PCs. If this fixes the problem, it was easy and painless (but shouldn’t have been required–if it does fix the problem, I’ll drop a note to Adamant to let them know their assembly folks need a bit of training).