Ive got a bit of a head scratcher here. First some background;

I was on a quest to upgrade my storage server. Picked up a Pentium III 1GHZ for cheap along with a stick of pc133 256mb. This computer was running a PIII 550 overclocked to 616, with 768 mb of ram.

I threw the new processor and ram in there, and decided to add a pci bus tweak at the same time, then i turned it on and prayed lol. I allready figured out that the pci bus tweak was the cause of my system instability. But now i have wierd ram problems. The computer came up fine the first time i set it right, and was fine for hours afterwards. But after about 6 hours or so the system will hard freeze, upon reboot it reports a ram size that is a good 2 to 3 times below what it should be. If i restart a few times, I will get sizes anywhere from 2xx, to 6xx mb. If i turn it off for a few minutes, fiddle with the ram a bit, it usualy goes back to reporting its full size again, and will run find untill its next freeze where it will go back to reporting a lower number of ram. I have played with it a bit, switching out pieces of ram. I thought i had a problem stick POINTED out and i took it out. But now its back to the same problem again.

This old board is fully loaded. Current specs:

GA-6BXE (motherboard)
Slot 1 Pentium III 1ghz
768mb of ram (in 4 slots)

AGP - Geforce 4 MX420 64mb Video card
PCI - USB 2.0 Card
PCI - Sound Card
PCI - SATA/IDE Raid Card
PCI - 56k Modem
PCI - 10/100mbps Nic
ISA - 10MBPS Nic

3 IDE HDD's
1 IDE CDROM
1 SATA HDD
1 External USB CDROM

---------------

This computer has always been the ol workhorse. Always stable and rock solid. Im scratching my head as to how to stop it from going ram crazy...Here is a pic of the inards:

Have you tried replacing the CMOS battery ? ?
About the size of a dime on the MBoard.
Part # CR2032.

As always when working inside the case remove all power sources and take anti-static precautions...I dont believe the CMOS battery is to blame here. Its not loosing the CMOS information. onlly freezing then i have to reboot it and its starts reporting a variety of ram values on each reboot. Im a PC tech by profession, I take all standard precautions.It's just a standard precaution i list every time.
Without being clairvoyant i cannot assume the user's skill level.
The only reason i suggested the CMOS battery is you are getting random RAM sizes REPORTED...
This is a function of the BIOS.

If MemTest reported no errors at all the next thing i would try would be to remove the RAM.
Clean the contacts with QTips and rubbing alcohol.
And before re-seating them blow out the RAM slots with compressed air.Quote from: Maul555 on July 29, 2007, 08:41:52 AM

Im a PC tech by profession