Weird Things Happening With Compy...

[BobtheGreatII]

So my story pretty much starts a lot of months ago... I decided to make the major switch to Intel. I put together a system made up of, an i5, Evga p55 ftw 200 motherboard, and... by accident, a g-skill triple channel kit. Now... I was super excited to have the cash to buy my upgrade, I didn't really look too much over it, considering I had made the wish list several months before my purchase. Well, if you know anything, the p55 ftw 200 is only a dual channel dimm setup. That was my first mistake. My second mistake was that I didn't look for an IDE connection on the board for my dvd drive. Well, it didn't have one, so I got an LG Multi - Blu Bluray drive. Things seemed pretty okay after all that. I installed only two sticks of ram, leaving the third sitting around, and I managed to overclock to 4ghz (I have a modified H50 with a res) and ran prime 95 for 7 hours without a single hickup. At the time I had two 5770's in my computer... but I managed to get my hands on a 470.

Now here's the problem: Ever since I first put these components together, I've been running in to nonstop problems. Blue Screens, Aero keeps crashing back to normal blue, firefox crashing, other programs randomly crashing, the list goes on. Just like anyone else, I figured I may have gotten a virus. So I formatted, and did a clean install. I've done this twice now. For the life of me I can't figure out what's wrong. I have two guesses. It could very well be my power supply (550 watt max :saddowns:) or that triple channel ram with only two sticks installed. Are either of these guesses close? Does anyone else have any ideas. I'm starting to get really tired of it now, it's been almost 5 months of this now. It's getting old quickly. Help please. :gonk:

Thanks.

[InnerGoat]

5 months of this? What is wrong with you lol.

The PSU could be on its way out, or perhaps a stick of ram is bad? Maybe your modded H50 let a drop out one night and shorted something. Run everything at stock speed if you haven't already, try only one stick of ram at a time, unplug devices not necessary to boot into windows, etc etc.
Start troubleshooting~

Good luck!

[Patssj6]

Overclocking causes problems as well. Can be also a faulty Mobo or HDD.

HDD can be tested if you do that disc check..if many errors show up then something is wrong with it.

[Cortexian]

I'd ditch any OC, reset the BIOS to all the default settings and start from there. This doesn't sound like a OS or Program issue, more like hardware. Try swapping the sticks of RAM you have in the system for the extra one lying around and run a torture test for an hour or two. It's possible one of the RAM modules could be messed up, but only using two of the three shouldn't cause any problems.

[BobtheGreatII]

Thanks for the responses guys. Today has been the worse for it. I'm just not sure. I've tried swapping the sticks one by one. All seemed fine. Mem check doesn't show anything. I've gotten 3 blue screens today. One I managed to catch that said "PFN_List_Corrupt". After looking around, it seemed to have to do with improper drivers? But I'm not sure. I have the greatest feeling that it's my power supply. I'm just running out of options. The BSOD were happening before I over clocked. I also don't think it's windows. But could a low amount of power to the graphics card and the motherboard cause memory errors and Aero to keep crashing? One last thing I'm running in to is programs not wanting to start, saying I don't have administrative privileges. And I don't mean games or anything. Like, AVG won't turn on until I restart a couple of times. It's just the strangest things. Thanks for the help guys. I'm just getting a little fed up with it.

[Patssj6]

Well I am pretty sure it's the HDD or the connection to it. Those errors seem like corrupted files / drivers which start to fail when the HDD is failing. Like I said do a disc check and see if there are any errors.

[BobtheGreatII]

Okay. I just ordered a new power supply, an ssd, and a second 470. I'll let you guys know the news probably next week. Thanks a ton for the help you guys.

[Warsaw]

Try cleaning your graphics card, too. Might be an overheat issue forcing it to either blue-screen or shut off 3D acceleration at the desktop. As for the Administrator issues...yeah, it's Windows being retarded.

Also, just for future reference, it's not just P55 that is incapable of triple-channel, it's any CPU using the LGA1156 socket. As such, I don't consider the i7 860 to be a true i7, it's just a glorified i5. A real i7 has 1366 pins and runs on the X58 chipset only. The new LGA1155 socket still does not support triple-channel RAM. I imagine they are saving that for LGA2011.

[BobtheGreatII]

Interesting. I had no idea. And yeah, it was just a retarded move on my part. I didn't double check anything. When I get my new stuff here probably next week, I'll probably take the entire system out and just clean everything.