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Thanks, grimfusion. My story had a surprise ending as it turned out. After Staples installed a second batch of new RAM to replace the first batch they installed, the PC continued to crash. So they did a slot-by-slot test of the RAM and discovered that one of my RAM slots is causing the problem. As long as there’s no RAM in that slot, the PC runs fine.

As a final test to confirm that the slot itself was bad, they put one of my old sticks of known-good RAM into the slot and the crashes reappeared. So they had to leave that slot empty, which means I now have 3GB instead of the full 4GB.

Since it was my computer that caused the problem, I didn’t feel I could ask for any money back. It was a long, frustrating process that began back in early February, so I’m glad to have my machine back.

Thanks to everyone here who helped me. I couldn’t have gotten through this without you.

Russ

Okay, folks, I need your help. Staples is playing hardball. I just called them to check on my computer and the tech said the memory test he ran (PC Doctor) showed no errors. This guy fancies himself the know-it-all expert who by default knows more than the clueless customer. He touted the $400 cost of PC Doctor and asked me if the memory tester I ran was a free program. With a remark like that, you know he’ll never give you a fair hearing. Then he tried to impress me by saying he’s been working with computers since he was 12.

I asked him if he had done some test runs on the computer to see if it crashed. He said he had and that it had not crashed. I don’t believe him.

He said that he had determined within a day or so after I had brought the PC back that there was no problem with the new RAM. So I asked him why someone hadn’t called me with the results. He said they didn’t have a record of my phone number because I hadn’t filled out anything when I brought the PC back. I told him I certainly had, including my address and phone number. Then he asked me who I dealt with, and when I told him, he said something like that guy wasn’t authorized to accept turn-ins for repair. I think you get the picture that this guy has nothing but excuses for every possible thing you ask him.

He also told me that when I first brought the computer in, it was crashing before he installed the new RAM. That’s not quite what happened since their other tech (who is a very nice guy) is the guy I dealt with when I originally took the PC to them. That other tech did a test boot and there was no crash, which he documented on the invoice he gave me (which I will show them when I go back to the store).

I asked him (the uncooperative tech) if he had tried replacing the RAM he had put in to see if that solved the crashing problem. He said he couldn’t do that because he would have to order more RAM from the home office, and since PC Doctor showed no memory errors, he couldn’t justify it.

Do you know any specifics about PC Doctor? Is it a good memory tester?

Is there anything I can tell him to try to convince him that Memtest86 is a good program?

I asked the guy if he’d boot the computer and let it run for an hour or so. I told him I’d call him back in an hour to see if it had crashed. (Update: It’s now an hour later and I called him back. He wasn’t there, so I’ll have to wait for him to call back.)

I’d really appreciate any advice you have on this.

Russ

BobFo:

When I loaded XP, includng SP2, onto the PC after I had reformatted the hard drive, the computer would freeze up after just a short time. So the crashes began before I updated with SP3. Every single time I’ve rebooted the PC ever since Staples replaced the RAM, it eventually crashes.

DrWho:

I don’t know what brand of RAM Staples uses. I asked the Staples tech that question before I had the work done, but he said he didn’t know because the company just sends the local store the RAM to be installed. Ironically, before I decided to take it to Staples, I had gone to Crucial.com and run the test that determines the type of RAM you need. I had thought about just ordering the RAM from Crucial and installing it myself, but when I opened the PC to take a look, there were several cables running directly over the RAM area, plus there was all kinds of dust all over the place, so I chickened out. I thought I might mess something up. And I thought maybe you had to do something in addition to just installing the RAM, like run some kind of program to let the PC know there was new RAM. I even took the printout of the Crucial test results to Staples and gave it to them (so I did some of their work for them).

Jerry:

Thanks for the info. Your suggestion of running Memtest86 has been the key to this whole issue.

Thanks to all of you for your feedback.

Here’s an update on this whole thing:

I took the computer back to Staples on March 25 and gave them the printouts of the Memtest results showing errors with the RAM. I told them all about the crashes and the amount of time I had spent trying to figure out what was causing them. Staples said they’d get back to me within 72 hours. I haven’t heard a word from them since then, so it’s been a little over two weeks. I’m actually glad they’ve taken so long because I plan to ask for my money back and this will give me more ammunition. My main basis for wanting a refund is that I spent several weeks trying to figure out why the PC was crashing after I got it back from Staples. I figure a rough estimate of the time I spent on that is maybe 30 hours. Assuming that the RAM they installed is actually defective, I believe I deserve a refund. If it’s not the RAM, then I’m not sure what I’ll do. But the basic fact is this: When I took the PC to them initially to have RAM installed, the machine was not crashing. When I got it back from them with the new RAM, it was crashing. And since Memtest86 showed that there were errors in the RAM, it seems very likely that the RAM they installed is causing the crashes. If I don’t hear from them in a few more days, I’ll call them.

Russ

Clint:

Even if I’m out of the warranty period, I don’t expect any problem getting Staples to replace the defective RAM. After they installed it, the guy told me that the machine was locking up shortly after boot. He said he tried to go back to a restore point, but it didn’t work and he didn’t know why. He had also done an overnight virus scan and told me he found about five viruses, which he said he believed were causing the lock-ups. He offered me two ways they could remove the viruses, one for $150 and the other for $90. I don’t believe in paying someone to try to remove viruses, so I took the machine home and reformatted the hard drive, but the locking-up never went away. I ended up reformatting it twice more, but the crashes continued. Then Jerry suggested using Memtest, which showed errors with the RAM. I’ll take the printouts of the Memtest results to Staples and show them.

BigMac56:

As you can see from my reply to Clint, Staples Office Supplies is where I had the RAM work done. So I’ll let them take care of it.

Thanks to both of you for your advice.

Sorry for the delay in getting back. I haven’t had much free time in the last few days, plus the computer crashing problem slowed down my testing.

As Jerry suggested, I opened up the PC case to be sure it was clean inside, and it was, because I had had the RAM installed by Staples Office Supplies and they apparently cleaned it out.

(I don’t know why my attachments were put here—maybe I had my cursor there or something. They apply to what I say further down.)

Next, I did a chkdsk /r and it came up clean, with no crash.33487-Memtest-results-froze-at-0-58-1433488-Memtest-results-froze-at-2-47-57

Then I ran Memtest, and had a lot of the same freeze-ups I’ve talked about in this thread, where the PC will not respond to Ctrl-Alt-Delete and you have to hold in the power button to turn it off. Interestingly, it kept freezing up at the 0:06:49 mark on the timer on the Memtest screen. That happened maybe 10 times. In between, however, Memtest would sometimes keep running beyond the 6:49 mark and some errors did show up. Since the PC eventually froze every time I ran Memtest, I had to manually type (on another computer) what the Memtest frozen screen looked like. I’ve attached two of those final frozen Memtest readouts.

Another interesting thing about the different repetitions I did of Memtest is that the results weren’t always the same. For example, the attachment with a Time of 0:58:14 shows 80 errors (at the far right on the same line as the Time), and it shows 7 errors for Test 6 in the Errors column on the bottom half of the screen. But another repetition of the test with a Time of 0:58:17, just three seconds longer (not attached), showed no errors.

The second attachment shows the run that lasted the longest, 2:47:57. It had the most errors with 260 (far right, middle of screen) and 25 errors in the Errors column for Text 6 (bottom half of screen).

The errors always occurred in Test #6, which is described as “[Block move]” in the top portion of the screen.

My conclusion from this is that some of the RAM that Staples installed is defective and I need to have them redo the job.

Do you have any thoughts about these test results?

Last night I did a complete reformat of my hard drive for the third time in the past couple of weeks. I wanted to find out once and for all why I was getting so many crashes. The DVDs I have of the XP Media Center operating system are two “Recovery Disks” I created using the instructions that came with my computer when I bought it. The disks include SP2 but not SP3.

After the installation was done, I just let the computer sit awhile to see if it would crash. After about an hour, I checked it and it was frozen and would not respond to Ctrl-Alt-Delete. So I turned it off by holding in the power button. It had been set to go into Standby mode after 25 minutes, so I thought maybe that had caused it. So I set it to never go into Standby and let it sit again. A half hour later it was frozen again.

I’ve checked the hard drive using SpinRite from grc.com and there are no errors.

I have a feeling this is a software problem because I never had crashing problems before I began the reformats. Is it worth buying another copy of XP? I realize Microsoft will end support for XP in April 2014, but I had just added 4G of RAM before I was forced to reformat. (I would not have added the RAM had I known I’d be having these reformatting issues.) The expanded RAM is for an audio recording program I use called Audacity, so I may continue to use this PC just for that (as a non-Internet machine) even after Microsoft stops supporting XP.

Do you think it’s worth buying another copy of XP? Or are there other diagnostics I should run? Are there websites that have diagnostic programs to check hardware?

I’d appreciate any advice you have.

Well, I just downloaded the SP3 file, burned it to a CD, and inserted the CD when sfc /scannow asked for it. A message appeared telling me it was the wrong disk. And it’s actually right, because the original message had asked for the “Windows XP Professional Service Pack 3 CD,” and the version I burned to CD is just the plain version, not the pro version.

So I’ve been searching for SP3 for XP Pro and it appears that it’s not free. I’m getting pretty confused by all of this. Can someone tell me where I can download SP3 for XP Pro without paying for it?

Thanks, Clint and Joe. You’ve been very helpful and I hope to try what you’ve told me in the next few days. If I have any trouble, you may be hearing from me again!

Russ

Clint:

Thanks for the slipstream suggestion. As you mentioned, creating a disk image will save a lot of time the next time Windows has to be reinstalled. I’m intending to do the image as soon as I can get my operating system stable and get rid of the crashes.

Joe:

Forgive me, but I don’t understand what that procedure does. I’m not at my computer, so I can’t go through the steps to see what the current value of SourcePath is. Could you explain a little about why that procedure is necessary? Thanks.

I appreciate all the suggestions, but I’m still wondering why the sfc /scannow command insists that you insert an SP3 CD rather than simply accessing the files from Microsoft’s website. Does Microsoft assume you might not have a legal copy of Windows? It seems to me that if you have the Microsoft Genuine Advantage update on your computer (which I do, proving that I have a legal copy of Windows), sfc /scannow should be smart enough to detect that and then go to Microsoft’s website for whatever replacement files it needs instead of demanding that I have a physical CD with SP3 on it. (If you have detected some irritation in my words, you’re absolutely right.)

Actually I’ve already uninstalled SP3 and reinstalled. I also discovered that Windows Update will not run if you don’t have SP3 installed. So you’re forced to install that first, and it has to be installed manually.

But thanks for the thought.

Resolved: I contacted the guy who set up our macros and templates and he said the problem is caused by his custom programming.

Gary,

I’ll have to check. We were discussing that possibility before I posted. We have a custom set of macros integrated into our system. However, there are other Word options that can be changed and do stay from one session of Word to the next, e.g., setting Smart Quotes. It seems odd that some options will hold and others will not.

Russ

I’ve used Open Office for several years on my home computer (Windows XP) and it’s been fine. As you may have noticed, there are equivalents for most of the Microsoft Office programs (Excel, PowerPoint). I would suggest that when you save your documents in Open Office, you save them as Word documents. In the “Save” dialog box, in the “Save as type” window, I always choose “Word 97-2003 Document (*.doc)”. That maintains the compatibility with Word and you can open and revise those documents using Word on another computer. If you don’t save them this way, they will be incompatible with Word.

I’ve also used the Open Office spreadsheet program (Excel equivalent) and it works fine as well. If you want to work on those documents in Excel on another computer, you must go through the same Save routine I mentioned above.

The Open Office programs don’t have quite the range of features that you find in Word and Excel, but for most situations they’re great. And you can’t beat the price.

That’s a great solution, Steve. Thanks. Sorry for the delay in getting back. It took me a while to figure out how to make it all work.

Russ

That’s a great solution, Steve. Thanks. Sorry for the delay in getting back. It took me a while to figure out how to make it all work.

Russ