vid card or memory caused boot.ini error?

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ohGrFreak

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My boot.ini file came up corrupted so I had to reinstall the O/S, here's what happened and my question...

I updated to nvidia's latest drivers for my PCI-e 8600 GT, upon reboot, my boot.ini was found corrupted. I tried recovery console from the XP disc, but that wouldn't even boot, gave me sometimes a bsod, sometimes nothing, most often an instant reboot. I could still access the BIOS roughly half of the times it rebooted. Then I remembered that my memory gave this motherboard a fit when I first installed the mobo, so I took out a stick, and now it works.

Here's the thing though, after I used some suggested settings someone mentioned to me (DDR2 voltage was off from gigabyte's bios), both sticks worked, not only that, they worked through about 4 O/S installs on this very motherboard. They are the very popular G.Skill 2x1gig sticks with the red heatsink.

Now, Gigabyte's bios DDR2 self test comes up okay when booting with both sticks, but the second after I get that message, the computer reboots. Is there a bootable mem test from say a thumdrive? I have no floppy.

Or can someone reccomend me some DDR2 that will be better compatable with a GIGABYTE GA-EP43-DS3L? I know I can probably find their compatability list, but I still don't know a lot about what memory is better than the next one. I just want cheaper 2 gigs with a heatsink that will work and be reliable.

Oh, and is it odd that a video card driver update caused this?
 
Thanks for the link, I'll try it out.

Since I don't have time right now to download and do the bootable memtest... I just figured I'd stick the second stick into a single channel slot as opposed to the color matched slot. Booted right up no problems, other than it's now running 2 gigs in single channel rather than dual. I may leave it like this until I add two more gigs, then I'll look for more reliable DDR2 anyway.

EDIT, well obviously this means it's not the memory right? I just have a tempermental mobo maybe?
 
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