Bad Checksum continually

[MundoDragon]

Hello,

Just want to see if anyone has any info on this problem. A few months ago, I purchased and installed a new video card, memory and power supply into my computer. Since then, occasionally when watching video online, the movie will just freeze, no encoding corruption, just a freeze of the video. The mouse will still respond and buttons, links, etc. on the current webpage will be clickable. However, no matter what you click, the current page will remain onscreen. Upon attempting to close the browser, the window will become semi-transparent and will not allow you to minimize. Although everthing will be clickable and appear to function (ie. hourglass cursor), nothing will actually load. The only alternative is to hit CTRL-ALT-DELETE. Upon doing this, the computer goes to a black screen, which remains until rebooting the computer. Upon rebooting, the computer will not POST.

I have found through experimentation that when this happens, I can pull out one of my 2 MB Dual Channel sticks of memory. The computer will then POST with a bad checksum, forcing you to go into BIOS at least one time (and to set the time and date, which oviously are bogus). Then, I can simply add the memory back into the computer and it will boot and run normally. Until I watch something online again, then it will happen all over again, apparently at random.

I recently attributed this to the power supply, as it was a cheap Logisys model that would overheat like I've never experienced. Yesterday I just installed an OCZ 600W Modxstream, which is supposed to be a good quality power supply (and for almost 100 bucks, it had better be). All yesterday, I watched videos and nothing happened. I thought my dilemma was fixed. Alas, about an hour ago, it happened again. The thing to note is, I have several videos actually on my computer, which I can watch with no problem. They don't lock up ever. Seems to only be a problem with streamed video. I am wondering if maybe the old power supply could have somehow corrupted my BIOS chip on the motherboard (due to heat, bad voltage, etc..) and maybe that is why I am experiencing these things. I am remiss to blame it on the video card, as it runs games and everything else perfectly. Just streamed video causing the lock-ups. Any suggestions? If anyone needs anymore info, just post and I'll be happy to provide what I can. Thanks.

By the way, the mainboard in question is not a particularly top of the line one, and somewhat old (but no more than a few years, not ancient( I will list it here in case anyone has knowledge of this particular model which could be a factor (which I severely doubt, as it only started after the above mentioned upgrade) it is an ECS K8M890M-M.

 

[Hefemeister]

check out your ram with memtest.
Memtest86+ - Advanced Memory Diagnostic Tool

try with your old ram as well.

 

[MundoDragon]

Thanks Hef, I'll try that, although I don't see how bad RAM could be corrupting the BIOS, if there is anything I have learned in the last 20 years, it is that with computers, ANYTHING is possible.

UPDATE: Seems due to my 64-bit OS, I can't install, much less run, memtest. Although I have ways around this, does anyone know of an equivalent extensive memory testing utility that will run on 64-bit OS? Would save me trouble of ripping apart my girlfriends computer, installing my memory and running memtest on her 32-bit OS.

 

[Hefemeister]

Any possibility of a bad cmos battery?

 

[MundoDragon]

I thought of that, and I plan to check it out ASAP, but again, I am remiss to blame the battery, as the problem arised at a very specific time, during an upgrade, which suggests non-other than upgrade related. I blamed the PSU because, against better judgement, I bought a POS that heated to considerable temperatures. If the motherboard were older, I would tend to think more that it was the battery, but as it is only about 2 years old and every single computer I've ever owned, I've owned for 5 years+ with absolutely NO battery failure, well, you see where I'm going with this. But anyhow, yes, I plan to check that as soon as possible, but I highly doubt that is the problem. I am also going to grab a new motherboard ASAP as well, as this one is a bit outdated anyhow. Was just wondering if, in the mean time, anyone had any suggestions. It's got me baffled. I actually posted on this problem when I did the upgrade a few months ago, but as it seemed the problem was fixed, I didn't bother since then. But, yes, you can imagine how annoying it is to have a video start online, not particularly started by you, but automatically by the page itself, only to have to rip apart your computer and play with memory to get it to boot back up. Now that I think of it, and another reason which caused me to blame the old PSU, was that one time when this happened, I did not have to rip the computer apart. Upon not posting, I reached back and, as I at this point, suspected the PSU already, turned the PSU itself off for a few seconds, then turned it back on and voila, computer posted. I have only been able to do this one time, though, all other times requiring ripping out one stick of my memory, then putting it back in. Then the computer will run fine, boot naturally, no bad checksum, nothing. Until it decides to lock up on streaming video again, then it's ripping it apart again (after, of course, trying the above mentioned PSU trick, which I haven't been able to duplicate since)

 

[MundoDragon]

Okay, little bit of a breakthrough here. Although I knew my BIOS was up to date, on a whim, I decided to reflash it anyhow. Upon doing so and rebooting, same problem happened. No POST. After the method described in original post, it booted up, forcing me to go into BIOS and reset the date and time, etc... Upon browsing through the options, I noticed an option entitled BIOS Protect. After getting everything up and running, I rebooted into BIOS again and set this to Enabled. Now, it is only a matter of time to see if the next time it locks up, if it will overwrite the BIOS as well. Just thought I'd share this to anyone who is interested.

 

[kmote]

Thanks Hef, I'll try that, although I don't see how bad RAM could be corrupting the BIOS, if there is anything I have learned in the last 20 years, it is that with computers, ANYTHING is possible.

UPDATE: Seems due to my 64-bit OS, I can't install, much less run, memtest. Although I have ways around this, does anyone know of an equivalent extensive memory testing utility that will run on 64-bit OS? Would save me trouble of ripping apart my girlfriends computer, installing my memory and running memtest on her 32-bit OS.

You shouldn't have to install memtest, just write the ISO to a CD and boot from it.

 

[patonb]

^^Yha, memtest doesn't run on an OS, as it is its own OS.

I've ran it just fine on my system, which runs vista 64, but again... its a live cd.

 

[MundoDragon]

Thanks guys, but I have received the same advice to run memtest on another forum, and although good advice, I deemed it's practicality virtually useless as receiving an error from memtest does not guarantee that the memory is, in fact, the cause of the error. As I already know that there is a problem, memtest will only confirm that which I already know: that there is a problem with one of the core components.

So far, since switching the BIOS Protect to enable and after watching several streamed videos, I have not had the problem. Since I have been using Firefox since setting the option in BIOS, I cannot ascertain as to whether my problem resulted from IE or simply a bad codec somehow affecting my BIOS. Later, I will switch back to using IE and see if then the problem rears itself yet once again.

Also, time permitting, I may run memtest in the future to deem whether it is a problem with one of the core components or not. This may help me to really narrow it down to either hardware or software. Thanks for everyone's help and I will repost any new breakthroughs as I deem them relevant, in case anyone is as baffled as I am about this issue.