Crashing to Desktop grrrrrrr

[Lyndal]

So, we have all been playing a Month now. and until Today I have had absolutly no problems with FFXI.

I upgraded my Ram today to 1280MB of PC2700 and now when I login it crashes to the desktop about 1min after I login.

My Setup is as follows.

P4 2.53ghz
ASUS P4PE-L MB.
1280MB DDR333 pc2700 Ram (Note: 512 is Corsair, the rest is Kingston but that should not effect it in anyway)
Leadtek Geforce 4 ti4600 128MB
Sound Blaster Audigy Gamer

Im getting baffled as to why this is happening. I can do anything else fine on the PC and now FFXI decides to screw up on me. Anyone have a solution:confused:

[LikeWhoa]

Why are you baffled? You know the cause, its your memory. If it was fine before you upgraded then bad after the solution is simple. Is the corsair also 2700, different brands of ram have different timings and have the possibility of messing up because of incompatibility.
Try removing the 256 Kingston and running that. If that fails remove the kingston alltogether with just the corsair. If that runs then try the Kingston alone (both 256 and 512). If that works then decide what you want to do, little more kingston or less with the corsair, but you should also check their timings, the lower they are the faster your memory is, so if you can't have a gig (both 512s) then go to your system bios and check which set is lower (if either work indepentantly) and use that.
Any computer person would tell you its not wise to mix brands of memory, while it doesn't always cause problems the chance is pretty high and unnessecary when you can just get the same brand.

[ZoNicONE]

As LikeWhoa said, you should never mix 2 brands of memory, as well as 2 different types of memory from one brand. Even 2 memory sticks that are both labeled CL2 can still have differences in timing (like one having 2-2-2-3-1 Timing and the other having 2-2-2-4-1 Timing), and so on. Different sizes hurt, memory allocation can be problematic.

I guess you have 512MB Corsair, 512MB Kingston, 256MB Kingston... the worst case possible. I hope you have WindowsXP, as Win2k is very picky with memory. Running Win9X on a PC like yours would be idiotic, especially because it has a memory allocation error; anything above 256MB of Ram can and will cause all different types of bluescreens, sudden shutdowns and so on.

Do yourself a favor and sell the 256MB Kingston as well as one of the 512MB sticks that has the slower timing, and try to get another stick of the faster memory. If all have CL3 (CAS-Latency), sell all of 'em and get 2x512MB sticks with CL2. Faster CL timings are even more effective than a jump from DDR333 to DDR366.

It's most effective if the multiplyer of the CPU is the same as all latency-numbers together (2-2-2-4-1 would fit perfect for a multiplyer of 11). But that's only if you really wanna have a perfect system ^^

[Lyndal]

Thanks for the quick assistance. The problem was the 256chip. which is gone now. so im down to 1024MB of ram. which I could care less about until yesterday I only had 512 hehe. I obtained the extra 256 chip from my bro who maxed out his board and thought id give it a shot but now we have an extra 256 laying around.

No biggie. I only wanted a gig anyway hehehe. everything is fine now was playing for a few hrs this morning.