RAM broken for no appearent reason :/
 

I was on vacation in Croatia for over a month. I came home today, and when I booted the computer, I got a kernel panic. I tried to boot windoze, and I just got a bluescreen. I tried memtest86+, and it found shitloads (pardon the expression) of errors. I pulled out one RAM card, and the computer started beeping when I turned it on. I put the card back in and pulled out the other one and it booted like normal. I have 2 PC2700 ram cards, each 256 megs. How did it break when noone used the computer during summer, and is it fixable? The comp is really slow now, and I'm low on cash so I can't buy a new one very soon. :cry:

if the computer had power (pluged into the electrical jack, not necessarly open and running) there probably been an electrical shortcut (over or under tension) that killed your RAM. Most PSU doesn't protect the motherboard about power fluctuation and it could be deadly on some hardware (RAM and Modem will most likely fry very quickly, hdd will take some time but will eventually fail if the power goes up and down all the time).
I would recommend to buy a good power bar with a good surge protection built-in... and watch out, often they claim there is a surge protection but it ends what they call protection is a power off button.

Anyways... the ram is dead, I doubt there is a way to fix fried ram (unless you can figure out what chip is dead ans to fix it yourself... where would you find replacement part anyways? )

Thanks for answering. It was unplugged all summer (that includes the modem from the wall too), so it can't have been a surge. I got a power bar with surge protection, and it's what I've connected all computer related things to.

Anyways, I got some money from my mom and bought a PC2700 512 meg RAM chip, but the problems don't seem solved.
It seems with all of the RAM cards, memtest86+ finds problems.
I don't know what's wrong, but I'm starting to doubt it's the RAM that's broken. When I boot, I get a message that says the computer wasn't shut down correctly, and I have to enter the CPU frequency in the BIOS. If I set anything above 100MHz (like 133, 166 or 200), after saving and exiting, it doesn't reboot, but just gives me a black screen. I hold the power button for 5 seconds and turn it off then, which brings me back to the "the computer was not shut down correctly" problem. My CPU is AMD Athlon XP 2600+ 1.9GHz, but I'm running it at 1.1GHz.
The computer seems to work, even though memtest finds hundreds of flaws. I'm not capable of playing GTA San Andreas (because of the CPU problem).
Is there anything I can do to fix all of this, or maybe there's something I missed?

Your BIOS battery could be dead, among other things. That would explain it losing settings. Or your CPU could've somehow been damaged, or the motherboard. CPU/Motherboard damge could show up in a memtest86+ test. Are the problems always found at the same memory addresses?

Mainly. They usually start appearing at around 70%-ish.
I got a spare BIOS battery from an old mobo, I'll try putting it in.

Hopefully it's of the same type? :)

Aren't they all the same type?
It's the same size and shape at least ;)

Then it's probably the same type. And no, they're not all the same type, though they are becoming increasingly standard. Some motherboards just have weird batteries.

k... lol
Well I've got some work to do now that it's running, I'll try putting it in later :)

I would make sure the voltage is the same... it's always written on the battery. I doubt a wrong voltage could cause problem but who know?

It might be enlightening if you told us how long you have had the computer for? Old hardware sometimes does just fail after all.

It seems to work fine now after I've switched the battery. The CPU is back on 1.9GHz, however I only have 512 megs of RAM. I wish I could put in the other two RAM chips, then I'd have a gig. :(
@Vgui: The computer is quite old, but every once in a while I get new components. I got a new mobo before summer, I got a new CPU last fall. The three oldest still functioning components I have are the GFX card (GeForce FX 5200), the main hard disk (some IBM 80 gig drive) and the PSU. Not that the above matters though, since the problem was solved. :)
Matir: Thanks for the battery suggestion. :)

No problem. Glad its back up and running.

You will probably find that a lot of the capacitors on the motherboard are starting to dry out. This will cause you a variety of problems, including, but not limited to, not booting, memory falling over in one or another slot, graphics card freezing up, back up battery not charging, and/or discharging if it is of the chargeable type, etc etc etc.......

I know you said you don't have much money, but you might need to thik about looking at either replacing those caps, or getting a new M/Board.