[Ham-Computers] Intermittent Computer lockup under Norton

[George, W5YR]

Paul, I don't doubt for a minute that Norton could mess up. In this case,
though, I identified which bank held the address of the error and removed
that memory stick. It was in Bank 1. Moving things around a bit to populate
Banks 0 and 1, I retested with no errors. Several other combinations were
tried, and a new stick was purchased. With the stick found to be faulty
reinstalled, the computer became very unstable and would hardly run. With
it removed, the system has "almost" become rock steady. I say "almost"
because no Windows system seems able to operate for an extended period
without requiring a re-boot. I will be installing Windows 2000 Professional
soon and expect a marked improvement in system reliability.

So, in this case, Norton did turn up a valid hardware fault and upon
solution, the system is now operating properly.

Thanks for your note and comments. Having been a computer system engineer
since 1957, I long ago learned to distrust any "diagnostic" program. Once
our system project leader wrote an elaborate test program for a  new
computer we were designing and building - the DARC with 3000 tubes and 80
tons of a/c! was TI's first digital computer - to verify proper operation
of the DIVide command. It ran very well indeed - so well, in fact, that one
could disable the DIV instruction and it would still run and not report any
problems. <:}

-- 
73/72/oo, George W5YR - the Yellow Rose of Texas         
Fairview, TX 30 mi NE of Dallas in Collin county EM13qe   
Amateur Radio W5YR, in the 56th year and it just keeps getting better!
QRP-L 1373 NETXQRP 6 SOC 262 COG 8 FPQRP 404 TEN-X 11771 I-LINK 11735
Icom IC-756PRO #02121  Kachina 505 DSP  #91900556  Icom IC-765 #02437


Paul Ahkolik wrote:
> 
> George,
> 
> Norton has a bug in it's diagnostics. It will show you having bad ram, when
> you don't.
> 
> When I ran Norton 2001 (Later 2002), it showed me having bad ram.
> When I deleted Norton & swithced on Ontrack, my "Ram problems" dissapeared.
> PC Pitstop also says I don NOT have a ram problem.
> 
> Paul W5PDA