new system issues

Tonight I put together a system from all new hardware. It is my first AMD system actually, heres the specs:

AMD Athlon XP 2600+ "Barton"
1 x 512 MB Mushkin 2700 (blue)
Gigabyte 9600 XT
WD 80GB SE
ASUS A7N8X-X

After all the hardware was installed, I booted up and had to adjust the CPU Ext Modifier to get the correct Processor Speed (at first it said 1150 Mhz. Now its correctly at 2600+).

The RAM was displayed as operating at 100Mhz ??? So I some settings in BIOS that put it at 222 Mhz. I decided to wait til after I installed windows and could get some Benchmark software to give me more info on the RAM to adjust it anymore.

I began to load XP ,made partitions, etc, etc from the XP SP2 slipstreamed CD I made with the Toms Hardware slipstream instructions. The first time the screen came up "loading windows 39 min left..." there was an error message about an "improperly labeled driver" (First time I'd ever seen that.)

So I rebooted and because of what I was reading in the mobo manual I decided to adjust the RAM speed again. I turned it up several more percent than before and as the computer exited BIOS it made weird beeping noises and locked up.

Immediately after rebooting and going into BIOS I lowered the RAM settings back to {optimal} like the original 166Mhz. This enabled the computer to get back to loading windows.

At this point the computer came back to the screen "loading windows ** minutes to go..." a blue screen popped up and stated : "PHYSICAL MEMORY DUMP...reboot required." I rebooted and now no matter what I try the screen goes blank after the initial boot up screen.

The amount of RAM and CPU speed reads correct, all my drives read correctly (floppy, HD, CD) but right after the message "Verifying DMI pool........."
everything goes black and dosent respond to keyboard, mouse or drive activity.

Does anyone have an idea how to solve this problem?

Could I have fried my RAM?

Thanks in advance.

You certainly could have fried your RAM. Get yourself a copy of Memtest86 (downloads, then installs to a CD) and run it. It boots from its own CD, once you have it installed, so your system doesn't need to be running Windows.

Next time, get RAM that's clocked for a motherboard and CPU like yours (i.e. PC3200 - runs at 200 MHz) and don't try to overclock without the proper cooling, etc.


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