New
#51
Well, it's been a few days since I updated this. It appears that cleaning the contacts on the memory modules was all that was needed to begin with... since doing that, I've had no weird issues at all, even with Steam. (Although I still haven't reinstalled TF2, so I don't know if that map texture issue was related or perhaps they became corrupted somehow.)
But since doing that, I haven't had any weird things happen, be them games crashing, BSODs, or MSE's service randomly stopping. I figured I'd give it a couple days at least (since things were going well) to post here again, and it's been a few, so there's that at least.
The only odd thing to happen since all of this is that lovely GWX.exe Microsoft slipped in through Windows update starting every time I boot the machine, or switch users, or at 6PM or whenever the task is triggered to start the program. But I (and I assume everyone else here) knows what that is, and how to get rid of it if need be, haha.
In any event, thanks again for the assistance and patience. Hopefully cleaning those modules was all that was needed... they were surprisingly dirty; some black residue, which I assume was just from being in contact with the metal contacts on DIMM slots (like old NES carts), and some brown-ish residue, which I assume was a combination of dust/dirt/? from the air itself.
If any more BSODs happen I may be back with more dump files, but so far everything is good. Kinda hate we went through all that trouble only to have the modules cleaned and have things clear up, but as old as this hardware is, putting it through stress tests and seeing it pass is pretty good I suppose.
Anyway, thanks again, and have a good one!