BSOD Errors - Is It Drivers or Hardware?

[sausage888]

My A31P suddenly started giving intermittant BSOD errors after trying out the new Netflix streaming movie viewer using Microsoft Silverlight. Movie would stream successfully for about 20 minutes, then get blue screen and re-boot. Tried uninstalling Silverlight - still happened intermittantly; tried various ATI drivers - still happened; rolled back ATI drivers way back - still happens. Up until this point, I have never had any issues with A31P and Windows XP Pro.

The error I get in system error msgs is "ati2mtag - I2C read/write error - Category: MMLIB - Event ID: 50181". BSOD began happening more frequently with same errors, so tried running PC-Doctor DOS to see if anything hardware related was wrong. Tests ran clean except for one of my two 1G memory cards failed with following error:

201-017-000-20100629-56-Sytem Memory: Failed (Error in DIMM1, memory location 038E4390)
Err_Addr=038E4390H, Actual Data=EA743A9CH, Delta=00000001H, TestID=B1
Complex Pattern Test, Err-Type=Data Mis-Compare

My repair manual suggested to remove one DIMM, run PC-Doctor against it, then remove other DIMM, run PC-Doctor against it.

One of the DIMMs failed on B1 test, so assumed that was the problem. Tried running a second time and it passed. Ran a third time and the test just hangs there unresponsive. (Full Memory Test)

Would getting ati2mtag.sys I/O errors be likely related to an intermittantly failing DIMM? - I might have thought it was more related to the ATI Mobility FireGL 7800 video card, but the video card checks clean over and over.

[Harryc]

Remove the failing DIMM and try running your movies again. If it fails with the ATI error you have your answer. If it doesn't fail replace the DIMM.