[Kneebs]

a couple of weeks ago, i bought a new chip, mobo, and 512mb DDR 400 memory, and all went pretty much ok apart from a slight memory problem, which i'll come to later..

Today I bought a new case, but in between swapping things over, I took out the chip, so I could try my brothers chip in my mobo, 'cos his chip isn't being detected as what it should be.

Before re-installing my chip, I got rid of the remains of the thermal transfer pad from the bottom of my heatsink, and on went some thermal transfer paste...

Now, when I re-connected everything back up, the pc randomly doesn't boot - if reset it or switch it off and back on, sometimes it comes on and sometimes it doesn't.

The motherboard has a diagnostic LED connected, which when it doesn't boot, lights 1 and 2 are on, which according to the manual, means "processor damaged or is not installed correctly - the paste won't of dried yet - could this be causing something on the chip to 'short', or could my chip be knackered ?

I've disconnected everything but my main HD, and the only card in it is the graphics card, and I've tried re-seating everything.....

Its a MSI K7N2 delta mobo, with an athlon xp 2800+

BTW, when it does actually boot, everything works fine.

My memory problem is that its a branded DDR 512mb 400 clock speed, but when in the bios, the FSB / DRAM ratio memory is set to auto, its detected correctly, but the pc crashes after a few minutes (at the most !). The only way i can get a stable pc is by changing the ratio to 'By SPD', and after a reboot, it shows as running at 333 - is this because the memory speed can only be as quick as the FSB speed of the processor (xp2800+ = 333) ?

Cheers peeps...
Mick