RAM, mobo or Vista?

M

maw

Supreme [H]ardness
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Sep 27, 2000
Messages
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hi all,

i have a weird problem with my system. its an Asus A8N-E running Vista x64 SP1 w/ 2 GB (4x512 Geil DDR400) memory. I decided I wanted to wring another year out of the system before I did a complete upgrade, so I decided to bump the RAM to 4GB (4 x 1GB A-DATA DDR400).

Well as soon as I installed all 4 sticks, Windows would BSOD right at at the splash screen. At first I thought it was the >2GB problem with Vista, but the patch for it does not work with SP1 (when I tried to run it, it said "not supported by your system", then exited). So I figured this means the issue was solved with SP1.

So I decided to check the RAM. Individually, all 4 sticks pass memtest with no problems (ran through 7 loops each time). If I use only two of them, Windows boots fine, and again, memtest reports no problems.

BUT if I use all four together..BSOD at splash screen.

Also, I tried using just two of them along with 2 of my old 512MB sticks, and while it boots into Windows, programs will unexpectedly quit. When I run memtest in this config, it almost immediately starts reporting lots of errors. When I put all 4 of my original 512MB sticks back in, everything is fine again.

So, basically, it looks like these sticks don't like to run in any config but as a single matched pair and nothing else.

So does this sound like a RAM issue? Or is it my mobo being finicky? Or is it a problem with Vista SP1, and if so, how do I fix it?

Thanks for any help with this
 
its not a vista problem. sometimes hardware is finicky, and if you're trying to run 4 sticks of antique ddr, then it sounds like you've already found the problem :)
 
thrawn86 said:
its not a vista problem. sometimes hardware is finicky, and if you're trying to run 4 sticks of antique ddr, then it sounds like you've already found the problem :)
Click to expand...

yeah, i'm starting to com to the conclusion that my mobo is the culprit. Bummer, cuz I really was hoping to get some more life out the system.
 
Ok, i found an updated BIOS for the mobo and that helped a little bit. I can get into Windows now, but still have a bunch of memtest error messages. I'm going to fiddle with some voltages and timings..

EDIT: i backed it down to 333Mhz and things look much better. Memtest hasn't reported any errors, but I'll let it run for a while
 
No motherboard can properly handle having all 4 memory slots filled. End of story.

Sad but true. :(
 
Yay!! memtest ran all night and showed no errors..still can't get them to run at 400Mhz without memtest errors (tried loosing timings and upping voltage a little), but I'm not going to sweat it.
 
spine said:
No motherboard can properly handle having all 4 memory slots filled. End of story.

Sad but true. :(
Click to expand...

What do you mean by "properly handle"?

I have two rigs right now with all four RAM slots filled. No problem with them.
 
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