So, here's my latest quandary in dealing with PCs: I bought another 2GB of Corsair XMS2 DDR2 RAM to install in my PC. When it arrived, I installed it and tried to boot up the PC. No dice. The BIOS sees it just fine, but Vista 32 Home Premium was not booting. In fact, as soon as the post completes, the screen goes black, and that's all she wrote. Tried to boot Vista in safe mode, it hangs at crccheck loading. Every time.
No problem, I thought. I want Vista 64 anyway. So, I ordered the 64-bit version of Home Premium from MS. It arrived yesterday.
After a gruelling install (Thanks so much for that, Microshaft...) I ran in to the exact. Same. F**king. Issue.
Now, I have done my research, and it seems quite a few people have this issue as well, and people with other motherboards are having similar issues.
I have tried installing the MS patch KB9297777 with no luck. I tried backing down the RAM timings from 4-4-4-12.
I scoured the web today, and tonight I am going to try a few remaining options before I go ballistic. In the BIOS, I am going to attempt to change the RAM voltage to 2.2. (It's already upped to 2.1 per manufacturers specs.) Then I'm going to make sure it's running at 667Mhz as opposed to its 800 rating. (A memory limitation of current chipsets, apparently, is that they can't run 4 sticks at the rated speed.)
I will, of course, post the results here, in the hopes that if I can fix this, I can help others who are having this very irritating issue.
System Specs:
MSI K9N SLI Platinum motherboard (NVidia 570 SLI)
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200
4GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2 RAM (4 x 1GB)
EVGA 8800GTS 640 MB
X-FI ExtremeMusic
BFG PhysX card
Killer NIC M1
Hiper 580W PSU
UPDATE:
Nothing has worked. I even tried removing everything from the system but the CPU, RAM, and HDD, but nothing will cause Vista 64 to boot while there are 4 sticks of RAM on this motherboard. I'm sorry folks, I have no fix for this.
Instead, I gave up and ordered an ASUS Crosshair 590 SLI motherboard. Lots of people have great luck with 4GB of RAM and this board, so I am hoping I do too.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131593
2 comments:
So did it work with your new Asus board?
Similar setup with similar results. Driving me crazy too. Getting it running again is a pain in the butt. Usually have to pull 2 sticks of memory out and it fires up, then pop the 2 sticks back in and it's fine for a few days. Then BSOD again. I may try 2 sticks of 2 Gig ram instead of 4x1, as I hear it might be an issue with all 4 slots occupied.
Core 2 Duo E6850
EVGA 680iLT nVidia-based mainboard
XFX 8800GTX GPU
4x1Gb Crucial Ballistix Tracer 800 MHz at 4-4-4-12 and 2.0V
3x320Gb Seagate Barracudas
CoolerMaster 850W PSU
Vista x64 Home Prem.
Runs great, when it runs.
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