Re: Puzzling Problems -- Pulling Hair

Bill Anderson wrote:
Kent_Diego wrote:
Nothing is getting too hot? I would start with RAM. I have seen bad RAM corrupt files on hard drive and cause many problems. Run MemTest86. Try increasing voltage or slowing speed and timings to troubleshoot. Next likely is mother board then power supply. You can trouble shoot to see if video card is problem by running ATI Tool and undrclocking GPU.

Troubleshooting a problem like this is often a matter of replacing parts until fixed.



I'm baaaaack. Here was the original problem:

Motherboard: ASUS P5K DELUXE/WIFI-AP LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz 2 x 4MB L2 Cache
LGA 775
Memory: Crucial 2GB kit (1GBx2), Ballistix 240-pin DIMM, DDR2
PC2-8500
Video Card: SAPPHIRE 100210L Radeon HD 2600XT 256MB 128-bit GDDR4 PCI
Express x16
Power Supply: PC Power and Cooling ULTRA-QUIET PSU: SILENCER(R) 610
EPS12V
Video capture: ATI VisionTek TV Wonder PCI Express (added within the
past month)
Storage: Four 500 gigabyte hard drives -- three Western Digital and
one Maxtor.

I'm running a triple-boot configuration with these OSs in separate
partitions on a single 500 gigabyte drive:

C: WinXP
D: Vista
E: WinXP testbed (a small partition where I try out things before
installing them on C:)

As I explained here in early December, the system had gone flaky, with odd problems cropping up and Vista refusing to run at all and total unpredictability. The solution was to run Memtest86+ and learn that one of my two 1-gig memory sticks appeared to be bad. I removed it, RMAed it to Crucial, ran for about a week with 1-gig RAM, and installed the new stick from Crucial when it arrived. All has been working apparently fine since then.

This morning I was typing a Usenet post in Thunderbird when suddenly my mouse froze. Then I realized everything had frozen -- no mouse, no Windows Task Manager -- nothing.

So I pressed the reset button and the system wouldn't even POST! What to do? I removed the case cover and noticed that when I'd try to power up the fancy blinky lights on the Crucial Ballistix memory sticks were dark. Both sticks were dark. Hey, maybe the blinky lights would come in handy for something after all. After letting the system run for about 30 seconds, the memory LEDs would actually light up, but they'd never blink as normal.

So I unplugged power and removed both sticks from DIMM A1 and DIMM B1 where I had them. I then put one of them in the DIMM B2 slot. Don't ask why, I just decided to do that. When I rebooted, the stick lit up like a hyperactive Christmas tree and I heard the post beep and I was back in business as though nothing had happened. I did get a BIOS error when booting -- seems "overclocking" had failed. So when I landed in BIOS, I reset the memory DRAM frequency from its advertised DDR2-1066 to Auto.

Everything has been running fine since, with 1-gig RAM. I have company coming tomorrow and they'll stay until Tuesday afternoon and I want my computer to be working fine while they're here. So I'm not going to touch a thing until Tuesday night. It's working now and I have no plans to fix it yet.

Still -- am I making a mistake trying to make my memory sticks run at 1066? Crucial advertises that they will. Should I just give that up? Ideas for me to try on Tuesday?


Is Vdimm raised, to help the memory work at DDR2-1066 ? I don't think
any DDR2 wants to do that with only 1.8V applied. It probably takes
more than that.

Paul
.