Bad ram stick?

Discussions about anything Computer Hardware Related. Overclocking, underclocking and talk about the latest or even the oldest technology. PCA Reviews feedback
Post Reply
User avatar
blackhawk
Golden Member
Posts: 1403
Joined: Thu Nov 23, 2000 4:58 pm
Location: Ontario Canada

Bad ram stick?

Post by blackhawk »

Been having an intermittent problem with the 8k7a setup down below. Its refusing to boot up to windows once in a while and just displays a blank screen after the boot screen splash, or going blue screen while loading windows or just rebooting while running and either showing blank or blue screen.

I thought it was my display settings....Dell P1110........too high a refresh rate but noticed when I went to one stick of crucial 2100, that it was displaying only 250mb of ram!
When I tried two it would sometimes display 512, sometines 506!

Only two slots in the mb and I have the stick I think is not reporting right out right now and everything seems normal but is that symptomatic of bad ram? bad slot? or something else maybe.

Another thing on bootup it finds "another liteon dvd player" and gives it a different ID number in my computer...properties.

any help would be appreciated :(

ram looks physically fine.....crucial has always been great
I Am Canadian

DFI Lanparty Ultra-D/AMD Opteron 165(9 x 270) /2x512mb Crucial Ballistix 3200/Nvidia 7900GT/LianLi V1000 + Antec Neo/WinXPpro/ Western Digital JDKS 250gb x 2/LG 16X Multidrive/Dell 1907FP

Asus A8N-E/AMD 64 3500+(11 x 255)/2x512 Corsair XMS 3200/Antec Sonata/ATI X800XL/WinXP/Maxtor 10 300gb x 2/LG 16X Multidrive/Dell FPW2005

Heat 219-0-0
User avatar
FlyingPenguin
Flightless Bird
Posts: 32783
Joined: Wed Nov 22, 2000 11:13 am
Location: Central Florida
Contact:

Post by FlyingPenguin »

If it works fine with one stick and not the other then you have to assume you have a bad stick.

Some other suggestions:

- If you're overclocking, don't and see if that helps.

- Try setting the ram settings in BIOS to their safe defaults.

- See if there's a BIOS update.


As for the DVD, does this happen when the bad stick is in, or does this happen all the time? Does it just redetect the DVD? I'm not sure what you mean.
Christians warn us about the anti-christ for 2,000 years, and when he shows up, they buy a bible from him.

Image
User avatar
blackhawk
Golden Member
Posts: 1403
Joined: Thu Nov 23, 2000 4:58 pm
Location: Ontario Canada

Post by blackhawk »

All the above was done. I also removed one stick for troubleshooting the system so no more problems and put second stick back in and put the side panel on, problems back! thought it might be some weird ground with the panel for a bit

I had updated the bios when I swapped in the 1800 from cak but everything is safe default so maybe it is a bad stick.

Will run that stick by itself later and call crucial if its the same. Always thought memory worked or didnt.

livin and learnin

thanks for the info
I Am Canadian

DFI Lanparty Ultra-D/AMD Opteron 165(9 x 270) /2x512mb Crucial Ballistix 3200/Nvidia 7900GT/LianLi V1000 + Antec Neo/WinXPpro/ Western Digital JDKS 250gb x 2/LG 16X Multidrive/Dell 1907FP

Asus A8N-E/AMD 64 3500+(11 x 255)/2x512 Corsair XMS 3200/Antec Sonata/ATI X800XL/WinXP/Maxtor 10 300gb x 2/LG 16X Multidrive/Dell FPW2005

Heat 219-0-0
User avatar
FlyingPenguin
Flightless Bird
Posts: 32783
Joined: Wed Nov 22, 2000 11:13 am
Location: Central Florida
Contact:

Post by FlyingPenguin »

Always thought memory worked or didnt.
Anything but. You can have a flaky stick that works fine in one computer, but doesn't work in another. It might work by itself, but not with another stick. It might work in one socket but not the other.
Christians warn us about the anti-christ for 2,000 years, and when he shows up, they buy a bible from him.

Image
User avatar
Pugsley
Posts: 7454
Joined: Mon Aug 19, 2002 11:54 pm
Location: NW Indiana
Contact:

Post by Pugsley »

yea.. i have a pair of 512 133 sitting here that i think are bad... my computer wont even reconize them, and anohter they will BSOD @ 133 but will work fine @ 100.
[align=center]A self-aware artificial intelligence would suffer from a divide by zero error if it were programmed to be Amish[/align]
Post Reply