PCA Forums

Ok. I am having issues with my Shuttle computer. It will not boot with 2 memory sticks installed. I have tried sever different types of working sticks but it just will not boot with more then one installed. It can be in either slot but only one. It will not even show the BIOS screen, only fans power up when 2 sticks are installed.

1st I figured I would update the BIOS for the hell of it. I can not for the life of me boot into DOS and have access to my SATA drives. How do you update the BIOS these days? I can not find any means to update in Win7-64.

Any ideas on either problem?

Sounds to me like you have a motherboard problem.

Can you isolate it to one slot being bad? Try booting with one stick in the other slot.

MEMORY:
Get some contact cleaner ( CRC brand sold at Home Depot), or at worst WD40 (trouble is WD40 leaves a residue) and spray the memory slots. All it takes is a slight bit of corrosion to upset the timing between two sticks in Dual Channel mode.

Examine the mobo for swollen or leaking caps. I've unfortunately come across a lot of Shuttle mobos from 4 years ago with bad caps.


Questions:

- Can you mix two different size sticks? Using two different sizes will force the mobo to run in Single Channel mode which is inherently more stable.

- You sure you're running the correct clock speeds for the CPU?


FIRMWARE UPDATE:

- Why do you need to access the SATA drives for a firmware update? The firmware should be on a floppy, CD or flash drive if it's a DOS based BIOS update. Make a bootable floppy and put the firmware update on it as well.

- That said, most SATA AHCI controllers run in IDE emulation in DOS mode. You may have an older SATA controller that doesn't. The way around that is to see if there's a setting in BIOS to switch the SATA controller into IDE Emulation mode. However make sure you change it back to SATA mode before booting Windows. However, as I mentioned above, you don't need SATA drives accessible to update your firmware.

Hope this helps...

Memory:
I will clean but no caps are swollen or leaking
I can not mix different sizes. 2-2, 2-1, 1-2 does not work
I can use either slot individually with success
computer is not overclocked, bios at default

Firmware:
I need SATA because the CD is also SATA along with all drives.
I do not have a floppy
I will check the bios for IDE emulation mode

Update:

Firmware: The IDE Legacy support worked and I have updated the BIOS but it did not resolve my issue with the memory. Did not think it would but worth a try.

Also....DIMM1 is the problem. Anytime I plug a memory into DIMM1 it will not boot. Doesn't power on monitor and will not beep or anything. Does not matter what size is in DIMM1. If a stick is in there I get nothing.

Bad Dimm slot I'm afraid is what it sounds like. Look carefully with a magnifier. Make sure there's no bent pins or a scrap of metal wedged in the Dimm connector.