Bluescreening with 2 sticks of ram

Grumbledook · 8 Dec 2009 at 13:34

Need some advice:

Got a cheap motherboard and cheap ram (about a year ago) think the mobo is gigabyte g31m-s2l

the ram is 2x 2gig PNY

The PC is really stable and has a great uptime with 1 stick of ram in, however when I put two in it will bluescreen after a while.

I'm using win XP if that makes any difference.

Looking to get a new hdd and isntall win7 pro 64bit so would like to get all 4 gig of ram working.

any ideas?

CBJ · 8 Dec 2009 at 13:35

Try swapping the sticks into different slots. That will tell you whether the memory or the slot is at fault, or whether it's just having 2 sticks in there that causes the problem.

marc69 · 8 Dec 2009 at 13:38

CBJ said:
Try swapping the sticks into different slots. That will tell you whether the memory or the slot is at fault, or whether it's just having 2 sticks in there that causes the problem.

Sounds like good advice. Once you find out if it's the ram / slot or just the fact of it having 4GB in we can have a go at sorting it out.

Could be that it needs more volts to get it to run stable or it might need a little NB bump for 4 sticks.

Let us know how it goes

Grumbledook · 8 Dec 2009 at 13:40

I'm fairly sure I ruled out both the ram sticks as it runs fine with either of them in, just not together.

Should I only need to try one stick in either slot to see if one of the slots is faulty, or try both sticks one at a time in each of the two ram slots?

CBJ · 8 Dec 2009 at 13:51

Try both sticks one at a time in each slot, then both sticks in different orders in each combination of slots. The combination of arrangements that work and don't work will tell you where the problem lies and give you a better idea how to go about solving it.

marc69 · 8 Dec 2009 at 13:54

Have you tried putting them both in and running a memtest in dos?

I'd try that first thinking about it, I'll give you a link:

Floppy
CD-ROM
USB Pen

Grumbledook · 8 Dec 2009 at 13:57

how long would a mem test likely take to run?

marc69 · 8 Dec 2009 at 14:01

Grumbledook said:
how long would a mem test likely take to run?

It runs until you stop it as far as I can remember. A good couple of hours should be sufficent?

Took from another forum:

I think most people do about 6 passes if they are waiting for the results. At most I would do 10 if you are under time constraints. Otherwise, assuming this is for your home PC, I recommend you just leave it running overnight and/or during a workday while you are away. This should be enough to give you a solid margin of error and does not impede on your schedule.

Grumbledook · 8 Dec 2009 at 14:06

probably best I set it to run before I go to bed tonight then by the looks of it

got no tv signal so would be rather bored without my machine to use! Cheers for the advice

marc69 · 8 Dec 2009 at 14:09

Grumbledook said:
probably best I set it to run before I go to bed tonight then by the looks of it

got no tv signal so would be rather bored without my machine to use! Cheers for the advice

Haha, sounds like a plan. Be sure to tell us the results tomorrow so we can have another look if needs be.

Do you know the rated DRAM Voltage for that RAM? You could try adjusting that in the BIOS, maybe it's undervolted.

Good luck =)

Grumbledook · 8 Dec 2009 at 14:23

no idea on the rated ram voltage, though I did try earlier in the year to up the voltage and it made no difference

could it be a problem with drivers or something in win XP that using win7 might sort out as well?

still going to do a bit more testing though, personally I think its the cheap as chips motherboard but hopefully we can narrow it down, fingers crossed

marc69 · 8 Dec 2009 at 14:45

There are no drivers for RAM, well non I know about anyway!

You've made sure you installed all of your motherboard drivers, right?

I think running memtest is the next logical thing to do if you have