booting problems

rikamus · 11 Dec 2007 at 21:49

i recently bought some new ram (same as my old ocz 8500), installed it, and a new hdd. oddly, now my computer won't boot normally. when switched on from cold it spins the fans up to a full speed test, where it would normally then slow down and load the os, and then just loops. spinning the fans. if i then hit the reset button it'll boot up fine. so every time i want to boot/restart i have to press reset...

any idea why adding some more ram/another hdd would do this? any idea how to fix it?

ta

rikamus · 15 Dec 2007 at 00:09

nothing is clocked and i tried upping the voltage - didn't get any change. any other ideas?

rikamus · 15 Dec 2007 at 11:10

i'll try that. surely if it was a hdd booting issue it would at least get a little bit of bios loaded before it conks out? the screen doesn't even realise that it's on, it just sits switching between analogue and digital.

rikamus · 15 Dec 2007 at 22:48

have 4 1gb sticks of ocz sli edition 8500. just tried it without the new hdd plugged in - no change. then without both the new sticks of ram in - booted fine. about to try it with just one of the new sticks. any ideas for a fix/workaround?

edit: haha, it really didn't like having 3 sticks in. froze at POST. popped them all back in and it's gone back to not booting first time.

rikamus · 16 Dec 2007 at 11:29

ok, tried the new ram on its own. it booted fine but as i was about to post windows bsod'd on me. i suspect that this was because the ram was in what i now know to be the second set of paired slots. so it's in the first 2 slots now and it seems to be working fine. however, in these slots it didn't boot properly - it gets stuck on the fan speed test. i'm gonna put the old ram back in, but in the 2nd set of paired slots and see what happens.

p.s. ...slots

edit: i can't get on the asus site atm to check if i have the latest bios but i did update it a couple of weeks ago to revision 1305. it's probably still the latest.

edit2: a futile effort i think

didn't make any difference swapping the ram round.

rikamus · 17 Dec 2007 at 15:54

right, ran memtest - i'll do the findings in bullet points.

- it returned errors straight away with all 4 sticks in (2 new and 2 old(ish))
- it returned errors with just the new sticks in
- it also returned errors with just the old sticks in
- it boots fine with just either old/new in
- it boots fine with all 4 in at speeds set to auto (800) as opposed to 1:1 linked (1066)

this suggests to me that it's probably a problem with the board not liking the ram?

btw voltage is currrently set to 2.3 (the rated amount). when i increased it earlier i increased it to 2.325 and then 2.350 (the EVP amount).

thanks for the help so far