Problem with PC - Mobo or RAM?

TNA

TNA

TNA

Caporegime
Joined
13 Mar 2008
Posts
31,004
Location
London
The problem stearted a few days ago when I started my computer and it would go to a error screen which gave me the following windows error code 0xc0000428. After restarting the computer it went into windows and it worked fine for the rest of the day. I initially thought it was a windows problem and did a backup and was going to format in the next few days time.

The next day the same happened and I restarted and it worked again. But this time I noticed the Asus logo was loading really slow and even got stuck for a while. I thought it was a BIOS problem and updated my BIOS to the latest version. This did not help though.

Yesterday when I turned it on the BIOS took a very long time to complete. You would get to see all the text for a long time trying to load. For example loading keyboard and USB. Then when I pressed del to go into BIOS menu it took a long time, I even saw WAIT.. while it was loading. When I got in the menu after going through the menu's it froze. When I started the computer it would come on, but no display. No signal to monitor.

I decided to take out the power cable, the battery in the motherboard and change the jumper from 1-2 to 2-3 and back to 1-2. This helped and I got into windows again. I wanted to change the timer on the motherboard and disable Floppy A and save, when I did this the same thing happened. It did not save like it usually does. It just restarts once and stays on and does not restart again. So I had to manually restart.

This time I saw something new for the first time. I cant remember all of it, but it was something like BIOS checksome. Then it said searching for floppy, not found, searching for cd-rom, not found, searching for usb, not found. It did that over and over again. I turned it off.

I turn on the computer again and I got no signal to the monitor at all. So I took out battery again and reset everything. This time I took out 2 sticks of ram and it came on. Everything seems to be working fine, with both sets of sticks, and I ran memtest86+ on each stick and they all got 3 passes each. Some got 7 or 8 because I got busy. No errors were found.

From this I can conclude that ram slots 3 and 4 are damaged or the motherboard does not like 4 sticks of ram anymore.

The system worked fine in its current settings for at least 6 months and no changes have been made before these problems started.

I am running on 2gb RAM at the moment, and it all works fine so far. Any ideas guys? Sorry about the long post :)
 
Motherboard, RAM or CPU.

You did the correct thing of taking the battery out, this ruled out any funny configuration settings.

I would say the problem is either heat or voltage related. I'm going to say you were sensible enough to cool the Q6600 properly though.
Given that you've tested all the sticks, it's very probably the motherboard, added to your evidence that the BIOS screen took a long time to turn on, especially when booting into windows.

RMA your motherboard I suppose - unless you're not really bothered?
 
try flashing the BIOS (should be able to from a thumb drive). Or try pulling the CMOS battery for a bit, 5-10 min, while the system is Off, and unplugged.
 
Well I want to try one more thing. My cousin can get hold of 4gb of RAM for me to test it with for a few days, so I want to do that first. But I am quite certain its the mobo. I mean what can cause all those crazy slowdowns and lock ups in the BIOS? Its notthing to do with heat I know that much. Could a doddgy CPU or RAM do it?
 
Paul2506 said:
try flashing the BIOS (should be able to from a thumb drive). Or try pulling the CMOS battery for a bit, 5-10 min, while the system is Off, and unplugged.
Click to expand...

I did that. I flashed to the latest BIOS. I did leave the battery out for a few minutes. It was unplugged of course :)
 
Have had and are still having an issue with a MSI Neo2 Platinum. It ran for 3 years faultless then it started to crash out of COD4 on exiting the game, it did this for about 10 months, just thought it was the game. Then one night it crashed and beeeeeeeeeeeep beeeeeeeeeeeep beeeeeeeeeeeeep...........

Took out the RAM thinking that this was the problem and it turns out than only half the RAM slots work, channel A only, and then only random RAM sticks work. Tried flashing, removing battery, reset CMOS. Nothing.
 
From what I can see right now, it maybe the rams. I am testing OCZ 4gb rams from my cousin and its been working fine since yesterday. I will be testing for 3-4 more days and if all works out fine I will go and order some new ram.

Weird how memtest did not find anything.
 
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