I am having a problem with one of my PC's which is clearly motherboard related.
I have tried everything I know and don't want to accept the obvious, so thought I would ask incase some one can offer a fresh perspective.
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-SINXP1394, P4 2.8, 1.5gb PC 3200 DDR ram (2 x 512mb and 2 x 256mb - each pair matched and happily running in 128bit dual mode for the last three years). I have never attempted to overclock the board, memory or any other components.
A few days ago I installed a Zalamn CNPS9500LED CPU Cooler, which as it is socket 478 and in a Lian-Li case with removeable motherboard, was a simple job. I took all the usual precautions with regards to static, spills of thermal grease etc. and am if anything always over careful when doing anything near the motherboard. I also have a good idea of what I am doing and have built or upgraded 10 or so PC's in the last two years without incident, inc. 2 this week.
Anyway, everything installed nicely, booted up perfectly first time...except the ram in memory banks 1 and 2 were no longer recognised.
Checked all four sticks of ram and others that I have lying around, all are perfect but banks 1 and 2 will not work (whether to boot from alone or as part of several occupied banks).
Restored the Bios that I backed up before the upgrade (the board has dual bios anyway) and have used stock versions f2 through f6 from Gigabyte, but to no avail.
I suspect that those two sockets are damaged, yet I can't quite believe it as I was so careful and never went near them or any other area of the motherboard than the heatsink.
Can anyone offer anything else that I may try before replacing the board, which I am trying to avoid at the moment as I can't afford the downtime that it would take to restore the OS and all the DTP software, filters, post-script stuff etc. that we use in our day to day work.
Is there any software out there that analyzes a motherboard for dead memory banks and other areas of the board for funtionality?
If anyone can help, I would greatly appreciate it.
I have tried everything I know and don't want to accept the obvious, so thought I would ask incase some one can offer a fresh perspective.
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-SINXP1394, P4 2.8, 1.5gb PC 3200 DDR ram (2 x 512mb and 2 x 256mb - each pair matched and happily running in 128bit dual mode for the last three years). I have never attempted to overclock the board, memory or any other components.
A few days ago I installed a Zalamn CNPS9500LED CPU Cooler, which as it is socket 478 and in a Lian-Li case with removeable motherboard, was a simple job. I took all the usual precautions with regards to static, spills of thermal grease etc. and am if anything always over careful when doing anything near the motherboard. I also have a good idea of what I am doing and have built or upgraded 10 or so PC's in the last two years without incident, inc. 2 this week.
Anyway, everything installed nicely, booted up perfectly first time...except the ram in memory banks 1 and 2 were no longer recognised.
Checked all four sticks of ram and others that I have lying around, all are perfect but banks 1 and 2 will not work (whether to boot from alone or as part of several occupied banks).
Restored the Bios that I backed up before the upgrade (the board has dual bios anyway) and have used stock versions f2 through f6 from Gigabyte, but to no avail.
I suspect that those two sockets are damaged, yet I can't quite believe it as I was so careful and never went near them or any other area of the motherboard than the heatsink.
Can anyone offer anything else that I may try before replacing the board, which I am trying to avoid at the moment as I can't afford the downtime that it would take to restore the OS and all the DTP software, filters, post-script stuff etc. that we use in our day to day work.
Is there any software out there that analyzes a motherboard for dead memory banks and other areas of the board for funtionality?
If anyone can help, I would greatly appreciate it.
