Really annoying cold boot problem

Blue160 · 17 Aug 2011 at 11:12

Hello chaps

I've got a cold boot problem with a system I built in July. Specs are as follows:

OCZ Agility 3 60GB
AMD Athlon II X4 640
Asus M5A88-M AMD 880G (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard
Corsair Builder Series CX 430W V2 ATX '80 Plus' Power Supply
Seagate Barracuda 500GB
OCZ Gold 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz
Win 7 Home Premium OEM

The system runs great, except that a cold boot always results in a BSOD followed by startup repair. I built it for a mate who kept running it like that until it borked his Windows install so badly it claimed it wasn't a genuine copy.

I got a BSOD trying to reinstall Windows, so tested the RAM. The RAM failed memtest spectacularly, so I swapped it out and Windows installed fine. The same RAM passes with no errors on another machine though, and is now back into the problem computer with no further errors.

I've updated the firmware on the SSD, and updated the BIOS, but no improvement.

At the moment I suspect the motherboard is at fault. Any help or suggestions gratefully recieved

Ch3m1c4L · 17 Aug 2011 at 11:45

does other ram test fine in the potentially dodgy board? Could be the memory controller, or maybe the volts/timings were incorrectly set?

Blue160 · 17 Aug 2011 at 12:01

Volts and timings match what it says on the sticks. I've tested a known working set of Corsair XMS3 in the dodgy board and it passed fine. I'm going to test them again from cold boot and see if that throws anything up.

agnes · 17 Aug 2011 at 12:41

I would suggest a badly seated stick?

Or, as said, a dodgy dimm slot.

I would get a stick you know for 100% is working fine, and test each dimm slot with memtest.

ags

Blue160 · 17 Aug 2011 at 13:37

Thanks for the suggestions

I haven't had the boot problem again since the last round of memory swapping this morning, so it may well have been a badly seated DIMM.

I'll boot it again this evening, and if it fails again I'll test all the slots as you suggested.

Blue160 · 18 Aug 2011 at 09:38

Right. Update time.

PC booted fine last night after being off for over four hours, so I thought the problem was gone............

Tried it this morning and it booted to a black screen

Ran startup repair and got a BSOD with the following error:

C0000221 Unknown Hard Error \SystemRoot\System32\ntall.dll

Ran memtest which immediately filled the screen with red. I then swapped in some known good RAM and booted Windows without using startup repair and it booted fine.

Is it the RAM or the mobo is the question. I suspect it booting without a repair lets the SSD off the hook. The main problem is I'll have to wait another eight hours or so before I can try it again :mad: