Strange strange behaviour!

[mooky32]

Hi folks,

Got a bit of a weird one on my hands and can't quite get to the bottom of it.

My rig is an OC Ultima, about 2 and a hald years old:

Q6600 @ 3.4
4GB Crucial Ballistic Ram (4 x 1GB)
Abit IP35 Pro MB
Saphire 4870 512MB GFX
Window 7 Ultimate - 64Bit

It has been a fantastic runner and no mistake. Rock solid until just now!
It made the switch to Windows 7 a couple of months back and had been running great.

PROBLEM:

After I shut the machine down and come back to it the next day and power it on it does one of 2 things. It hangs on the ABIT Bios Image - you can't even enter the BIOS at this point

or

It starts to load Windows 7 and then blue screens very very early into the boot loader and resets in the blink of an eye. A couple of times it has started to load the Windows 7 logo and just halts and the logo looks totally like its suffering a bad case of video corruption.


WORKAROUND

Strangely if I switch the computer off at the rear power switch (as in no power to MB) and back on again and then cycle the power on - it boots and will work all day long like this without issue - till the next power down.


There have been no hardware or software changes to the computer. One occassion I had to remove a DIMM from one of the 4 memory slots to get it to boot at all and thought I had cracked it with a faulty DIMM or bad memory slot.
The next day I put the DIMM back in and it booted.

Keep in mind it has been stable for a long time , and OC settings\voltages have not been altered.

Clear CMOS, Dodgy RAM, maybe even MOBO?, just can't figure best course of action.

Any advice is appreciated guys as this is getting to be quite annoying.

P.S Have tried memtest on all 4 sticks gave 1 error on 11 cycles over night.
Also ran Memscope and it showed hundreds of errors.
Replace the memory you fool I hear you say but not convinced by Memscope and have MOBO suspicions......

Thanks

 

[tipes]

Hi folks,

Got a bit of a weird one on my hands and can't quite get to the bottom of it.

My rig is an OC Ultima, about 2 and a hald years old:

Q6600 @ 3.4
4GB Crucial Ballistic Ram (4 x 1GB)
Abit IP35 Pro MB
Saphire 4870 512MB GFX
Window 7 Ultimate - 64Bit

It has been a fantastic runner and no mistake. Rock solid until just now!
It made the switch to Windows 7 a couple of months back and had been running great.

PROBLEM:

After I shut the machine down and come back to it the next day and power it on it does one of 2 things. It hangs on the ABIT Bios Image - you can't even enter the BIOS at this point

or

It starts to load Windows 7 and then blue screens very very early into the boot loader and resets in the blink of an eye. A couple of times it has started to load the Windows 7 logo and just halts and the logo looks totally like its suffering a bad case of video corruption.


WORKAROUND

Strangely if I switch the computer off at the rear power switch (as in no power to MB) and back on again and then cycle the power on - it boots and will work all day long like this without issue - till the next power down.


There have been no hardware or software changes to the computer. One occassion I had to remove a DIMM from one of the 4 memory slots to get it to boot at all and thought I had cracked it with a faulty DIMM or bad memory slot.
The next day I put the DIMM back in and it booted.

Keep in mind it has been stable for a long time , and OC settings\voltages have not been altered.

Clear CMOS, Dodgy RAM, maybe even MOBO?, just can't figure best course of action.

Any advice is appreciated guys as this is getting to be quite annoying.

P.S Have tried memtest on all 4 sticks gave 1 error on 11 cycles over night.
Also ran Memscope and it showed hundreds of errors.
Replace the memory you fool I hear you say but not convinced by Memscope and have MOBO suspicions......

Thanks

Hi There,

First off you could do with being able to read the message on the blue screen - to do this you need to disable the re start on error. Go to contol panel/system whne system opens click on advanced system settings in left panel and then when system properties opens click on the advanced tab and the starup and recovery tab settings down the bottom - when there untick automatically re start under system failure then click apply or ok and back out of all tabs - you may have to re start after this. When you have done that you will at least be able to read the blue screen and jot down any stop error, once you have this info you can google it or research it on Microsoft site - it will give you a clue as to what is going wrong.

Also I would suggest swapping in some known good memory - borrow some if necessary from a mate - failing that i think you should identify the dodgy stick which you said one of them came up with an error - leave this stick out and see how you get on.

Come back and let us know how u get on.

Mark

 

[Frozennova]

As said above

Try one stick of ram at a time or run memtest

Drop to stock clock to see if the overclock has become unstable as your chip is degrading due the extra volts

Reinstall Windows

 

[mooky32]

Hi There,

First off you could do with being able to read the message on the blue screen - to do this you need to disable the re start on error. Go to contol panel/system whne system opens click on advanced system settings in left panel and then when system properties opens click on the advanced tab and the starup and recovery tab settings down the bottom - when there untick automatically re start under system failure then click apply or ok and back out of all tabs - you may have to re start after this. When you have done that you will at least be able to read the blue screen and jot down any stop error, once you have this info you can google it or research it on Microsoft site - it will give you a clue as to what is going wrong.

Also I would suggest swapping in some known good memory - borrow some if necessary from a mate - failing that i think you should identify the dodgy stick which you said one of them came up with an error - leave this stick out and see how you get on.

Come back and let us know how u get on.

Mark

Cheers for suggestions Mark. I will certainly run with the blue screen tip.
Think its down to memory or Mobo and trying to figure out which!

Will let you know how I go.

Cheers

Mooky

 

[tipes]

Cheers for suggestions Mark. I will certainly run with the blue screen tip.
Think its down to memory or Mobo and trying to figure out which!

Will let you know how I go.

Cheers

Mooky

My guess is you are likely to find out that it is the memory that is the problem - but we will see.

Mark

 

[mooky32]

My guess is you are likely to find out that it is the memory that is the problem - but we will see.

Mark

Hey again,

Well I have the BSOD captured now due to the little change you suggested.
Its BAD_POOL_HEADER

STOP: x00000019

I starting to think memory myself, one suggestion is to turn off indexing.
Will give this a bash.

Thanks

Mooky

 

[mooky32]

Update on this.

I eventually shed my idleness and ran memtest and memscope against individual DIMMS to find that one was faulty. Strangely Memscope seemed to highlight this issue much earlier than memtest.

I then ran happily for 2 or 3 days on 3GB and then had an issue with C1 post on Mobo.
Again pointing to memory. Another DIMM in the other pair had died.

So RMA'ing all to crucial who as usual provided a great service experience.

Hoping Mobo is not killing DIMMS but running them at 2.0v and mild 945 overclock on 5-5-5-15 timings.

Suspect Ballistix have gone just that. Will update when new DIMM arrive.

Thanks for input folks

 

[BuToNz]

If they are 800MHz DIMMs i would seriously suggest you running them at 2.1 or 2.2v's, not many sticks can reach that speed without some more volts. This could also be causing the errors, hence why it was recommended you reset to stock clocks.

I have had many problems with my Ballistix, but rest assured Cruical are super quick and efficient.

EDIT: Just to add, might be worth making sure your northbridge voltage is up abit from stock. With all 4 DIMM slots occupied you will need the extra to sustain those speeds, hell i need it and i dont clock my RAM.

 

[mooky32]

If they are 800MHz DIMMs i would seriously suggest you running them at 2.1 or 2.2v's, not many sticks can reach that speed without some more volts. This could also be causing the errors, hence why it was recommended you reset to stock clocks.

I have had many problems with my Ballistix, but rest assured Cruical are super quick and efficient.

EDIT: Just to add, might be worth making sure your northbridge voltage is up abit from stock. With all 4 DIMM slots occupied you will need the extra to sustain those speeds, hell i need it and i dont clock my RAM.

Hey mate,

I did have the sticks running at 2.1 when the errors started. They had been running at 2.1 for a couple of years and were fine.
I was just experimenting at 2.0 as I was getting desperate!
Will defo be running the new 4 DIMMS at 2.1.
My MCH has also been increased historically and been very stable.

Thanks for input